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By 1962, the term New Realism was being used in the United States and France (where it was called Nouveau Realisme) as a name for Pop Art. That use never caught on in the United States, and then the term began to signify instead, a new breed of Realism. “The traditional variety had linked humanistic content with the illusionistic representation of observed reality and the rejection of flattened pictorial space derived from Abstraction”. Today’s realists are signaling a return to values rejected by te abstract, minimalist and conceptual art movements that have dominated most of our century. They’re bringing back the art of fine draftsmanship and showing new respect of shape, color and proportion. In the process, they are using such classic genres as landscapes, still lives and portraits to pose important questions about contemporary art. By contrast, New realism (although an extreme withdrawal from the Abstract Expressionism that dominated the 1950's) incorporated the flattened space, large scale, and simplified color of Modernist painting. Some New realist artists, such as Alfred Leslie, switched from abstract to representational painting. New Realism is too broad a term to have much meaning except a shorthand for a Figurative alternative to the abstraction of Abstract Expressionism, or Minimalist. It has taken many forms from serene landscapes (Fairfield Porter) to slyly psychological portraits (Alice Neel), and from the abstracted nudes (Philip Pearlstein) to the cerebral self-portraits by William Beckman. The term also tends to imply a “nongestural or nonexpressionistic handling of paint that suggests fidelity to appearances”. The belief that New Realists are primarily motivated by an interest in the way things look is believed by the psychic probing of Lucian Freud’s work or the radially more simplified stylizations of Edouard Vuillard - two artists associated with New Realism. (Comparisons between the two artists) Lucian Freud’s main characteristic in painting was a strict linear style of thin, carefully laid-on colors. He abandoned this style after the 1950's. He began to paint in an impasto manner - a new, strong, plastic coloration which requires stiff paintbrushes and great physical activity and participation. It began to loosen and the paint left imprints and traces in the color on the canvas - the effect of raw tissue.
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