There is a strong belief among many viewers of art that the purpose of art is to imitate life in a way that recreates the experience we would have if encountering the real-life experience being interpreted by the art work. This idea comes in many forms. Again, in listening to the comments of other art viewers, you may hear great praise being giving to a work because it "looks so real." This is often associated with the artist's technical skill in creating an image that looks exactly as the thing would appear in three-dimensional space. BUT the word "realism" can have many implications. There have been art movements that defined the best art as that which presents something as it looks in nature (naturalism). Others consider the most important purpose of art to be presenting an image in it's grittiest social context. For example, photo-like images of homeless people (social realism) that stir people to empathy and action. Others, still, have valued works that present something that looks the way we would "really" like it to be (idealism). To complicate matters, there is an art "ism" called surrealism, which presents images, often from one's dreams, that look real but are physically impossible in the "real world.