Social Realism

Grade 12 Visual Art
Wexford Collegiate School For The Arts

Social Realism: a quick summary for your notes
Instructor: Peter Marsh, 2008

The saints and gurus of our great religions have decided long ago that what exists in the universe is here to stay and that it is unlikely that any part of it can ever truly disappear. Based on this logic, the everyday bloke can have faith that he/she will go to heaven, but unfortunately, for the folks lined up in Courbet’s “Burial at Ornan”, (1850), perhaps his friends and relatives, they have reached one of those points in life where they have to question both their logic and their faith and decide if this ignominious burial has portent for their own lives, and their entry into the great beyond. They stand there, inert, in their own contemplation, as the minister approaches the grave with his words of final reckoning, peace, and hopeful blessings.
I think it is no mistake that the painting verges on the monochromatic. Despite the wish to couch starkness in kindlier terms it is often the case that things are either, up or down, on or off, black or white, dead or alive. The ‘black or white’ palette echoes this finality and sets the somber mood of the painting. It also gives the painting, a graphic and stark reality, fitting to the occasion if you are a social realist as Gustav Courbet was. The starkness is only relieved once by the cleverly placed red at the paintings major dynamic point, and perhaps echoed by the one third proportional division marked by the blue stockings.


Unlike its most recent predecessors, this painting is not an artificial allegory of present-day events. The clothing is contemporary, the scene is contemporary, and the people are contemporary. To do this Courbet has stepped outside the traditional field of accepted academic painting to introduce a style and thinking that will give dignity and acceptance to the everyday working person.
Courbet exudes this same egalitarian strategy in two other famous works, “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet” (1854), and “The Stonebreakers” (1850). In the first painting, we see the artist himself, both in the title and in the poses, purposely elevating his social position to the equivalent of the moneyed elite.



The lack of deference in his pose suggests immediately the obliteration of any social differences, a political belief that was dear to his heart and caused him many troubles in his life, and some say eventually killed him. Although he also painted landscapes and used a more painterly application than his predecessors, “The Stonebreakers” is another painting of the ilk he is truly famous for, because it too depicts a ‘social realist’ situation. Here, going about their daily work, are the faceless and lowly stonebreakers, elevated to the canvas like more famous ancestors, and thereby giving a slap in the face to traditional painting.


Gustav Courbet’s social realism spelled the end of both neoclassicism and romanticism. It should also be said that his work put the working class ‘on the scene’ as they struggled in difficult economic and changing times brought on by the industrial revolution. Courbet would have been sympathetic to the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the beliefs of Marxism, and his tradition was continued by the likes of Daumier, Manet, and Ben Shan and Diego Rivera. Gustav Courbet’s social realism, expressed in these three works, was a sympathetic expression of the lives of the working poor. It wasn’t a “pretty movement”, neither was it pleasant for those who did their best to understand art. Social realism was a classic new direction giving dignity to a class of human existence.
Although social realism in painting and artwork extends to this day its beginning is marked by Courbet’s life span from 1819 to 1877
Social Realism is the first great painting movement that marks the beginning of the period to be studied in Grade 12 Visual Art. It should now be easy to understand why I marched us back to the French Revolution. Social Realism was a definite departure from its neoclassical and romantic predecessors and marked the beginning of a journey towards modern times.