I think the answer is right here at the top of your post. Creating a realistic likeness is much more time-consuming than a stylized one. Not just in the creating itself (realistic depictions require more and smaller strokes/carvings than stylized ones), but in the training. Stick figures and flattened perspective-less images are easy. Kids draw them. Photorealism requires a lot more practice.
Are you under the misapprehension that photographs are realistic? Because they’re not. Suppose, for instance, that a person has a particularly pointy nose. A photograph can capture that pointy nose, true. But now suppose also that that same person also has two eyes and two ears. A photograph that faithfully captures that pointy nose will also show the person as having only one each eye and ear. What’s realistic about that? How is a one-eyed picture a realistic depiction of someone who has two eyes?
Yes, it’s a 2D abstraction of a 3D reality, but it’s pretty clear what is meant by "realistic"in the sense of the OP. There are other pedantic reasons why I’d consider photography not as “realistic” as one might think on first account, but that’s nitpicking.
And yet, it is possible to get both the proper number of eyes and ears, and the correct shape of a nose, in a 2D abstraction. Picasso did it, after all. Why can’t we expect all of our 2-D art to be as realistic as Picasso’s?
And yet, I show my 1-year-old daughter a picture of her mom with only one ear and one eye showing, and she knows who it is and smiles. My crayon abstraction with all sides of her showing, not so much. One does not need to observe all sides of a 3D object for it to be “realistic,” unless one has a very, very technical and non-colloquial definition of realism that might only apply to holograms, and perhaps not even that. I mean, I know this is the Straight Dope, but come on.
But you don’t need to be “realistic*” to see that.
Plus, how do you define “realistic”? What you think of realistic? Or what the artist things as realistic? Because if it’s the former, you’re complaining that the artist didn’t do the work with a modern sensibility.
*“Representational” is a better term, but I’ll stick with what the OP started.
Well, that just proves there’s an arbitrary line somewhere down the slippery slope of little-r realism, and it’s defined by “I know it when I see it.”
Which is always, ALWAYS, a bullshit argument.
No, it’s not. We make arbitrary distinctions like this all the time. It’s clear from the OP that they are looking for representational art that is on the photography side of the scale as opposed to the hieroglyphic side of the scale. Where their line is, who knows, but in colloquial language, it’s pretty clear to me from the examples given by the OP that a photograph would be “realistic” and a drawing from the comics would not.
Drawings and paintings are 2-dimensional. There is more than one way to represent a 3-dimensional object on a 2-dimensional medium. A camera captures it one way, but we now consider it to be the accurate way, but it’s not the only way.
Consider drawings by children. It may show the ground as a straight line across the page, with everyone’s feet glued to it. Because the picture represents people all on the same ground. But a photo-realistic picture would not show the ground as a line, and it would show people at different heights on the paper.
Or a child’s picture may show a blue sky only at the top of the paper. Because the sky is something that’s up above, not something that fills the gaps between buildings.
Or, consider 3D modeling (CAD) software. They all provide orthographic projection as an option (and usually as the default), even though it is not realistic. A realistic rendering would use perspective projection. But the orthographic projection is a better representation of the actual shape of the object. It is arguably more accurate than the photo-realistic projection.
Close one eye. Look forward. Map the image your brain gets onto a 2D surface (as the image is 2D itself). That’s perhaps the "gold standard"of what “accurate” is in this context. Yes, we could nitpick this shit to death, and so can I (cameras and photographs are NOT 100% accurate ways of how the human eye and brain sees reality), but for the common use of the word and practical purposes, this suffices.
I see no reason whatsoever to consider the view with one eye closed as more realistic than the view with both eyes open. Further, even the image with only one eye open is three-dimensional, which cannot be captured by a still camera (but which can be by a video camera), since you’ve got a time dimension, too.
Fine. Let the OP come back and clarify what is meant by the question instead of this nitpicking wankery.
The human eye is a fairly ordinary camera, with a light-gathering plane, a lens, an aperture, and so on.
In particular, all light must pass through a small hole. And as such, anything that would be physically occluded to a camera is also occluded to the eye, and vice versa. There is no way for an eye to see two ears unless a camera in the same place also saw two ears.
Perspective is the same way; objects twice as far away are half the size, for both the eye and camera. An orthographic projection is perfectly realistic since it’s just the special case of a very distant camera.
The brain of course does all kinds of postprocessing on the image, with special-cased facial recognition, motion estimation, etc. But in terms of what is actually visible, the real (and not perceived) relative sizes, etc., the eye and a camera are the same.
