Magic Realism: Defining the Indefinite Author(s): Jeffrey Wechsler Source: Art Journal, Vol. 45, No.

4, The Visionary Impulse: An American Tendency (Winter, 1985), pp. 293-298 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776800 . Accessed: 19/08/2013 11:19
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 175.137.83.6 on Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:19:51 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Magic

Realism:

the Defining

Indefinite

By Jeffrey Wechsler imaginative, fantastic, or odd imagery has provokedits often intended confusion not only in the minds of viewers in general but also in the minds of the art historians who struggle to define it and categorize it. In the twentieth century, the most accepted historical categorization of one aspect of such art is Surrealism. Yet a style that encompasses such widely differing imagery as that of Magritte, Mir6, Dali, and Masson is certainly flexible in its boundaries. Imaginative art has a free-form, rather ahistorical quality that frustrates even its most committed advocates. For example, in the letter inviting me to contribute to this issue of Art Journal, the co-editors wrote that they intended to offer "a survey of visionary/imagist/ narrative art in America. We are still somewhat unclear on exactly what to call this phenomenon and have settled tentatively on 'An American Tendency,' with 'The Visionary Impulse' being a close second." I empathize with their quandary; such double-slashed, tripletermed inventions as "visionary/imagist/narrative" show an understandingof the complexity of the problem. In a step towards resolving the matter, the term "imaginative realism" is set forth here. It simply suggests that a common denominatorof the many styles discussed in this Journal issue is a shifting away, to lesser or greater degrees, from the straightforward depiction of reality, while maintaining the depiction of recognizable objects. If the number of artworks that can be considered "imaginative realism" seems immense and unmanageable in normal art historical terms of style and chronology, so be it. When it is understood that imaginative realism has occurred in many places and

he vastquantity of art that includes times, that it has taken many forms, that Arnason's encyclopedic textbook, Hisit has been called Surrealist, magic realist, fantastic, Symbolist, visionary, eccentric, and so on, and that it has been practiced by groups with common theories and by isolated individuals, then it can be recognized that there is no need for an all-encompassing art historical framework. There is much research to be done on the pertinent artists as groups or individuals and on their art, but the impossibility of meaningful historical categorization of the art as a whole should be clear. Vagueness and confusion--qualities fundamental to the effects of this art on the viewer-hardly encourage universal definition. With this said, a study of the forms of art called "magic realism" is useful in demonstrating the difficulties encountered in defining a particular variety of imaginative realism. In the United States, the term "magic realism" has been used with some regularity since the 1930s, and gained in currency with the organization of the exhibition American Realists and Magic Realists at The Museum of Modern Art in 1943. Nevertheless, magic realism has always been an elusive term. The Art Index has never used magic realism as a subject heading. Artists who have painted works that may be defined as magic realist have accepted, rejected, or ignored the term. Some artists produce magic realism, but only occasionally. Some recognize this, and admit to the problems of stylistic labeling: 0. Louis Guglielmi stated that his work "has been called surreal, magic realist, romantic, and expressionist. I do not know what to call it. It has the elements of all these classifications."'' One of the very rare attempts at defining magic realism is found in H. H.

tory of Modern Art. Arnason writes: "In general, the magic realists, deriving directly from de Chirico, create mystery and the marvelous through juxtapositions that are disturbing even when it is difficult to see why. The magic realists, even though they may not indulge in Freudian dream images, are interested in translating everyday experience into strangeness."2 This is a useful definition, not only for its insights into magic realism but also for its assertion that no matter how unmanageable imaginative realism is in its entirety, certain select bits of it can be fruitfully analyzed. Magic realism as a term does exist in art writings, and should therefore have some rational basis for its usage. Although not all magic realists are, as Arnason implies, directly beholden to De Chirico, the Italian artist was a vital source for a great portion of the imaginative realism of our century. Arnason also points out that magic realism differs in a subtle but significant way from Surrealism: it deals with a strange reality, not a surreality. That is, the unreal creations of Salvador Dali, for example-hybrid monsters and flesh flowing like taffy-are off limits to the magic realist. Magic realism does not invent a new order of things; it simply reorders reality to make it seem alien. Magic realism is an art of the implausible, not the impossible; it is imaginative, not imaginary. painting State Park by Jared French (Fig. 1) is a good example of magic realism as practiced in the United States; it is an image from daily life manipulatedjust enough to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. A pleasant day at the beach becomes, Winter 1985 293 She

