Realism ja reaalsuse representatsioonid
Realism and Representations of Reality

Summary/Abstract: The current article grew out of dealing with the problems of pictorial representation on the one hand, and on the other it was encouraged by an increasing interest in recent years in realism, especially socialist realism. There have been special exhibitions in Tartu, Tallinn, Helsinki, etc and various conferences, either connected with the exhibitions or independent. Besides the local wave of interest after the end of the Soviet rule, there is also a wider and more general level that is expressed in the deepening of art’s social function and mission since the late 1960s. Considering the said, it is obvious that the notion of realism should be defined again, to see whether it has a certain content in today’s world, and if yes then what it is like. Subsequently, realism’s relations with such notions as depiction, representation, resemblance and illusion, and real existence–fiction, should also be analysed. Realism has an obvious and historically motivated connection with the concept of mimesis, but this has been deliberately left out of this article. Mimesis as a separate topic is too vast to examine to any satisfactory extent in the current treatment. Besides, determining realism does not really depend on it either.

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