pretty much EVERYTHING is idealized The strange thing about art is that there seems to always be this tension between "looking real" and conveying whatever is being "expressed." I look at Caravaggio and the hopelessly cardboard faces painted by his contemporaries, and I have to admit that what appeals to me is his "realism," the sense that this is what I would have seen if I had been there. But I think realism is a craft. And it's a selective craft. We get exercised about the realism of Michelangelo's skin textures (vs., say, the concrete Impresssionism of a Rodin) and we fail to observe, or take into account, that his women are essentially men with apples on their chests. Touched by the emotional weight of the work, we look for crafts to praise, because what really draws us is outside the realm of language. Even with Caravaggio, realism is in service of art, not the other way around. It is the stark truth of the light in the death of the virgin that gives the picture its emotional weight. If what we see is simply, "Wow, good IBL!" then we are missing the point, however well we may be learning our craft. Still, if bad "IBL" distracts from the emotional effect, the picture is ruined. Art without craft is no more whole than craft without art. M