Realism (18th century ~19th century) is the 'close resemblance to what is real, fidelity of representation, rendering the precise details of he real thing or scene'.

Richard Betts, "Realism"

In terms of art, realism and romanticism are always in constant battle.

"The first purpose of art is to reproduce reality."

"Realism is a corruption of reality."

The highlight of Western art is always the Renaissance era, where beauty of things are often magnified and enhance, people embraces things of beauty: like painting of angels, god, goddess and all. When it comes to realism, things took a wild turn, raising question like, why can't normal thing like apple on the desk, girl washing clothes be embraced as well?

Let's look at Zeuxis and Parhassis:

Pliny the Elder told the story of two rival painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, who were competing to see who could produce the most realistic painting. The story goes that Zeuxis had painted a picture of grapes so realistically, that birds were deceived enough to peck at the fruit. After Parrhasius finished his painting, he invited Zeuxis to his studio. Zeuxis tried to lift the curtain from the panel to see the painting underneath. To his surprise, the panel was a painting of a curtain. Zeuxis conceded that Parrhasius was a better painter, whereas he had deceived only birds, Parrhasius had fooled a human being.

Humans have 3 urges: Documentary urge - view the world as IT IS; Confessional urge - view the world as I EXPERIENCED; Imaginative urge - view the world as I IMAGINE IT TO BE.

To add, there is also this term called 'uncanny valley', where today's 3d art or robotic figures look eerily more and more like human till you can't even tell the difference. You even have the gooseebumps feeling that they are sort of like a living corpse.