Which of the Different Artistic Styles Appeal to Your Senses the Most?

Art can be a challenging concept to define, which is by design. Any piece of creative and expressive work is technically art, irrespective of whether the artist followed any predefined schools of thought for its creation or not. There is a reason why art is often used synonymously with freedom of expression after all.

That being said, the importance and influences of the various artistic styles are immense. In the beginning, the schools of artistic style act as guidelines and even inspiration for young artists. Over the years, each art style becomes a potent tool in the deft hands of a skilled artist. As to what defines the most important schools of art and makes each of them so unique, let’s take a quick look.

Realism

Realism is one of the oldest classic schools of art in existence today and it’s also the simplest to define. Paintings depict subjects as realistically as possible with true to life details. There is limited room for artistic liberties, imaginations, and flare, but the school of realism is primarily centred around creating artistic depictions that look as close to their real-life inspirations as possible. In direct contrast to modern abstract portraits, classic portraits are always true-to-life, making them some of the best comparative pieces for understanding realism in art.

Abstract

Abstract art is a subjective movement in art that originated in direct opposition to realism. The style actively propagates ideas of true expressionism that goes much beyond the confines of realism. As the scope of abstract art is nigh-infinite due to its nonrepresentational nature, several substyles have been developed by abstract artists over the decades.

Expressive portraits painted by James Green define the concept of abstract portraits best. See his abstract portraits, expressive portraits, abstract landscapes, abstract cityscapes, and other works of abstract art on the official James Green Artist to find out if the style appeals to you.

Abstraction

Abstraction exists between realism and abstract art in both history, concept, and practice. Prior to the emergence of complete abstract art, came the school of abstraction. For example, an abstract portrait is the exact polar opposite of a realistic portrait, but a portrait created in abstraction will retain elements from both schools.

Subjects portrayed in abstraction pieces will often remain recognisable as artistic representations of their real-life inspirations. However, they will be recreated in the artist’s imagination with lines, shapes, colours, contours, and more, ensuring that the painting only looks vaguely representative of the subject and never like a realistic imitation.

Finally, photorealism deserves a mention here as well, if only to clear out popular misconceptions. A photorealistic art piece will look identical to the real-life subject in every detail and may at times be even more detailed than a photograph of the same subject. However, the piece will still remain clearly recognisable as the painting that it is.Because of how easy it is to use software for creating hyper realistic digital paintings nowadays, the authenticity of photorealistic paintings can be difficult to determine. Also, while stencils definitely allude towards the presence of artistic skill, the result itself may not always be considered art.