Idealism and Humanism

"Idealism," in the context of art, refers to a stylistic departure from the realistic appearance of things in order to portray more accurately the ideal essence of things. In other words, the idealist artist is someone who ignores the flawed forms of things found in nature, and this permits him or her to grasp and portray the idea of things without flaws. In this way, the idealist artists seek to re-create the perfect ideational forms of things that nature has only imperfectly rendered. This approach to art is closely affiliated with Plato's philosophy, which maintains that tangible objects, as they appear in the world, are imperfect copies of the ideal forms of objects as they exist in the sphere of ideas.
Of course, Plato ultimately came to denounce artists because their works were imitations of the forms found in nature, which were themselves only imitations of the ideal forms of things as they take shape in the mind. Hence, for Plato, art was the pale imitation of another pale imitation. But the tradition of idealist art attempts to short-circuit this chain of pale imitations. For the idealist artist, the goal is to imitate the ideal form of a subject directly, completely bypassing its natural form.	Cezanne's Still Life, 1890
Humanism refers to a specific case of idealism. It designates the idealistic treatment of the human form. Thus, a humanist rendering of the human form will idealize that form by presenting it, not as it appears in nature, but as it appears in the sphere of pure ideas. Accordingly, the humanist rendering of the human form will not usually correspond to the flesh and blood people we might actually meet in our daily lives. These renderings of humanity are flawless embodiments of "Man" and "Woman" as they exist in the mind of the artist. And, even though humanist artists often work with living, breathing models, these artists will recreate the image of their models so as to remove any of the natural flaws that may mar the image's appearance.	Rubens's Judgement of Paris, 1635-38
Hence, humanist portrayals of Man and Woman will always present us with perfectly developed physiques, gorgeous facial features, and elegantly posed bodies. These figures will likewise embody the inner characteristics of grace, nobility, and virtue. These humanist figures are, in a word, ideal.