The concepts of social realism and new realism are developed in relation to the artworks of Lena Svedberg and Olle Kåks. A comparison between the artists’ uses of the concepts of social realism and function is presented. How the realist approach during the years around 1970 played out in the force field of society and the psyche, the collective realm and the individual, is exemplified by our two very different case studies. Svedberg’s political narratives compose mon-tages in which fictional, metaphorical figures are inserted side by side with political leaders drawn from newspaper clips. Kåks’s allegory-like oil painting shows a stone worker working in the face of his imminent disappearance. They both reveal myths as opposed to historically manifested commodity relations.