MAGICAL REALISM
IN
ART AND LITERATURE
“The Burning Giraffe” by Salvador Dali
•
“The Burning Giraffe” is an example of
surrealism…
• Surrealism is an early 20th-century movement
in art and literature that tried to represent the
subconscious mind by creating fantastic,
dream-like imagery and juxtaposing ideas that
seem to contradict each other.
• Salvador Dali is a Spanish painter/sculptor
whose work came to define this movement.
“Empire of Light” by Rene Magritte
“Empire of Light” is an example of
magical realism…
Magical Realism is an artistic movment which
combines elements of the real/ordinary with
elements of the fantastic or magical.
Rene Magritte, though first considered a surrealist, has
come to typify magical realist painting because he
juxtaposes realistic images or scenes with unreal or
fantastic images.
The term “magical realism”…
…was first coined by art historian Franz
Roh in 1925, to describe an artistic
movement emerging in Europe. This
movement was also called “New
Objectivity” because its artists chose
to represent “real” or ordinary
objects in a “new” or “magical”
way.
Magritte and Dali
More Rene Magritte…
Magical Realism as a Literary Movement
• Magical Realism as an artistic movement, originating
in the 1920’s, eventually traveled from Europe to
Central and South America in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
• Magical Realism did not become a literary
movement until it arrived in Latin America (Mexico,
Central and South America, the Carribean). There, it
was claimed by such authors as Gabriel Garcia
Marquez (Columbia), Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis
Borges (Argentina).
Qualities of Magical Realist
Literature:
• Reality-based fiction
• NOT fantasy, horror, science-fiction, fairytales, legend or
folklore
• Fantastic events are considered normal by the characters
• No need to justify unreal elements or why fantastic events
occur
• Makes ordinary objects seem extraordinary
• Suggests a certain “timelessness” - stories not limited to a
certain time period
• Reveals the mysterious or magical side of the ordinary
• Uses Hyperbole, or exaggeration, to emphasize the
extraordinary
Examples of Magical
Realism in Literature
Hyperbole (exaggeration)
From Clarice Lispector’s “The Smallest Woman in the World”
“In the Eastern Congo, near Lake Kivu, he really did
discover the smallest pygmies in the world. And—like a box
within a box within a box—obedient perhaps, to the necessity
nature sometimes feels of outdoing herself—among the smallest
pygmies in the world there was the smallest of the smallest
pygmies in the world.
Among mosquitoes and lukewarm trees, among leaves of
the most rich and lazy green, Marcel Pretre found himself facing a
woman seventeen and three-quarter inches high, full-grown, black,
silent—who lived in a treetop with her little spouse.”
Makes the ordinary seem
extraordinary
Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano describes just such a moment:
“It is noon and James Baldwin is walking with a friend through the streets of
downtown
Manhattan. A red light stops them.
‘Look,’ says the friend, pointing at the ground.
Baldwin looks. He sees nothing.
‘Look, look.’
Nothing. There is nothing to look at but a filthy little puddle of water against the
curb.
His friend insists: ‘See? Are you seeing?’
And then Baldwin takes a good look and this time he sees, sees a spot of oil
spreading in the puddle. Then, in the spot of oil, a rainbow, and even deeper
down in the puddle, the street moving, and people moving in the street: the
shipwrecked, the madmen, the magicians, the whole world moving, an astounding
world full of worlds that glow in the world. Baldwin sees. For the first time in his
life, he sees.”
Magical events are described as if they are
ordinary, and characters in the story react to
them as ordinary
From Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
“On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to
cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a
temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been a sad thing
since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on
March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish.
The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing
away the crabs, it was hard to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the
courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face
down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his
enormous wings.”
To Review: Qualities of Magical Realist
Literature:
• Reality-based fiction
• NOT fantasy, horror, science-fiction, fairytales, legend or
folklore
• Fantastic events are considered normal by the characters
• No need to justify unreal elements or why fantastic events
occur
• Makes ordinary objects seem extraordinary
• Suggests a certain “timelessness” - stories not limited to a
certain time period
• Reveals the mysterious or magical side of the ordinary
• Hyperbole, or exaggeration, to emphasize the
extraordinary