| |
In literature, magic realism is a kind of fiction in which supernatural and natural characters and events merge as if there is no distinction between them. It is the method of fairy tale: a way to interrelate the worlds of dream, fantasy and reality. In the 20th century, South American novelists began writing magic realist fables which described harsh political reality in terms of naive, folk-inspired fantasy. Particular masters of the style include Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. Márquez\'s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera are among its masterpieces. Other writers who use personal versions of magic realism include Isabel Allende, Angela Carter, Günter Grass, John Irving and Salman Rushdie.
In painting, the term magic realism was used, in a similar way, by a group of 1920s Munich painters—and indeed many artists, from Aboriginal cave-painters to such sophisticates as the sculptors of Hindu temple carvings, Hieronymus Bosch, Marc Chagall, Georgia O\'Keeffe and Diego Rivera, have blended realistic depiction and naive fantasy. Their work is often executed in a highly realistic manner, but the subject matter, or incidental details, as in surrealism, disrupt a naturalistic reading. For all that, the term ‘magic realism’, common in literary criticism, is rarely used in art. KMcL |
|