This content downloaded from 175.137.83.6 on Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:19:51 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

uneasiness or puzzlement, hardly an effect conducive to objective measurement or study. To someone seeing nothing out of the ordinary about Astor Place, it cannot be proved otherwise. Most observers would probably find Henry Koerner's Fire on the Beach (Fig. 3) stranger than Astor Place. What is the purpose of this meeting of three people and two goats on a beach? The differing apparel of the figures, especially the woman's clinging, windwhipped costume, heightens the mystery. The picture is rendered in an extremely detailed and precise manner, and this contributes to that quality of Fig. 1 Jared French, State Park, 1946, stillness so important to magic realism. egg tempera on composition board, Although similar in effect and technique, as well as locale, to French's 231/2 X 231/2".Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Gift of Mr. State Park, Fire on the Beach suggests and Mrs. R. H. Donnelley Erdman, somehow that there is a symbolism to be 1965. penetrated, as the two men watch and tend the small fire that separates them from the enigmatic woman. Apparent symbolism is another frustration to students of magic realism; the confusing scenes of this art range in intent from pure whimsy to complicated allegories fraught with meaning. The allegorical nature of much of this art was perceived by Lincoln Kirstein, a longtime admirer and collector of works by Koerner, French, George Tooker, Charles Rain, and other magic realists. In 1950, these artists, along with Paul John Atherton, Alton Pickens, 2 Francis Astor Cadmus, Place, Criss, Fig. and others, were included by Kirstein in 1932, oil on canvas, 32 x 40". Whitney an exhibition he entitled Symbolic Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase. Realists, which was shown at the Edward Hewitt Gallery in New York, and then traveled to London. In an and a stiffness more than little through stylization of form, a rather frightening introductorybrochurefor the show, Kirexperience. The extremely mannered stein stated that the selected artists pose of the lifeguard, looking as if he "take painting for an intellectual more were cast in concrete, is particularly than a manual profession." Thus, only seven years after The Museum of Moddisturbing. Magic realism affords a surprising ern Art's American Realists and Magic latitude of psychological effects, al- Realists exhibition, knowledgeable obthough it is pinned in, as it were, servers were further subdividing the artbetween realism and Surrealism. Con- ists so identified into new groupings. A further step on the magic realism sider the following three paintings, a of scale to scale is seen in George Tooker's Highincreasing arranged present strangeness. Astor Place by Francis way (Fig. 4). Here, a complex environCriss (Fig. 2) is magic realism in its mildest form. There is a sense of stillness, of immanence about the image that makes the viewer wonder about the scene; somehow it "feels" different from a typical cityscape. The presence of the two darkly shrouded nuns is important for this effect, but it is more the sense of unnatural emptiness and quietness, a hallmark of much magic realist art, that is the focus here. Astor Place also demonstrates, by occupying the low end of the magic realist scale, the hazy borders of our topic. Magic realism is utterly Fig. 3 Henry Koerner,Fire on the dependent for its existence on the pro- Beach, 1950, tempera on canvas, 411/2 duction of some sort of vague mood of x 50". Private collection. 294 Art Journal