It was my understanding from that one Art History course I took in college more than 30 years ago, that foreshortening wasn’t “invented” until the 14th century. A lot of the ‘stylized’ look of older paintings is the artist’s way of conveying what was real.
There ya go.
Bottom line: the purpose of visual representations varied widely, and many/most of those purposes did not require a representational approach - things like hieroglyphic language; allegorical and religious art, etc.
As humans entered the Humanist age, where Man Became the Measure of All Things, and scientific disciplines emerged, things like perspective became important, and representational depictions became more cheap and reliable to produce.
Ok, I will try to clarify. Picture a Haida artwork. It has figures that have the parts (head and limbs) of humans and animals. You could not recognize an individual. Now look at a drawing done by a regular child. Maybe it’s “Mommy”. It has her blonde hair, her favorite red shirt, her glasses and the mole on her left cheek. It may be quite crude but anyone in the family would know right away who it is.
As I said in the OP, I turned out a reasonable portrait of the boyfriend simply because I was bored and happened to have a piece of scrap paper and a pencil.
By “photographic” I simply meant a picture that looks like a recognizable individual rather than a figure stylized into anoniminity. It doesn’t have to be precise, just like the person.
I think people are getting too hung up on “photographic”. It was meant as an easy way to describe drawing a particular person.
I also realize that my conception of Greek, Egyptian and Roman art has some serious gaps. The mummy portraits were sure a surprise! However, there are still many examples of civilizations that seem to have mostly produced stylized figures. I mentioned the Mayans and Our local First Nations.
While I understand that life in the past didn’t leave much time for art, it just seems logical that someone in any group would have a bit of talent and figure out that a good likeness could be done with a burnt stick and a piece of bark or whatever.
Again, why would they? Well, I did it from boredom. Why not? I picked the nearest subject, someone I care about. Now I can remember what he looked like at that time. Even two hundred years ago, drawing was the only way to “keep” a person. Think about it. Picture someone who’s gone. Can you remember their nose? The precise way their hair curled? Are you sure? Go look at a picture of that person. I bet it’s just a little different.
I think I remember my dad but every time I see a picture, I realize my mental image is just a little off. So, an aid to memory is one good reason for realistic portraits. Don’t try to tell me that ancient people didn’t love. I’m sure men going off to war would have been happy to have s likeness of the wife at home.
I suspect that some of you fine Dopers are thinking I mean a full size, full color oil portrait when I said realistic. No. Just a recognizable individual.
You discounted my first example of a Chinese portrait, when it far far better than anything done by a regular child as well as being a recognizable individual. As a reminder, here it is again:
By way of contrast, here is a modern caricature of an individual that I’m sure you’ll recognize. It’s also better than anything done by a regular child. But I think you’ll admit that it’s neither natural nor realistic:
Just what is it that you’re after?
I’ve been assuming you mean the first picture, that of the Emperor. To me, I think that I would have trouble recognizing him. If you mean the hanging scroll portrait further down, then yes, he’s very “real”.
Sure I recognize 'ol Alfred. He looks like himself. Individual hair, individual wrinkles etc. I thought I made it clear that I didn’t mean a precise, crystal clear image. I just meant a recognizable individual. Why is that hard to understand?
Again.
When I say “stylized” I mean pictures in which the people all look the same and you can’t really look at one and say " hey! I know him!"
When I say “photographic” I mean a picture that does make you say "hey! I know him! "
It isn’t the quality of the portrait, it’s the recognizability.
The original question i wanted to ask was, “why did a lot of civilizations get stuck at non-individual pictures instead of drawing people that looked like individuals?” I probably shouldn’t have said “photographic” when I meant “recognizable”. My bad.
The appeal to me is just that it’s really freaking cool! Like, that someone actually drew/painted something that looks SO real.
I somehow deleted my last post. Dammit!
Ok, again. The Chinese portrait I assume you are referring to is the first one, the Emperor. I don’t know if I would recognize him. If you mean the hanging scroll, he is very “real”.
I know right way that that is Einstein, of course, because he looks like himself. It’s his hair, his wrinkles.
What I meant was, as I’ve said, why did some civilizations only, or at least mostly, leave pictures of people that were stylized to the point that you could not recognize an individual?
It isn’t the quality of the picture that I’m concerned about. “photographic” was, perhaps, a poor voice to describe what I meant. Let me put it this way.
Stylized - “I have no idea who this was other than he’s Egyption or Mayan or Haida or whatever”
Realistic (Photographic) - “Hey! I know him!”
The quality of the picture isn’t the issue. I just want to know why some people couldn’t seem to make their subjects look like persons rather than one-size-fits-all.