Magic realism
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| An example of magic realism can be seen in [[Julio Cortázar]]'s "[[La noche boca arriba]]," in which an individual experiences two realistic situations simultaneously in the same place but during two different time periods, centuries apart. | An example of magic realism can be seen in [[Julio Cortázar]]'s "[[La noche boca arriba]]," in which an individual experiences two realistic situations simultaneously in the same place but during two different time periods, centuries apart. | ||
| + | ==Etymology== | ||
| + | While the term ''magical realism'' in its modern sense first appeared in 1955, the German art critic [[Franz Roh]] first used the phrase in 1925, to refer to a painterly style also known as [[Neue Sachlichkeit]] (the [[New Objectivity]]), an alternative championed by fellow German museum director [[Gustav Hartlaub]]. Roh believed magic realism is related to, but distinctive from, [[surrealism]], due to magic realism's focus on the material object and the actual existence of things in the world, as opposed to the more cerebral, psychological and subconscious reality that the surrealists explored. Magic realism was later used to describe the uncanny [[Realism (visual arts)|realism]] by American painters such as [[Ivan Albright]], [[Paul Cadmus]], [[George Tooker]] and other artists during the 1940s and 1950s. However, in contrast with its use in literature, magical realist art does not often include overtly fantastic or magical content, but rather looks at the mundane through a hyper-realistic and often mysterious lens. The extent to which magical elements enter in visual art depends on the subcategory, discussed in detail below. | ||
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| + | Determining who coined the term ''magical realism'' (as opposed to ''magic realism'') is controversial among literary critics. Maggie Ann Bowers argues that it first emerged in the 1955 essay "Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction" by critic Angel Flores. She notes that while Flores names [[Jorge Luis Borges]] as the first magical realist (some critics consider him a predecessor, not actually a magical realist), he fails to acknowledge either Alejo Carpentier or Arturo Uslar-Pietri for bringing Roh's magic realism to Latin America. | ||
| ==History== | ==History== | ||
| The term ''magic realism'' was first used by the German art critic [[Franz Roh]] to refer to a painterly style also known as [[Neue Sachlichkeit]]. It was later used to describe the unusual realism by American painters such as [[Ivan Albright]], [[Paul Cadmus]], [[George Tooker]] and other artists during the [[1940s]] and [[1950s]]. It should be noted though that unlike the term's use in literature, in art it is describing paintings that do ''not'' include anything fantastic or magical, but are rather extremely realistic and often mundane. | The term ''magic realism'' was first used by the German art critic [[Franz Roh]] to refer to a painterly style also known as [[Neue Sachlichkeit]]. It was later used to describe the unusual realism by American painters such as [[Ivan Albright]], [[Paul Cadmus]], [[George Tooker]] and other artists during the [[1940s]] and [[1950s]]. It should be noted though that unlike the term's use in literature, in art it is describing paintings that do ''not'' include anything fantastic or magical, but are rather extremely realistic and often mundane. | ||
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Magic realism (or magical realism) is an artistic genre in which magical elements appear in an otherwise realistic setting.
As used today the term is broadly descriptive rather than critically rigorous. The term was initially used by German art critic Franz Roh to describe painting which demonstrated an altered reality, but was later used by Venezuelan Arturo Uslar-Pietri to describe the work of certain Latin American writers. The Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier (a friend of Uslar-Pietri) used the term "lo real maravilloso" (roughly "marvelous reality") in the prologue to his novel The Kingdom of this World (1949). Carpentier's conception was of a kind of heightened reality in which elements of the miraculous could appear while seeming natural and unforced. Carpentier's work was a key influence on the writers of the Latin American "boom" that emerged in the 1960s.
An example of magic realism can be seen in Julio Cortázar's "La noche boca arriba," in which an individual experiences two realistic situations simultaneously in the same place but during two different time periods, centuries apart.
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Etymology
While the term magical realism in its modern sense first appeared in 1955, the German art critic Franz Roh first used the phrase in 1925, to refer to a painterly style also known as Neue Sachlichkeit (the New Objectivity), an alternative championed by fellow German museum director Gustav Hartlaub. Roh believed magic realism is related to, but distinctive from, surrealism, due to magic realism's focus on the material object and the actual existence of things in the world, as opposed to the more cerebral, psychological and subconscious reality that the surrealists explored. Magic realism was later used to describe the uncanny realism by American painters such as Ivan Albright, Paul Cadmus, George Tooker and other artists during the 1940s and 1950s. However, in contrast with its use in literature, magical realist art does not often include overtly fantastic or magical content, but rather looks at the mundane through a hyper-realistic and often mysterious lens. The extent to which magical elements enter in visual art depends on the subcategory, discussed in detail below.
