In The New Criterion, Dalrymple compares two art exhibits in Madrid: one on the seventeenth-century still lifes of Juan Fernández, also known as El Labrador, and one on the twentieth-century hyperrealism movement. Both are realists, he says…
…but the realism of the former is contemplative and elevating while that of the latter is brash, jarring, superficial, and painful to the eye. The former is refined and exquisite, the latter low, vulgar, and no better than kitsch.