AI Art Styles
This entry documents how a generative image model rendered Realism when the movement was named in a prompt. It forms part of a survey of 60 art movements generated in February 2024.
The images
Two subjects are held constant across the series: Lake Kenogamissi in Northern Ontario, and Times Square in New York City. Each is rendered twice. A thin prompt names the movement and nothing else. A thick prompt supplies a generated description of the movement’s visual characteristics.
The thick descriptor
The following description was generated by GPT-4 and supplied to the image model as the thick prompt.
Realism art style prioritizes portraying real-life subjects and scenes objectively, without idealization or romanticization. Details are crystal clear; people, objects and landscapes are depicted accurately. Lighting and perspective are used reiteratively to highlight depth, space and volume. To create Realist art, study, observe and replicate details thoroughly, utilize nuanced color palettes, depict unadorned scenes from daily life, and finely articulate light and shadow.
About this movement
Background on Realism is available at its Wikipedia entry. The images above are not offered as an account of Realism as art historians understand it. They record what a commercial image model produced when asked for the style by name.
About this series
This entry is part of a survey, described in the series introduction. The full set of 60 movements is browsable in the Art Styles index. The survey used text-to-image generation, in which composition varies alongside the style itself.