ment is developed and manipulated to create not just strangeness but a definite sense of menace. Unlike many magic realists, Tooker has been rather consistent in providing a framework of social commentary and humanistic content for his art. The impersonality of contemporary society is a favored theme, and Highway uses city traffic diverted in a welter of confounding barricades and arrow-stanchionsto suggest the individual's loss of control over his destiny. In this painting, Tooker practices the magic realist's method of creating extreme but possible situations from the world around him; positioning the round, reflective signal held by the foreground figure so that it obscures his head, Tooker cleverly transforms him into an anonymous, faceless figure of authority. The artist also nudges the limits of magic realism with the delightful device of redesigning the grillwork of those streamlined autos of the 1950s into metallic grimaces, which convey the anguish of the drivers whose own grimaces are hidden or echoed by the downward-directed arcs (frowns) of their steering wheels. How far can magic realism go before it slips into Surrealism? Tooker's odd grilles are acceptable in magic realism, I believe, because they offer a feasible variation on objects that are already variable in form. One could manufacture such grilles, and they are hardly more bizarre than the more extreme tail fins that sprouted from the automobiles of the fifties and sixties. Put wings on a car and let it fly about in the air, though, and you're into fantasy and Surrealism. Even so, magic realism can accommodate remarkablegoings-on. The Belgian artist Paul Delvaux has often been labeled a Surrealist, but a very large proportionof his art remains within the bounds of magic realism. Delvaux's signature themes are certain locationsrailway stations and their environs, city streets, and ancient villas-populated by women who are usually nude, but sometimes partly or fully clothed, and are sometimes joined by clothed, professorial-looking men, who usually ignore them. The women may march unclothed in processions, clasping lighted candles or bouquets, past the overhead electrification towers and cables of the railways; they may lounge naked on divans in rooms opening onto mountainous landscapes, while the professors study mineral samples nearby;scores of them may gesticulate and pose in a town square, without any audience. Yet all these weird scenes can be considered magic realism. No matter how complicated the scene, if it can be staged, like props and actors on a film set, the term magic realism can suffice.

This content downloaded from 175.137.83.6 on Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:19:51 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Fig. 4 George Tooker, Highway, 1953, egg tempera on composition board, 227/8 X 18".Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois; Daniel J. Terra Collection.

Magic United States from the late 1930s

to the early 1960s. Its critical and public popularity may be credited in part to reactions against the avant-garde movements that preceded it or were contemporary with it. Magic realism actually paralleled the development of Surrealism instead of growing out of it; but the public, and some artists, were made more aware of Surrealism than of early modes of magic realism by such events as the massive 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism at The Museum of Modern Art and Salvador Dali's commissions for designing fashionable shop windows, his pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and his other sundry antics leading to a fanciful spread of photos on him in Life magazine. Surrealism, however, did not necessarily gain adherents from this exposure; a lot of American critics hated it, calling it "psychotic"and a "hoax." The public often agreed. In contrast, magic realism was much more understandable, more "real," and therefore appealed, if not for the best reasons, to a wider audience. By midcentury, magic realism was also facing "competition" from Abstract Expressionism. Obviously, viewers who were hostile to the abstract modes being developed at the time could find solace in the well-crafted images of magic realism. A preference for high technical standards in painting was not limited simply to some disgruntled viewers of modern art. Among the best-known practitioners of magic realism were many who shared with certain other American artists a renewed interest in traditional art

