Magical realism, however, portrays a reality that someone believes in, once believed in, or could believe in. Fantasy and Science fiction – Fantasy and science fiction novels portray an alternate world with its own set of rules and characteristics or experiment with our world by suggesting how a new technology or political system might affect our society.

Magical realists, on the other hand, portray the real world itself as having marvelous aspects inherent in it. Surrealists, however, try to discover and portray that which is above or superior to the “real” through the use of techniques such as automatic writing, hypnosis, and dreaming.

Surrealism – Many early magical realists such as Alejo Carpentier and Miguel Angel Asturias studied with the surrealists, and surrealism, as an international movement, influenced many aspects of Latin American art.

Postmodernism – Magical realism is often considered, as a genre, a subcategory of postmodern fiction due to its challenge to hegemony and its use of techniques similar to those of other postmodernist texts, such as the distortion of time.

Uses a mirroring of either past and present, astral and physical planes, or of charactersĪs a literary style, magical realism often overlaps or is confused with other genres and movements.

May be set in or arise from an area of cultural mixing.

May be an overt rebellion against a totalitarian government or colonialism.

Presents events from multiple perspectives, such as that of belief and disbelief or the colonizer's and the colonized's.

Inverts cause and effect, for instance a character may suffer before a tragedy occurs.

Another technique is to collapse time in order to create a setting in which the present repeats or resembles the past. Distorts time so that it is cyclical or so that it appears absent.Characters accept rather than question the logic of the magical element.The magical element may be intuitive but is never explained.

Surrealism & Magic Realism in American Art surveys the various reactions to Surrealism by American artists.The following elements are found in many magical realist novels, but not all are found in each novel and many are found in novels that fall under other genres. Some artists imbued their art with the vitality and abstract sensibility of automatism, while others created their own dream-like visions of reality. Surrealism provoked a diverse range of responses from the Americans who interpreted and adapted its aesthetics and ideology to satisfy their own creative goals. As a result, American artists were exposed to the novel expressions of Surrealism and many were quick to respond. At the end of the decade many European Surrealists fled World War II and settled in New York where they became members of the creative community. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery's spring exhibition, Surrealism & Magic Realism in American Art, illustrates the impact of the Surrealist movement on American Art during the 1930s and its contribution toward the ferment of abstract expressionism in the 1940s.ĭuring the 1930s American galleries and museums mounted significant exhibitions of Surrealism in addition to publishing catalogues. Surrealism and Magic Realism in American ArtĪrtists included in this exhibition: Leo Amino, Eugene Berman, Clarence Carter, Federico Castellon, Julio De Diego, Louis Eilshemius, Jimmy Ernst, Adolph Gottlieb, John Graham, James Guy, Hans Hofmann, Gerome Kamrowski, Boris Margo, Walter Murch, Bertrand Old, Alfonso Ossorio, Irene Rice Pereira, Walter Quirt, Attilio Salemme, Charles Seliger, Kurt Seligman, Joseph Solman, Theodoros Stamos, Pavel Tchelitchew, George Tooker, Laurence Vail, and John Wilde

Magical realism art