Determining who coined the term magical realism (as opposed to magic realism) is controversial among literary critics. Maggie Ann Bowers argues that it first emerged in the 1955 essay "Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction" by critic Angel Flores. She notes that while Flores names Jorge Luis Borges as the first magical realist (some critics consider him a predecessor, not actually a magical realist), he fails to acknowledge either Alejo Carpentier or Arturo Uslar-Pietri for bringing Roh's magic realism to Latin America.
History
The term magic realism was first used by the German art critic Franz Roh to refer to a painterly style also known as Neue Sachlichkeit. It was later used to describe the unusual realism by American painters such as Ivan Albright, Paul Cadmus, George Tooker and other artists during the 1940s and 1950s. It should be noted though that unlike the term's use in literature, in art it is describing paintings that do not include anything fantastic or magical, but are rather extremely realistic and often mundane.
The term was first revived and applied to the realm of fiction as a combination of the fantastic and the realistic in the 1960s by a Venezuelan essayist and critic Arturo Uslar-Pietri, who applied it to a very specific South American genre, influenced by the blend of realism and fantasy in Mário de Andrade's influentiafal 1928 novel Macunaíma. However, the term itself came in vogue only after Nobel prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias used the expression to define the style of his novels. The term gained popularity with the rise of the Latin American Boom, most notably Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, and Gabriel García Márquez, who confessed, "My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separates what seems real from what seems fantastic." More recent Latin American authors in this vein include Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel.
Subsequently, the term has been applied both to earlier writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, or Ernst Junger and to postcolonial and other contemporary writers from Salman Rushdie and Gunter Grass to Angela Carter
Visual art
Historical development
The painterly style began evolving as early as the first decade of the 20th century, but 1925 was when magischer realismus and neue sachlichkeit were officially recognized as major trends. This was the year that Franz Roh published his book on the subject, Nach Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus: Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei (translated as After Expressionism: Magical Realism: Problems of the Newest European Painting) and Gustav Hartlaub curated the seminal exhibition on the theme, entitled simply Neue Sachlichkeit (translated as New Objectivity), at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in Mannheim, Germany. Irene Guenthe refers most frequently to the New Objectivity, rather than magical realism; which is attributed to that New objectivity is practical based, referential (to real practicing artists), while the magical realism is theoretical or critic's rhetoric. Eventually under Massimo Bontempelli guidance, the term magic realism was fully embraced by the German as well as in Italian practicing communities.
New Objectivity saw an utter rejection of the preceding impressionist and expressionist movements, and Hartlaub curated his exhibition under the guideline: only those, "who have remained true or have returned to a positive, palpable reality," in order to reveal the truth of the times," would be included. The style was roughly divided into two subcategories: conservative, (neo-)classicist painting, and generally left-wing, politically motivated Verists. The following quote by Hartlaub distinguishes the two, though mostly with reference to Germany; however, one might apply the logic to all relevant European countries. "In the new art, he saw"
a right, a left wing. One, conservative towards Classicism, taking roots in timelessness, wanting to sanctify again the healthy, physically plastic in pure drawing after nature...after so much eccentricity and chaos [a reference to the repercussions of World War I]... The other, the left, glaringly contemporary, far less artistically faithful, rather born of the negation of art, seeking to expose the chaos, the true face of our time, with an addiction to primitive fact-finding and nervous baring of the self... There is nothing left but to affirm it [the new art], especially since it seems strong enough to raise new artistic willpower.
Both sides were seen all over Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, ranging from the Netherlands to Austria, France to Russia, with Germany and Italy as centers of growth. Indeed, Italian Giorgio de Chirico, producing works in the late 1910s under the style arte metafisica (translated as Metaphysical art), is seen as a precursor and as having an "influence...greater than any other painter on the artists of New Objectivity."
Further afield, American painters were later (in the 1940s and 1950s, mostly) coined magical realists; a link between these artists and the Neue Sachlichkeit of the 1920s was explicitly made in the New York Museum of Modern Art exhibition, tellingly titled "American Realists and Magic Realists." French magical realist Pierre Roy, who worked and showed successfully in the US, is cited as having "helped spread Franz Roh's formulations" to the United States.
