RB Lyotard

I have a new appreciation for realism. Thanks to Jean-François Lyotard’s argument against it. Maybe his argument’s solid. I don’t know.

He writes, “Those who refuse to reexamine the rules of art pursue successful careers in mass conformism by communicating, by means of ‘correct rules,’ the endemic desire for reality with objects and situations capable of gratifying it” (41).

He defines realism as art that avoids its inherent unrealism, and this, he writes, is realism’s “only definition”—his definition. (Was that definition determined the only definition by the same “correct rules” that create mass conformism?) Realism, according to him, is McDonald’s food and western TV. That’s not the realism google found for me.

Is Lyotard saying that if art doesn’t not act a certain way, then it’s propaganda? Like it’s being on a canvas or in a book isn’t enough. It’s got to be like, “Look at me, am I a picture of a young maiden or an old hag?” or “Look at me, I’m 800 pages of nonsequitors.” Lyotard writes things like “the rules of plastic and narrative art” (41). Should I know what plastic means in this context? Plastic art. Is that the same thing as a plastic essay?