Can 'non naturalistic/realistic' and 'serious' work together and not be 'ugly'?

By naturalistic/realistic, I mean, where the artstyle is reasonably faithful to reality geometry-wise.

I remember reading from some website on animated film festivals that the more 'artistic' a work becomes, the less prettier or more realistic the pictures tend to be. Are there any artists out there that don't fall in that category? This argument can probably be applied beyond animation, and in painting and games as well. Any medium with a visual component.

So my question is, which artists do this? I know painters do this often, like Picasso (I actually love Guernica) and practically every other modern artists ever. Unfortunately, in my opinion anyway, they tend to be pretty ugly. I mean, let's be honest, no matter what we think of Picasso now, we've all probably scoffed and mocked him as children, because the 'cubist' movement wasn't exactly the prettiest sight.

I've probably made lots of people angry. I agree that the definition of 'serious' is a fickle one, but please don't start that argument here. I'm not interested, and you know what I mean anyway. Also, I know that 'appropriate for children' and 'serious' is not mutually exclusive, but you don't see that enough to be a point of contention here.

Anyway, the only example I can come up with is Spiegelman's Maus.