Magic realism that excludes the overtly fantastic
When art critic Franz Roh applied the term magic realism to visual art in 1925, he was designating a style of visual art that brings extreme realism to the depiction of mundane subject matter, revealing an "interior" mystery, rather than imposing external, overtly magical features onto this everyday reality. Roh explains,
We are offered a new style that is thoroughly of this world that celebrates the mundane. This new world of objects is still alien to the current idea of Realism. It employs various techniques that endow all things with a deeper meaning and reveal mysteries that always threaten the secure tranquility of simple and ingenuous things.... it is a question of representing before our eyes, in an intuitive way, the fact, the interior figure, of the exterior world.
In painting, magical realism is a term often interchanged with post-expressionism, as Ríos also shows, for the very title of Roh's 1925 essay was "Magical Realism:Post-Expressionism." Indeed, as Dr. Lois Parkinson Zamora of the University of Houston writes, "Roh, in his 1925 essay, described a group of painters whom we now categorize generally as Post-Expressionists." [1] [[File:Alexander Kanoldt Still Life II.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Alexander Kanoldt, Still Life II 1922]] Roh used this term to describe painting that signaled a return to realism after expressionism's extravagances, which sought to redesign objects to reveal the spirits of those objects. Magical realism, according to Roh, instead faithfully portrays the exterior of an object, and in doing so the spirit, or magic, of the object reveals itself. One could relate this exterior magic all the way back to the 15th century. Flemish painter Van Eyck (1395–1441) highlights the complexity of a natural landscape by creating illusions of continuous and unseen areas that recede into the background, leaving it to the viewer's imagination to fill in those gaps in the image: for instance, in a rolling landscape with river and hills. The magic is contained in the viewer's interpretation of those mysterious unseen or hidden parts of the image.
Other important aspects of magical realist painting, according to Roh, include:
- A return to ordinary subjects as opposed to fantastical ones.
- A juxtaposition of forward movement with a sense of distance, as opposed to Expressionism's tendency to foreshorten the subject.
- A use of miniature details even in expansive paintings, such as large landscapes.
The pictorial ideals of Roh's original magic realism attracted new generations of artists through the latter years of the 20th century and beyond. In a 1991 New York Times review, critic Vivien Raynor remarked that "John Stuart Ingle proves that Magic Realism lives" in his "virtuoso" still life watercolors. Ingle's approach, as described in his own words, reflects the early inspiration of the magic realism movement as described by Roh; that is, the aim is not to add magical elements to a realistic painting, but to pursue a radically faithful rendering of reality; the "magic" effect on the viewer comes from the intensity of that effort: "I don't want to make arbitrary changes in what I see to paint the picture, I want to paint what is given. The whole idea is to take something that's given and explore that reality as intensely as I can."
Later development: magic realism that incorporates the fantastic
While Ingle represents a "magic realism" that harks back to Roh's ideas, the term "magic realism" in mid-20th century visual art tends to refer to work that incorporates overtly fantastic elements, somewhat in the manner of its literary counterpart.
Occupying an intermediate place in this line of development, the work of several European and American painters whose most important work dates from the 1930s through to the 1950s, including Bettina Shaw-Lawrence, Paul Cadmus, Ivan Albright, Philip Evergood, George Tooker, Ricco, even Andrew Wyeth, is designated as "magic realist." This work departs sharply from Roh's definition, in that it (according to artcyclopedia.com) "is anchored in everyday reality, but has overtones of fantasy or wonder." In the work of Cadmus, for example, the surreal atmosphere is sometimes achieved via stylized distortions or exaggerations that are not realistic.
Recent "magic realism" has gone beyond mere "overtones" of the fantastic or surreal to depict a frankly magical reality, with an increasingly tenuous anchoring in "everyday reality." Artists associated with this kind of magic realism include Marcela Donoso
Artists such as Peter Doig, Richard T. Scott and Will Teather have become associated with the term in the early 21st century.
Painters
- Felice Casorati
- Antonio Donghi
- Marcela Donoso
- Gian Paolo Dulbecco
- Jared French
- Edward Hopper
- Gayane Khachaturian
- Ricco
- Carel Willink
- Frida Kahlo
- Colleen Browning
- Eyvind Earle
See also
With reference to literature
With reference to visual art
With reference to both
General