realism flourished in the

methods and materials. This might take the form, for example, of Peter Blume's practice of preparing a painting in the same elaborate manner used by Renaissance artists in designing a major commissioned work. Blume plans the entire project thoroughly by means of scores of preliminarydrawings, sketches, finished renderings, progressivelylarger versions of details, and full-sized cartoons. The resurrectionof such techniques, whether prompted by Renaissance-oriented teachers or by the predilections of younger artists, resulted in a surge of interest in largely forgotten technical skills, especially in the use of tempera and egg tempera. A few American schools offered instruction in historical techniques in the middle decades of this century. The University of Wisconsin at Madison, through the efforts of Bill McCloy and James Watrous, trained the artists John Wilde, Wynn Chamberlain-both often associated with magic realism-and Robert Grilley. A crucial point of dissemination of Renaissance techniques was the Yale Art School. Daniel V. Thompson and Lewis E. York were both Yale professors who proselytized for fine techniques, and extolled the virtues of egg tempera. Thompson produced an authoritative translation of Cennino Cennini's handbook of technique, and updated and enlarged on it in his 1936 The Practice of Tempera Painting. Robert Vickrey and Ken Davies both studied at Yale; Vickrey's early work was essentially magic realist in effect, as can be seen in his painting Gravel (Fig. 5). Alfonso Ossorio, whose mature style of assemblage is far from Renaissance realism, studied at Yale with York. Ossorio later demonstratedthe egg-tempera technique to Jared French and Paul Cadmus, who became major proponents of Renaissance methodologies. French preceded Cadmus in making a tempera painting, learning from Thompson's book, although in 1943 it was Cadmus who recommended the book to George Tooker. Much of the appearance and emotional effect of American magic realism has prototypes in Renaissance art. The magic realism of Tooker and French in particular is conditioned by the dignified stillness and forcefully modeled figures of Renaissance painting. French based his Washing the White Blood off Daniel Boone (Fig. 6) on Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ. French chose a subject that closely relates the concerns of Piero's work to a more recent, American era. A story about Daniel Boone describes how the Indians, awed by his many skills, kidnaped Boone in order to honor him as a god. French depicts a ritual of water-pouring

Fig. 5 Robert Vickrey, Gravel, n.d., egg tempera on composition board, 36 x 48". Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas Art Association Purchase.

Fig. 6 Jared French, Washing the White Blood off Daniel Boone, n.d., egg tempera on composition board, 281/2X 32". Collection of Monroe Wheeler, Rosemont, New Jersey. (baptism) that symbolically washes away Boone's true ancestry to make him a part of the Indian culture. The Indians demarcate a stately circle around Boone; echoes of the Renaissance resonate in the monumental calm and symmetry of the composition, the structure of the mountains behind, and even the forms of the clouds. In this work, French has created an unlikely hybrid: magic realist history painting. merican magic realism resulted from a confluence of earlier modes. As mentioned earlier, a major source for magic realism was the art of Giorgio de Chirico. Indeed, given De Chirico's stated intentions of perceiving deep, philosophical meanings in the common objects seen around him, and his use of disturbingjuxtapositions to realize these perceptions in visual terms, it could be said that magic realism entered modern art under the guise of De Chirico's "metaphysical art." The artist's famous Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, with its provocatively arranged but plausible scenario of a running girl, arcades, a van, and ominous shadows, fits quite nicely into the realm of magic realism as described here. Not all De Winter 1985 295

This content downloaded from 175.137.83.6 on Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:19:51 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Chirico's paintings avoid the impossible, but a large number do. Metaphysical art was the primary source for the first group of artists to be stylistically classified as magic realists. This occurred in Germany in 1925, after G. F. Hartlaub organized a show, Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity), for the Kunsthalle in Mannheim. According to the art historian Werner Haftmann, German painters selected for this show exhibited "quite specific characteristics" including "a peculiar restlessness and compression of the new pictorial a style of restrained architecture,.... romanticism full of intense adoration of nature and poetic content."3In the same year, Franz Roh took an overview of the artists practicing this style in Germany, along with a few artists in other countries whom he saw as demonstrating similar stylistic tendencies, and produced a book that offered the style not one name, but two. Roh's book, NachExpressionismus, Magischer Realismus-Probleme der Europaischen Malerei, marked the first coherent application of the term magic realism. Significantly, dated illustrations in Roh's book show that examples of German magic realism predated Andre Breton's Surrealist Manifesto of 1924. Thus, magic realism, as a mode of painting, has a slight chronological edge on Surrealism, while both styles are profoundly influenced by metaphysical art. Curiously, with respect to sources, German magic realism is based almost as much on the metaphysical art of Carlo as on that of De Chirico. Carrt Carrd often used extremely reduced visual incident in his works, a single manikin form in a bare room, for instance. Thus arose the almost obsessive simplicity favored by such German magic realists as Anton Raderscheidt, who managed to coax the requisite mood of stillness and disquiet with minimal means such as those in Young Married Couple (Fig. 7). Other German artists used hyperrealistic techniques to make the ordinary seem odd, as in Otto Dix's Dr. Mayer-Hermann (Fig. 8). Americans soon had the opportunity actually to view German magic realism, aside from knowledge of these works through reproductions in periodicals. An important exhibition of German art, German Painting and Sculpture, was held at The Museum of Modern Art in 1931. The show contained a good selection of new objectivity/magic realism painters, including Dix, George Grosz, and George Oskar Schlemmer, Schrimpf. The Museum of Modern Art acquired a number of these German works for its permanent collection, including Dix's widely reproduced Dr. Mayer-Hermann. As a convenient 296 Art Journal

