Introduction
What is realism in regards to equine art? No, really — what is it? Define it. Like according to Dictionary.com, it’s defined as the “treatment of forms, colors, space, etc., in such a manner as to emphasize their correspondence to actuality or to ordinary visual experience.” Similarly, in Merriam-Webster online its “the showing of things as they really are in art, literature, and theater.”
But what the heck does that even mean? No seriously — break it down and what does “equine realism” actually mean? Be on target. Show your work.
It’s not as easy as you think, is it?
Well, at least it shouldn’t be. Because here’s the thing: If it did come easy, you might have to rethink equine realism.
Why is that? Because “equine realism” is an incredibly complicated issue. Indeed, I wrote a five-part series discussing just some of the factors at play, The Unreality Of Realism; Walking the Tightrope Between Fact and Fiction (hit "newer post" to go to the next Part). In it we consider many pieces from the vast collection at Brookgreen Gardens, a place famous for their realism-centric criteria for accepting pieces. That’s to say, they only focus on realistic sculpture — that’s their thing, their claim to fame.
But even then, there was an enormous variety of expression — so many various interpretations of reality — that it really stretched the issue of “what is realism” to a breaking point. Indeed, at Brookgreen we had centaurs, horses, winged horses, Unicorns all together, yet how is that realistic? But they were sculpted “realistically,” so that fit the criteria apparently. But even with the horses, a factual animal, the artistic styles exhibited within “realism” were staggering — yet it all worked! Because that’s the crux of it — even when the single criterion for selection is realism, the spectrum of expression was still wildly diversified.
So again — define realism.
Bet you can’t if you're trying to be really specific. Because if you know anything about realism at all, you realize it cannot be pigeon-holed so easily.
But “realistic” is such a buzzword isn’t it? Everyone and their dog and cat and parrot insist on it as though realism was some sort of unquestionable Truth. But it’s not. Not by a long shot. So why do we allow an ambiguity to be used as a bludgeon? Especially when it’s so evident that so many people who bonk others with it really don’t even know what they’re talking about?
Indeed, we often find the concept of “realism” weaponized, lobbed around like grenades to blow apart the work and reputation of artists unjustifiably. But misunderstanding the true scope of “realism” to then use it as a battering ram is literally like being a 3-year-old playing around with a loaded gun. It’s dangerous to our art form, dangerous to our artists, and well...it's definitely a dicey look. In other words, we’ve got to have a darned good handle on the fuller breadth of realism before we have any credibility to declare something as “more realistic” or “less realistic." When a concept has that much power, we’ve got to wield it responsibly.
So in an effort to illuminate just how convoluted realism actually is, let’s talk about this curious grail we all chase, and why we have to handle it like a live grenade. Caution with realism is just better for our art form and our long-term goals — and it’s the smart approach of anyone who truly understands just how tricky realism is to pin down with any modicum of sense. So let’s go!…
The Conundrum
I’ve said in the past that conformation is subjective while anatomy is objective, and I still stand by that. However, it should be noted that this was designed as an oversimplification to get a point across during a time when we were switching from BCC (breed type, conformation, and registry color) judging to ABC (anatomy, biomechanics, and color genetics) judging, and certain lines in the sand had to be drawn.
Because the issue is actually far more complicated.
You see, here’s the gist of it: Nothing "realistic" made by human hands is technically perfect, only Nature can create a perfectly structured horse, a truly realistic horse. It’s DNA or nothing. All we can ever do — no matter how skilled we actually are — is an approximation, a facsimile, an interpretation. That’s it, that’s all we can ever hope to achieve. So technical accuracy isn’t as objective as we may think it is — it’s not infallible, it’s not a given, it’s open to misinterpretations and blindspots, and it’s a function of artistic style all the same. Said another way, technical accuracy is just as subjective as conformation when you really come to understand it.
