Pseudorealism

His advice to the young artist is to strive for triumphant expression through the masquerade of pseudorealism in the suave juxtaposition of plane upon counterplane, also to eat freely of ice cream and spinach that the hungry soul may not starve in its age-long search for dynamic symmetry.

The quarrel over realism in art stems from a misunderstanding, from a confusion between the aesthetic and the psychological; between true realism, the need that is to give significant expression to the world both concretely and in its essence, and the pseudorealism of a deception aimed at fooling the eye (or for that matter the mind); a pseudorealism content in other words with illusory appearances.

The specter of pseudorealism raises the crucial issue of how Bazin’s theory of total cinema relates to the current fascination with immersive media, both as an ongoing technology and a historical tradition. […] While Bazin never directly states this, I believe that it was precisely the stimulation (and simulation) of sensation that Bazin associated with pseudorealism, with trompe l’oeil, with that aspect of the image that he opposed to his ideal of realism and designated as a trick, an illusion—a deceit.