Magical realism

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The magical realism ( Spanish realismo mágico ) is an artistic movement that since the 1920s, especially in the field of painting and literature is represented in several countries in Europe and the Americas. Magical realism was later taken up and continued in the fields of film art and photography.

Magical realism in painting

Alexander Kanoldt , Still Life II (1922)

Magical realism represents the fusion of real reality (tangible, visible, rational) and magical reality (hallucinations, dreams). It is a “third reality”, a synthesis of the realities we are familiar with. The transition to surrealism is fluid.

Meaning and differentiation from other styles

The term was first used in 1925 by the art critic Franz Roh in his book Post-Expressionism: Magical Realism. Problems of the latest European painting. used. He described a post-expressionist painting style of pictures in Gustav Hartlaub's exhibition New Objectivity, which was planned for 1923 . German painting since Expressionism , which was shown from June 14 to September 18, 1925 in the Kunsthalle Mannheim . The term “Magical Realism” was initially used to compete with the term New Objectivity and is today seen in its original sense as a third direction with surrealistic echoes of the new representational painting of the Weimar Republic , alongside verism and classicism . During the movement of the New Objectivity with the seizure of power of the Nazis and the subsequent direct connection of media and culture ended, the Magic Realism established in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s as an independent flow across Europe and in America .

After Roh's text appeared in the Spanish magazine Revista de Occidente in 1927, the term soon found its way into the intellectual circles of Buenos Aires and, after heated discussions in the 1960s to 1990s, was also applied to parts of Latin American literature.

Representative of painting

Germany:

Austria:

Switzerland:

Netherlands (can be visited in the museums of Arnhem and Gorssel , among others ):

Belgium:

Italy:

UNITED STATES:

Magical realism in literature

Nobel laureate in literature Gabriel García Márquez (2002)

Magical realism as a literary form emerged in Germany, Italy and Flemish from the beginning to the middle of the 20th century and, with the detour via Paris and Spain, quickly had a major influence on literature in Latin America. The term was first applied to Latin American literature in 1948 by the Venezuelan Arturo Uslar Pietri . Miguel Ángel Asturias with his novel Hombres de maíz ( The Corn People ) from 1949 is regarded as the real father of the magical-realistic style in Latin America . In this work, indigenous myths (here the Maya ) with the reality, culture and history of Latin America are told from the perspective of the indigenous population. This magical view of reality leads to the fact that the legend represents the justification of what happened as a reaction to the oppression of the indigenous people by the whites. A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez ( 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature ) is also considered one of the most important works of magical realism.

With the foreword to his novel El reino de este mundo , Alejo Carpentier wrote a manifesto of magical realism, so to speak. He clearly delimits Latin America from Europe. According to him, “the European” lost the ability to experience the wonderfully real through the Enlightenment, while belief in myths and spirits are still naturally integrated in everyday life in Latin America. According to Carpentier, magical realism is natural, not forced; it is the embedding of the wonderful in everyday life.

Magical realism blends the lines between reality and fantasy. Folk culture, mythology, religion, history and geography merge in the texts and are always recognizable. It combines two concepts that are seen as opposing in the industrialized nations: reality and mythology / fantasy / magic - but the idea is that these two can very well coexist in the sense of a balancing act and are not necessarily in conflict. The opposite of magical realism is realismo social or social realism.

Differentiation from other styles

Magical realism is a sub-genre of the fantastic and some authors also see close correspondence between magical realism and (not to be confused with the fantastic) fantasy . In an interview, Gene Wolfe defined magical realism as follows: "Magic realism is fantasy written by people who speak Spanish." According to Terry Pratchett , it is "a polite way of saying man." write fantasy "(" a polite way of saying you write fantasy ") and" more acceptable to certain people ", as an author to assign yourself to magical realism instead of fantasy.

Alejo Carpentier sees a contrast between magical realism and European styles such as surrealism , which, according to Carpentier, must artificially create the wonderful. In contrast, magical realism is everyday life in Latin America and shows itself in a special way in the integration of the miracle in daily life (e.g. myths of gods).

Post-Macondismo

Criticism of magical realism and its commercialization in Europe and the USA intensified in the 1990s, especially in Chile, where it was first disparagingly referred to as Macondismo by José Joaquín Brunner (* 1944) , and in Mexico and Guatemala. He paints a false picture of an idyllic mestizo culture which ignores the traces of colonialism and the diverse division and hybridization of modern Latin American societies.

Representative in the literature

In German-speaking countries:

In the rest of Europe:

In the USA:

In Canada:

In Latin America:

In Asia:

See also

literature

  • Franz Roh : Post-Expressionism. Magical realism. Problems of the latest European painting. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig 1925.
  • Franz Roh: History of German Art from 1900 to the Present. F. Bruckmann, Munich 1958.
  • Michael Scheffel : Magical Realism. The history of a concept and an attempt to determine it (= Stauffenburg-Colloquium. Vol. 16). Stauffenburg, Tübingen 1990, ISBN 3-923721-46-3 (also: Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 1988).
  • Andreas Fluck: "Magical Realism" in painting of the 20th century (= European university publications. Series 28: Art history. Vol. 197). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1994, ISBN 3-631-47100-9 (also: Münster, Univ., Diss., 1992).
  • Reeds, Kenneth: Magical Realism: A problem of definition. In: Neophilologus 90 (2), London 2006, pp. 175-196.
  • Durst, Uwe: "Limited and unbounded wonderful systems: From bourgeois to 'magical' realism", in: Lars Schmeink / Hans-Harald Müller (eds.), "Foreign worlds: Paths and spaces of fantasy in the 21st century", Berlin / Boston 2012, pp. 57-74.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franz Roh: Post-Expressionism: Magical Realism. Problems of the latest European painting . Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig 1925.
  2. ↑ Stefanie Gommel: New Objectivity. In: Art Lexicon, Hatje Cantz Verlag. January 30, 2013, accessed April 22, 2015 .
  3. ^ What is Magic Realism Art , accessed March 22, 2015
  4. ↑ Kenneth Reeds: Magical Realism: A problem of definition. In: Neophilologus , Vol. 90 (2006), No. 2, p. 179.
  5. ^ Gene Wolfe, Brendan Barber: Gene Wolfe Interview. In: Peter Wright (Ed.): Shadows of the New Sun. Wolfe on Writing, Writers on Wolfe. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2007, p. 132 ( online ).
  6. ↑ Linda Richards: January Interview: Terry Pratchett . In: January Magazine , 2002. Retrieved June 24, 2010.
  7. ↑ Michael Rössner : Hybridity as 'Anti-Macondismo': Paradigm Shift in Latin American Literature at the Turn of the Millennium? In: Alfonso de Toro, Cornelia Sieber, Claudia Gronemann, René Caballo (eds.): Estrategias de la hibridez an América Latina. Frankfurt, New York 2007, pp. 395-407.