What's more, you can have some very anatomically savvy artists critique the same piece and chances are each will focus on different things either because of blindspots, knowledge gaps, biases, allowances, misinterpretations, knowledge strengths, or preferences. You see, even technicality has its foibles! And to add even more spice to the brew, I’ve seen so many pieces fatally flawed in anatomy earn massive kudos in the community while real masterpieces of accuracy meet with crickets. One begins to wonder just how many people in this genre have ever actually seen real horses! Which brings us to…
The Bias
Most people in equine collectibles have a shockingly conventional interpretation of technical accuracy. Saying it another way, they really don’t know about accuracy all too well, let alone all the oddities and nuances and momentary changes — though they certainly think they do — and so they default to the safest and most dumbed-down version of technicality, the most familiar milquetoast formula. Case in point, that whole “butt wrinkles” fiasco regarding the Breyer Hamilton. There was a perfectly accurate detail misinterpreted by a host of folks who simply had no clue about actual reality. Have they never actually seen a horse doing that kind of motion? One wonders. Another case in point: Fleshy texture. Horses aren’t mirror-smooth on their surface contours. That’s as much a contrived artistic stylization away from reality as tool marks. Why? Because when you get up close and really study the animal in person or more closely in photos and videos, you see all the fleshy details from wrinkles and crinkles, ripples, lumps and bumps, veins and capillaries, nerves and striations, etc. from hide, fascia, flesh, and moment. Indeed, put any horse in directional light and they’ll all pop out. Yet observe just how many people balk at these injections of actual reality as “unrealistic,” as "errors" in the finish. This is probably because most people have been conditioned by smooth-finished factory OFs such as Breyer and Stone to favor that polished surface. They don’t understand that this contrivance is simply to improve the look of the directionally-shaded airbrush paintjobs more than anything else. It’s a factor of production, not reality. This bias is so strong, in fact, that I’ve seen realistically textured ARs actually sanded smooth in order to achieve that “correct” mirror-smooth finish.
But these conventional biases are typical in our community, right down to the smallest nuances. If you sculpt actual reality, real living details, textures, and structure and movement or posture into your work then, be ready for the panicked and confused — and sometimes fiercely adamant — backlash. Isn’t it so strange that in an art form which asserts it’s constantly striving for realism that so many couldn't actually recognize reality if it licked them on the face?
And then we have those who know just enough to be problematic with their information, sounding like an authority to sway the perceptions of others yet never really grasping the deeper concepts, moments, or factualities. For instance, the “chaotic moment” is often a tripping point of these types as they simply cannot See the mercurial changes that happen such as momentary ripples, nostril distortion, expression, odd articulations, off-formula muscle configurations, etc. Quite simply, we’re dealing with a widespread Dunning Kruger Effect which can be an issue for an entire art form.
As such, when depictions of actual reality are produced, out of the woodwork come naysayers with no real clue blasting those pieces. “Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road,” said Voltaire. Indeed. When we start pruning our progress for the sake of our misinformed biases, we’re in real trouble.
The Blindspots
To exacerbate matters, everyone has their blindspots and knowledge gaps that make for a morass of criticism or kudos that may or may not be warranted with any given piece, creating a host of conflicting expectations artists have to navigate. For instance, years ago my work was criticized heavily because it had “too much detail” like wrinkles, bumps, crinkles, capillaries, veins, morphing flesh, etc. Yet this is exactly the sort of thing I was seeing on the living animal in field study and in my plentiful library of references. It left me genuinely baffled — where people just not seeing the animal the way I was, or was I seeing the animal incorrectly? After I did more field study and re-hit my references, I deduced that — yes — I had it right and those in the community had it wrong. What a strange realization! Here I was being emphatically told to create more realistically then when I actually did, I met with strong resistance. There's that conventional thinking again.
And highly skilled artists are no different. Each artist has their own blindspots and knowledge gaps, biases and prejudices, all of which manifest in their artistic style and aesthetic. Then ping the blindspots and knowledge gaps of the collector base off all that, and well…it’s easy to see how it all spins into a crazy kaleidoscope of what’s lauded as “correct” or criticized as “wrong.” It can turn into a really confusing mess very quickly.
The Fads
As if all that wasn’t enough, we have all the fads and trends that pop up to skew things, sometimes correctly and sometimes unrealistically, sometimes momentary and sometimes permanently. For instance, a few decades ago, the demand for the ever-famous “tri-eye” was absolutely voracious to the point of it being a single deal-breaking aspect for many pieces. Yet was it more realistic? Not really. It was just a fad. For another example, some years ago a wildly streaky treatment of sabino patterns was massively popular. And while it strongly diverged away from actual realism, still the community embraced it quite enthusiastically. It even did quite well in the ring, placing over genuinely more realistic depictions. So what’s correct? Actual reality or what the community accepts as reality? The two are not the same!
The Facts
And still more complication, believe it or not we can’t trust those all-hallowed anatomy charts. Why? Well, I wrote a two-part blog post on exactly why, Now About Those Anatomy Charts Part I and Part II, which I recommend you read. Boiled down, however, it distills into four major problems with them. First, key features are stripped off to reveal the overly-emphasized musculature and bones. Things like hide, fat, fascia, and nerves and other fleshy tidbits are simply removed to reveal the muscles and bones beneath, but these removed things have a huge effect on the surface textures and subtle contours. For example, the torso's “fly shaker” muscle is regularly stripped away with the hide in dissection and so not shown on anatomy charts despite its very pronounced effect on the surface contours of the torso. Second, Nature is messy, really messy. The animal’s body is a mass of organic chaos. As such, an anatomy chart is simply an individual’s attempt to make sense of it, which is exactly why various charts differ. Nature is full of much more variation and chaos than a tidy chart, than any one person’s interpretation! Third, anatomy charts are created from dead horses. As such, all the morphing living flesh undergoes in the moment and with movement is simply absent but which is a huge consideration for sculpture. And fourth, an anatomy chart doesn’t convey nuance as everything is amplified the same. The horse’s body is an array of differently amplified anatomical features — they don’t appear with equal emphasis in life, plus emphasis changes with moment and motion. Besides, every horse’s body is individualistic, and different anatomy features will manifest differently between different horses. Truly, when you really look at a lot of horses, you realize just how individualistic they actually are not only in conformation, but also in anatomical expression.