Fig. 7 Anton Raderscheidt, Young Married Couple, 1922, oil on canvas. Unlocated.

was an augury of good things to come for Roy. He was included in the first group exhibition of Surrealism in the United States, held at the Wadsworth Atheneum in December 1931 (Americans at that date had enough trouble adjusting to Surrealism, let alone separating magic realism from it). Another one-man show for Roy at the Brummer Gallery was held in 1933, and he was included in the landmark Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism. Among Roy's works at that Museum of Modern Art presentation was what may be regarded as a classic painting of early magic realism, Danger on the Stairs (Fig. 9). Utterly simple in its conception, it strikes many viewers as both incongruous and shocking. Although this chilling image might adequately be explained as the result of someone's clumsiness in a herpetology lab, the picture remains, through its knife-edge tension between the possible and the irrational, a key example of magic realism. Danger on the Stairs was purchased by The Museum of Modern Art; Arnason used it to illustrate his explanation of magic realism. Continued shows in the 1930s and 1940s in the United States, and frequent visits here by the artist, kept Roy in the limelight as an example for potential American magic realists. nomena of Surrealism, magic realism, and the revivals of Renaissance techniques, there emerged the concept and practice of an American branch of magic realism. From its earliest days, however, magic realism tested the organizational skills of American curators, as did all forms of imaginative realism. The amorphous borders defining such art resulted in exceedingly liberal interpretations of the topic by museum personnel. Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism caused confusion by its inclusion of earlier fantastic art and contemporary works of dubious affiliation with Surrealism. Some of the "historical precedents" for Surrealism presented in the exhibition were made as early as the fifteenth century, and a section of the exhibition offering contemporary analogues to Surrealism ranged from a Walker Evans photograph to a frame from a Walt Disney cartoon about the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs. Magic realist paintings also found their way into this section. The 1943 American Realists and Magic Realists exhibition at MOMA was a sensible effort to appraise the national contribution to the now separately recognized category of magic realism. But the show's organizers hedged their bets by jointly displaying

rom the nearly simultaneousphe-

Fig. 8 Otto Dix, Dr. Mayer-Hermann, 1926, oil and tempera on wood, 583/4 X 39". The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Philip Johnson. bracket for the midcentury period important to American magic realism, another exhibition of twentieth-century German art, which also included magic realism, was held at The Museum of Modern Art in 1957. A second importantsource for American magic realism was the work of the French painter Pierre Roy. Rather a forgotten figure today, Roy was remarkably successful and well regarded in the United States in the 1930s. In November 1930, Roy was given a large oneman show at the Brummer Gallery in New York. A glowingly positive review of the show by Ralph Flint in Art News

