{"id":53953,"date":"2020-02-20T15:41:38","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T23:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/?p=53953"},"modified":"2024-04-19T05:35:02","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T12:35:02","slug":"design-trend-american-realism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/design-trend-american-realism","title":{"rendered":"Design Trend Report: American Realism"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century, the United States was still a new country just coming into its own with its identity. American Realism<\/strong>, sometimes called New Realism, is a design trend that captured this growing awareness of America’s role in the world. Taking some of its cues from French Realism, the American version of the trend first started in literary circles before expanding into visual art by the 20th<\/sup> century.
\nA movement of, by and for creatives who were coming of age in the brave, new world of the 20th<\/sup>-century United States<\/a>, this design trend helped to shape what the rest of the world thought of American pop culture for the next 100 years. In short, this trend was preoccupied with using the visual arts to illustrate what was “real†in the country at the time—not always the most objective goal.
\nHere’s a deep dive into American Realism in all its glory.

<\/span>The History of American Realism<\/span><\/h2>

The history of this design movement is as layered and diverse as the scene in the U.S. in the early 20th<\/sup> century. This century would be marked by tremendous European immigration to the new world, increasing American expansion across the globe, and newfound wealth.
\nWhile historians look to the 20th<\/sup> century as the true start of American Realism, we have to look at its roots to really understand this movement’s motivations.
\nSomeone who had a big impact on what would turn into this style was the American printmaker and landscape artist Winslow Homer. A Bostonian, he was born in 1836 and quickly embarked on a career as an illustrator for various magazines<\/a>, stateside. By 1867, he decided to expand his know-how and so moved to France to immerse himself in European design styles.
\nWhat particularly caught his eye was Realism, a French design movement that had recently started in the 1840s. The philosophy behind it was depicting average people and society in general in an accurate and honest way. Therefore, Realism was the polar opposite of Romanticism, which was concerned with showing subject matter in an overly glorified and exaggerated way.
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Image Credit: Wikipedia<\/a><\/h6>

On his return to the States, Homer began to produce artworks that took this more realistic approach to painting; he put a uniquely American spin on it by showcasing scenes from typical American life in the late 19th<\/sup> century.
\nAround the same time, in literary circles in the U.S., writers were making contributions to what would become American Realism by chronicling the everyday struggles of the common man. Writers like Mark Twain<\/a> (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em> and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer<\/em>) and Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage<\/em>) deserve credit for bringing an objective accuracy to their novels. Twain accomplished this by having his characters speak in the slang of American colloquialism that was popular at the time, while Crane often wrote about the hardships of war, the working class, and the poor.
\nThis now brings us to the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century and the rise of American Realism. Due to increasing immigration, life in the U.S. at this time started to become more urban than rural. Newcomers to America needed jobs, housing and an infrastructure of community support that they could better find in the cities. Indeed, the aforementioned luminaries that preceded this design trend—Homer, Twain, and Crane—focused more on the rural side of realism in their various works.
\nThis all would change with what we today call American Realism proper.
\nThe new crop of designers and artists who emerged at the turn of the century understood that chronicling the shift to more urban life would shape this design trend.
\nPerhaps no better crop of new artists represented this trend better than the Ashcan School. This was a collection of artists who documented the look and feel of New York City in the early 20th<\/sup> century, via realistic paintings and artworks. Their calling card was their subject matter, which, in urban city life, included:<\/p>