So wrap it all up, and if we lean too much into our charts, we’re going to become exceedingly formulaic and conventional in how we convey anatomy — and, ironically, that’s not realistic. Equines don’t move like anatomy chart paper dolls. Absolutely, we cannot habitually “sculpt by numbers” but have to pay attention to the spectrum of possibility and the organic morphing that happens in real life, all things that no anatomy chart can actually convey. As such, charts and diagrams are best used as guides rather than gospel because "the living moment" offers up an enormous amount of information, possibility, exceptions, and oddities which either represents a wonderful exploratory challenge or an intimidating roadblock, depending on your attitude.
The Bubble
But to Big Picture it all, the essential problem is two-fold. First, people think technical accuracy in art is black n’ white — because they want it to be black n’ white — but the fact of the matter is, it’s a spectrum, or more accurately, like a bubble of what’s realistic. Why? Well, because remember, whatever equine realism we create will be technically flawed no matter how hard we try. Instead then, technical accuracy is messy, circumstantial, Sight-based, and founded on the “organic chaos” of the moment. For example, there isn’t one right way to sculpt hair, but many different styles will work equally well. Or there isn’t one right way to paint a chestnut, but many different expressions can get to the same destination. All we humans can do is to interpret reality, we can never actually recreate it — only DNA can do that. And so we have this bubble of what’s possible, a bubble with morphing borders as we push envelopes, but a bubble of what’s “realistic” all the same. We operate within an art form of moving goalposts.
And second, most people think they know enough of The Right Facts — but the problematic truth is they don’t. Not even halfway. You see, the topic of technical accuracy is so big, you have to constantly research, study, train, and observe to create a baseline then to expand into its edges. But even more, you must challenge your own biases and conventions, habits and formulas if you ever hope to get anywhere near accurate. But most people just don’t do this. They only go so far then stop, thinking they know enough to not only get by, but to pick the good pieces. Nope. Because if there was ever a topic in equine realism other than color genetics where this kind of thinking was dangerous, it would be anatomical accuracy. And it can be frustrating, exhausting, and confusing when too many entrench into their conventional thinking even further. Fear? Stubbornness? Indifference? Laziness? Whatever the reason, it's an on-going problem.
This brings us to our own special brand of realism in equine collectibles. Perhaps nowhere else is technical reality more expected, right down to the surface textures or hair-ticking, than in our art form. We cannot deny this, or ignore it. Like there were many pieces at Brookgreen that would've fit right into our genre, but also many that wouldn't have even though they were categorized as "realism." Things like tool marks, too much impressionism, artistic textures, or glossed over areas can disqualify a piece from success in our art form. Instead, we want a real horse shrunk down as accurately as possible, that's our claim to fame. But if we're paying attention, there's still that bubble of believability even in this hyper-focus all the same. For instance, simply study how hair is sculpted so differently between artists, yet it all works just fine. Or analyze how musculature and flesh are expressed differently, yet it all works nicely. Or pay attention to how different painters approach the same color with such variety of style, yet they're all quite effective. So even in our peculiar myopic focus, that bubble operates just the same, just tighter. So curious!
The Sight
Now one would think in lieu of all this that more education is the answer. And to a point, it is. It’s certainly helped over the decades, especially when we transitioned from BCC judging to ABC judging. But all the same, to a point, it isn’t. Why? Because advanced education is dependent on one thing full of nuance, complexity, and complication — Sight. This is the keener skill of perceiving, interpreting, and translating more actual reality into our clay or pigment that goes beyond formula, habit, bias, and convention to convey much more clinical exactness, momentary oddities, subtle nuances, and varied complexities. As such, Sight challenges and confronts, tearing through prejudices, biases, and conventional thought like paper, and presents reality as it more actually is, not what we want it to be — because the two are not the same. And wow, does this upset some folks! And it’s unclear if it upsets them because it makes them confront their willful conventions, or forces them to give up their preferred stylistic biases and safe zones, or whether it actually does scare them because they believe the art form is advancing beyond their ability to comprehend it. Maybe all three?
Whatever the cause, it prevents a whole lotta people from furthering their own pro-active education and training, and so we get stuck right back in the same place we’ve always been stuck — in our stylistic conventions. All this can keep the unwary artist on artistic plateaus, the unaware collector entrenched in skewed biases, and the unsuspecting art form from actually progressing along more realistic pathways.
The Tentative Step
So getting back to the definition — it’s a lot harder to do than first thought, isn’t it? Yup. As counterintuitive as it seems, the more ambiguous we make it, the more it sticks, it’s just that big an issue. So as a thought experiment, try this definition on for size:
Equine realism is the accurate technical depiction of the colors, effects, and patterns, and the momentary biological manifestations of the structures, movements, textures, details, and contours found in the genus Equus.
Does it work? Does it fail? How so? Why? These are important considerations to ponder because it all speaks to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? And we need to better hammer things out if only to pave the way for more realism in our genre. We need to make room for the oddities, the momentary changes, the extra touches that speak to actual realism without them being disparaged and discouraged. If there’s one thing this genre does well, it’s advance, but right now that advancement is being impeded by confining conventions and biases when it comes to genuine accuracy, and we need to address that head-on.
The Job
But even so, all said and done, it’s also true we can get more technically accurate in our work, right? It’s called “improvement.” And we all know that some artists are more skilled at capturing more technical precision than others, too. It’s why their work looks “more realistic.” So there is some degree of measurable objectivity here. Indeed, study, observation, training — it all has a net effect on making our work more technically faithful. Like, we learn where the tuberocities are supposed to go, where the muscle groups are located and how they’re configured and how they change, how the joints articulate and when and why, how the skull is constructed, and so on. Or more specifically, a sculpted hock looks more like a real hock the more technically faithful it is while a sabino pattern looks more like a real sabino pattern the more authentically rendered it is. In short, they don’t just “look right” — they are more right.
Conclusion
As it may be clearly evident now, “realism” isn’t as black and white as we may have originally thought. So what’s the point of all this? Well, it’s to use the term “not realistic” very carefully. Painfully carefully. Be judicious and skeptical of your own judgments. Like are you sure you know what’s more realistic, or is your Eye missing key components? Are you sure you’re actively flushing out your blindspots through training, exercises, and study? Or are you simply relying on “I know enough”?
Now it’s okay to like what you like. Of course, that’s okay! That’s actually quite good for our art form, too! Different strokes for different folks keeps our arts base vibrant and diversified. But the thing is, when you lob the grenade of “not realistic,” be sure you know exactly what you’re talking about. Make sure you can objectively defend your statement with evidence. Show your work. Can you back up your claim with actual proof? Or does it just “look wrong” to you and you can’t go farther than that? Because if you just chuck that “not realistic” grenade willy-nilly, not only can you do a great deal of unfair harm, if enough people do it, it can actually steer our arts right into a ditch. It almost did with “butt wrinkles.”
So artists, this is also a call to exercise the same judicious behavior in your own work to really get to the heart of what’s “realistic.” Don’t rely on “it just looks right to me” — is it actually right? Can you compare your body portions to actual referenced photos and do they look more objectively similar? Even actually the same? Can one be confused for the other? That’s the level you want to be at, and that takes exercises, training, discipline, and gumption. Remember, there’s a big difference between fudging what you don’t know well enough and fudging what you know really well.
And as a community, we’ve got to do better by “realism.” We’ve got to continue to educate ourselves on the ABCs and not lean so heavily still on the BCCs. Conformation is an easy topic — anyone can learn it and apply it with relative ease. But anatomy (and color genetics) is another matter all together, but one that will increasingly be necessary as artists continue to push those boundaries past collective convention and half-formed expectations. The community simply must keep up and come to embrace the larger reality of equine realism.
So let’s get real about equine realism — we’ve got to be more careful with this accusation of “less realistic” or “wrong.” “There are more things in heaven and hell, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” wrote Shakespeare in Hamlet. Absolutely spot on, especially when it comes to equine realism. Indeed, Nature is full of curveballs, always unexpected and always surprising. So right when we get comfortable with what we think of as “right,” or “I’ve figured this out,” or “I see the pattern now,” along comes Nature to throw all that into the blender and now we have a new fascinating pathway of investigation to follow.
So follow it.
Adopt the mantle of an educational explorer and seek out those curiosities of equine structure, color, movement, and moment that flavor equine realism in deeper and more complete ways. Bust beyond formula, habit, convention, or bias, and strive to See beyond the obvious, and especially the accepted and expected. And above all, come to a broader understanding of just what equine realism really is — a vast array of possibility and moment all amalgamated together into a brilliant bubble of potential. Getting real about realism means we no longer see a fixed chart, we no longer “sculpt by numbers,” and we have no real need of comfort zones — we want the real thing, the real deal, and we’re bold enough to reveal it authentically.
"True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing."
— Jean Cocteau