This content downloaded from 175.137.83.6 on Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:19:51 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Fig. 9 Pierre Roy, Danger on the Stairs, 1927-28, oil on canvas, 36 x The Museum of Modern Art, 235/8". New York, Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. realism and magic realism; although the styles are distinguished in the show's title, they were not appreciably differentiated in the catalogue essay. Indeed, confusion as to the definition of magic realism was exacerbated by statements such as "Magic realists try to convince us that extraordinarythings are possible by simply painting them as if they existed."4 That is rather a fair descriptionof naturalistic Surrealism; magic realist painters, in contrast, try to convince us that ordinary things are strange and that these things are painted because they are possible. Furthermore, the inclusion of such artists as Patrick J. Sullivan (a self-taught allegorical fantasist), Edmund Lewandowski (generally regarded as a precisionist), and Ben Shahn (who used a stylized, abstracted technique for his realism) certainly did not make matters of definition easy for the viewer.5Nevertheless, the exhibition was a pioneering effort in the display of American magic realism. and Magic Realists the question of definition remained unanswered. In 1975, the Whitney Museum of American Art's downtown branch mounted an exhibition of about thirty-five works representing, it was claimed, Romantic Realism: 1930-1955. The term "romantic realism" was popular in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s as an expedient catchall for many forms of realistic painting that actually included such styles as magic realism, Surreal-

Three ists

decadesafterAmerican Real-

ism, neoromanticism,Lincoln Kirstein's "symbolic realism," and others. The exhibition was a potpourri of imaginative realism of these kinds, grouping together paintings as diverse as those by Walter Murch, Philip Evergood, Kay Sage, Dorothea Tanning, Hyman Bloom, Ben Shahn, and Andrew Wyeth, to name a few.6 If classification is the object here, the term "romantic realism" will not do. For instance, Sage and Tanning are Surrealists. Other artists in the show seem to have been included simply because they paint in the extremely precise technique associated with magic realism, Alex Colville and Honore Sharrer, among them. My nitpicking over nomenclature, however, should not be seen as an attack on the organizers of the show (who were students in the Whitney's fine curatorial internship program). Rather, it emphasizes the continued jumbled state of affairs that sets in whenever individuals wish to display a broad range of imaginative realism. In their search for a blanket categorization for the varied images, they revive terms from the past without fully considering their meaning or inherent imprecision. A recent show held under the auspices of the Whitney Museum, at its branch at the Philip Morris corporate headquarters in New York, can serve as a practical example and summary of the problem of working with imaginative realism. The exhibition was called The Surreal City: 1930s-1950s, and was organized by Susan Lubowsky, who carefully grappled with the scope of her subject.' The general intention of the exhibition was to display American paintings that deal with urban themes in an imaginative or Surrealist manner. Magic realist and Surrealist work would be appropriate,as would the specialized category of social Surrealism, which encompasses paintings that handle subjects of social concern by employing fanciful imagery (Social Realism + Surrealism = social Surrealism). With these preconditions of subject matter and style in place, the next order of business was selecting the works. The constant concern was that each urban scene must not be straightforward realism. Some choices were obvious and logical: O. Louis Guglielmi's Mental Geography depicts a twisted and shattered Brooklyn Bridge populated by a strange assortment of people, including a harpist with small buildings substituted for his head. It was in the realm of magic realism, where subjective judgment plays a role in determining the effect of the work, that the knottiest organizational questions arose. Criss's Astor Place was deemed sufficiently mood-provokingto be included,

as was George Ault's New York Rooftop (Fig. 10). The latter work, in my view, falls just shy of becoming magic realist; a reviewer of the show called it a "mild example" of magic realism. These differing perceptions are a matter of course with magic realism, with no opinion being provable. Paul Cadmus's Playground (Fig. 11) was considered, but didn't make it into the show. The activities that pack the picture may be unlikely to happen all at once, but collectively they don't produce a deep sense of unease or unreality. Philip Evergood's Lily and the Sparrows (Fig. 12) was included. I admit to indecision on this painting, despite my interest in defining magic realism; the strangeness of the work seems to depend too much on the odd face of the child: beauty, like magic realism, is in the eye of the beholder. Tooker's Highway was included: no argument there. Such is the fundamental ambiguity of magic realism. In the course of assembling twentyone paintings, the curator had to give the show a title. "The Surrealist City" was considered, but not all the works were Surrealist. By accepting the existence of magic realism, the curator rendered that title too exclusive. Another option, "Urban Themes: Surrealism and Magic Realism," was lengthy and awkward; furthermore, that title would neglect social Surrealism. Some consultation on the matter with Patterson Sims, an associate curator at the Whitney Museum, led to The Surreal City. The term "surreal" denotes the overall theme of strangeness and imaginative imagery without defining all the work as examples of Surrealism, for which the adjectival form would be Surrealist. To end a discussion of magic realism with a crescendo of hair-splitting is both frustrating and relevant. It touches the dichotomy that is the essence of imaginative realism in general and magic realism in particular: understanding

