Between 19, magical realism in Latin America reached its peak, with prominent writers appearing mainly in Argentina. 'Within a year, Magic Realism was being applied to the prose of European authors in the literary circles of Buenos Aires.' Jorge Luis Borges inspired and encouraged other Latin American writers in the development of magical realism - particularly with his first magical realist publication, Historia universal de la infamia in 1935. One major event that linked painterly and literary magic realisms was the translation and publication of Franz Roh's book into Spanish by Spain's Revista de Occidente in 1927, headed by major literary figure José Ortega y Gasset. Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier and Venezuelan Arturo Uslar-Pietri, for example, were strongly influenced by European artistic movements, such as Surrealism, during their stays in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Writers often traveled between their home country and European cultural hubs, such as Paris or Berlin, and were influenced by the art movement of the time. Literary magic realism originated in Latin America. Such a complex system of layering-encompassed in the Latin American 'boom' novel, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude-aims towards 'translating the scope of America.' Marvelous: not meaning beautiful and pleasant, but extraordinary, strange, and excellent. These mixing ethnicities grow together with the American baroque the space in between is where the 'marvelous real' is seen. mestizaje, engenders the baroque,' made explicit by elaborate Aztec temples and associative Nahuatl poetry. 'America, a continent of symbiosis, mutations. From this angle, Carpentier views the baroque as a layering of elements, which translates easily into the post-colonial or transcultural Latin American atmosphere that he emphasizes in The Kingdom of this World. In his essay 'The Baroque and the Marvelous Real', Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier defined the baroque by a lack of emptiness, a departure from structure or rules, and an 'extraordinary' abundance (plenitude) of disorienting detail (citing Mondrian as its opposite). 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. Maggie Ann Bowers argues that it first emerged in the 1955 essay ' Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction' by critic Angel Flores. The extent to which magical elements enter in visual art depends on the subcategory, discussed in detail below.ĭetermining who coined the term magical realism (as opposed to magic realism) is controversial among literary critics. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Carpentier's work was a key influence on the writers of the Latin American 'boom' that emerged in the 1960s.Īn 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. Carpentier's conception was of a kind of heightened reality in which elements of the miraculous could appear while seeming natural and unforced.

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). 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.

Magic realism (or magical realism) is an artistic genre in which magical elements appear in an otherwise, mundane, realistic setting.Īs used today the term is broadly descriptive rather than critically rigorous.

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