There is a big difference between the "Realism" that many artists follow (the popular Richard Schmid, for example) and the "verismo" that I advocate. To explain the difference is to review again the entire history of the I Macchiaioli and the sterile academic regimine they were rebelling against. Some blogs try to make this to seem as simple as "painting stuff to look like stuff" and the end result of all this bologne are myriads of atelier realism schoools churning out thousands of "realist" painters out there with brush and knife in hand, competing to be the next Richard Schmid.
The whole point of the Risorgimento and its artistic followers was to confront "realism" with "dal vero" (after life) and the movement was as decidely anti-academic as the Risorgimento was anti-clerical. The academics, you will remember, attacked the I Macchiaioli for a style of painting that was too different from the accepted realism of the time which celebrated very highly skilled accuracy but also "dull as death" artistic products.
On the other end of the spectrum there was Adolf Hitler who attempted to enter the Austrian Academy but was rejected twice because his application showed little knowledge of anatomy. Hitler's paintings were lifeless academic studies of buidings sans people. But more than that the professors of the day at the Academy were figures like Max Lieberman who were already moving beyond pedestrian realism to work like Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt.
Adolf's painting
Schmid painting
But getting back to why realism is a dead end. In the competition between the brush and the camera for realism, the camera won. The I Macchiaioli were heading in a different direction than photographic accuracy.. Most had graduated with honors from the Italian academies and, like Signorini, were expert draftsmen. They wanted to go beyond a skillful, even loose accuracy in depiction. They sought "verismo" which meant both a liberal if not revolutionary politics but also expressions of artwork in social annd spiritual context for the times. Both in subject matter and, more importantly actually, the manner of painting, building on the discoveries of Palizzi, the animal painter and the notion of "macchia" as defined by Vittorio Imbriani.
Constable (who could be considered an English version of the I Macchiaioli) said "I have endeavored to draw a line betwen genuine art and mannerism, but even the greatet painters have never been wholly untainted by manner." When you look at his "Ploughing Scene in Suffolk" (1824) you see a much deeper and poetic understanding of nature than many of todays leading "realists."
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