Fig. 10 George Ault, New York Rooftop, 1940, oil on canvas, 263/8 x Collection of Raymond J. 201/4". Learsy. Winter 1985 297

This content downloaded from 175.137.83.6 on Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:19:51 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Fig. 12 Philip Evergood, Lily and the Sparrows, 1939, oil on composition board, 30 x 24". Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase.
Suba, Patrick J. Sullivan, Stow Wengenroth, Andrew Wyeth, Zsissly. 6 The full listing of artists exhibited is as follows: BarbaraAdrian, Ivan Albright, John Atherton, Peter Blume, Paul Cadmus, Clarence Carter, Federico Castellon, Alex Colville, Joseph Cornell, Edwin Dickinson, Philip Evergood, Jared French, Adolph Gottlieb, Stephen Greene, O. Louis Guglielmi, Philip Guston, Henry Koerner, Hughie Lee-Smith, Walter Murch, Bernard Perlin, Alton Pickens, Walter Quirt, Kay Sage, Attilio Salemme, Ben Shahn, Honore Sharrer, Walter Stuempfig, Dorothea Tanning, George Tooker, Robert Vickrey, Hans Weingartner, Andrew Wyeth. 7 The exhibition was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris from May 3-July 11, 1985. At this writing, it is beginning a tour of various museums, beginning with the Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, and concluding at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia. The full listing of artists exhibited is as follows: George Ault, Peter Blume, Jewett Campbell, Francis Criss, Philip Evergood, O. Louis Guglielmi, James Guy, Henry Koerner, Alice Neel, Kay Sage, George Tooker.

Fig. 11 Paul Cadmus, Playground, 1948, egg tempera on masonite, 24 x 18". Georgia Museum of Art, The University of Georgia. versus ambiguity. The very qualities that produce our pleasure in viewing magic realism hinder our full intellectual grasp of it, and this has surely contributed to the dearth of research devoted thus far to magic realism. Notes
Parts of this article are based on previouswritings by the author on related topics; specifically, the exhibition catalogues Surrealism and American Art: 1931-1947 (1977) and Realism and Real'ities: The Other Side of American Painting, 19401960 (1982), both organized by The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum (formerly: Rutgers University Art Gallery), Rutgers, The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. I am grateful to the editors of this issue of Art Journal for the opportunity to reiterate and expand my thoughts about magic realism for a wider audience, and to do so in the important context of an entire issue devoted to forms of imaginative painting. 10. Louis Guglielmi, "I Hope to Sing Again," Magazine of Art (May 1944), pp. 175-76. 2 H. H. Arnason, History of Modern Art, New York, 1977, p. 376. 3 Werner Haftmann, German Art of the XXth Century, exh. cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1957, pp. 19-20. 4 Lincoln Kirstein, introduction to American Realists and Magic Realists, Alfred Barr, Jr. and Dorothy Miller, eds., exh. cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1943, p. 8. 5 The full listing of artists exhibited is as follows: Ivan Albright, John Atherton, Peter Blume, Audrey Buller, Paul Cadmus, Clarence Carter, Ferdinand Cartier, Jared French, O. Louis Guglielmi, Hananiah Harari, Z. Vanessa Helder, Peter Hurd, Lawrence Kupferman, Edmund Lewandowski, Louis Lozowick, Theo-dore Lux, Fred Papsdorf, Charles Rain, H. D. Rothschild, Patsy Santo, Ben Shahn, Miklos

Jeffrey Wechsler is Assistant Director at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

298

Art Journal
This content downloaded from 175.137.83.6 on Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:19:51 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions