Realism is a catch-all school of thought which refers to a series of artistic, political, and intellectual movements that have taken place throughout history. When you look at art movements in the post-Renaissance era, it's easy to pick out a pattern of mindset swings. Western artistic movements alternately become infatuated with romanticism, which views the world as idealized, and realism, which views the world "as it is." These philosophical vacillations often mirror contemporary political swings. Following the armistice that ended World War I, a group of writers, artists, and philosophers developed a movement orthogonal to both realism and romanticism. The surrealists, dadaists, and other lost-generation scholars rejected the premise that the world could be understood purely in either romantic or realistic terms. This imaginative refutation of realism and romanticism lost steam during the Great Depression, when world economic troubles forced artists and authors to "get their heads out of the clouds." There was great pressure to depict the real struggles of the survivors of the Dust Bowl era, for instance. Realistic writers, like John Steinbeck, created evocative descriptions of Great Depression suffering. In the decades following World War II, realism and romanticism have continued to battle for the hearts and souls of the world's artists. A modern form of romantic nihilism, peculiarly illustrated by pop artists, like Basquiat, and pop musicians, like the rock groups Nirvana and Radiohead, took hold at the end of the millennium. However, the September 11 attacks of 2001 and the subsequent war on terror may have switched the dial back to realism.
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