American magic realism
Most people associate the term “magic realism” with Latin American literature –
Two paintings stood out to me at this year’s Whitney Biennial: Jared French’s Rope (1955) and George Tooker’s Subway (1950). Painted with egg tempera, which was used into the Renaissance before being superseded by oil paints, both are figurative works that evoke the feeling (& dark humor) of Surrealism + spatial plotting & composition of Renaissance painting.
The museum categorizes both as magic realist works (though Tooker objects). In any case, I was surprised & excited to discover a tradition of American magic realism. I learned that magic realism had originally been used to describe paintings — first German, then American ones including those by French & Tooker — before being used (& popularized) to describe Latin American literature such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s fiction.
There is a key difference in magic realism in visual art vs. literature. Magic realism in visual art excludes the overtly fantastical; instead, treating the mundane with “extreme realism” reveals the interior mystery of the mundane. In literature, magic realism blurs the line between the fantastic and real through literary devices (though the term itself gets appropriately blurred as various critics/scholars try to pin it down).
Why does magic realism in the visual exclude the overtly fantastic? How does this translate to film — if you move from the visual art approach into film vs if you move from the literary approach into film? David Lynch’s films would be considered fantastic and not magic realist. The thing about a painting like Subway is that it’s all about style, design, and expression: its precise design extends to choreography, facial expression, colors — it is purely visual & conveyed concisely, in a single frame. What if the painting extended into a moving picture? What would happen? How would the magic realism extend itself if the picture came to life in a film story? The story element is what differentiates a painting from fiction. The internal thoughts, the fleshing out of relationships, all the language of fiction, is precluded in a painting. What about in a film?
It just seems that if you took this concept into film it would open up amazing possibilities to tell awesome stories in a way we haven’t seen before. Many many films explore the fantastic & the fantastic through a cinematic expression of the psychological (I do this in my own film Stutter & work in surreal elements into Triangle) — but what if one both 1) confined the overtly fantastic AND 2) expressed the interior mystery? Would part 1 also mean excluding actual dreams and visions? Yes. The tension of those two elements seems pregnant w/ possibility.
It must be in the details, the design, every choice. And the magic realism serves the story. Like today — I saw a woman with a transparent bag on her head. It was drizzling. As she walked, collecting garbage, the transparent bag swaying beautifully behind her, like a jellyfish undulating smoothly forward in water. She had a jellyfish on her head. It was beautiful. It was mundane. It was not dark. Is there any magic realism there? Isn’t it about — after all — seeing the invisible & showing it?