ABSTRACT
Representations are not identical with what they represent, and it's in the distance afforded by representation that realism finds its role. For any given thing, there are many representations of it, many ways of representing it. Think of all of the ways there are, for example, to represent a loved one. Among the descriptions, some are long while some are short, some are informative while others leave you wondering. Some are eloquent, others awkward. Some are accurate, some inaccurate, some misleading. Some are tender, some harsh, some funny (at least to you). And we’re just getting started. The same goes for pictures, caricatures, and any other kind of representation. The foregoing are ways in which something can be represented, which concern how a representation relates to whatever it represents: “realism is a matter of how pictures depict their objects” (Abell 2007: 4). Realism and unrealism are ways of representing things: we can represent things realistically or unrealistically.
