魔術的リアリズム
Magic Realism（英）, Magischer Realismus（独）
マジック・リアリズム、マギッシャー・リアリスムスとも言う。特定の潮流を指す名称ではなく、時代、地域、ジャンルを超えてさまざまな文脈で適用されてきた。文学の領域では現代イスパノアメリカ文学の一傾向を表わすが、美術においてはワイマール共和国時代のドイツにその発祥を見出すことができる。すなわち、1920年代の初頭、第一次世界大戦後の社会不安のなか、反表現主義的な立場から生まれた新しいリアリズムの潮流である。即物的、客観的な態度で対象の再現にのぞむ具象表現という観点から、Ｇ・Ｆ・ハルトラウプが提唱した新即物主義（ノイエ・ザッハリヒカイト）と混同して語られるか、もしくはその一部とみなされることが多い。ハルトラウプが「新即物主義―表現主義以後のドイツ絵画」展をマンハイム美術館で開催した25年、美術史家・写真家のＦ・ローは『表現主義以後』と題された著書を刊行し、ここに初めて魔術的リアリズムの名称が登場する。同書でローは、表現主義と表現主義以降の美術を「エクスタシー的対象／醒めた対象」「客体抑圧的／客体の明確化」「動力的／静力学的」などの二項対立で図式化し、さらにその後、表現主義以後の動向の代表格として、Ｍ・ベックマン、Ｏ・ディクス、Ａ・カノルト、Ａ・レーダーシャイト、Ｇ・シュリンプフらのほか、イタリア、フランスやスペインの画家の名前をリストに挙げた。卑近な対象を冷たく無機質な描写で描き、事物の背後にひそむ謎めいた感覚を引き出すのが魔術的リアリズムの典型的なスタイルと言える。こうした作風は、ジョルジョ・デ・キリコの絵画がドイツの画家たちに与えた影響を物語るものである。魔術的リアリズムは、その後オランダやアメリカ、スペインにも第二世代にあたる潮流を生み出した。また、50年代後半あたりから活動を開始した現代スペインの写実画家アントニオ・ロペス・ガルシアとその周辺に集う画家たちも、徹底した観察眼で対象に迫りながらどこか超現実的な雰囲気を醸し出す作風から、「魔術的リアリズム」あるいは「マドリード・リアリズム」と称されるときがある。
著者: 中島水緒
「魔術的リアリズム」とは元々、ドイツ人の写真家、美術評論家であるフランツ・ローが1925年のマンハイム美術館で行われた『新即物主義展（ノイエ・ザッハリヒカイト）』で展示されていた「冷静に現実を表現することによって現れる魔術的な非現実」を感じる作品群の美術的表現であるが、次第に文学表現にも使われるようになった。ヴァイマール時代の魔術的リアリズムの最大の作家はエルンスト・ユンガーだろう。まさに「魔術的非現実」と「合理的現実」を同時に見るという複眼的視線に基づくユンガーの文学は、ドイツの魔術的リアリズムの代表とされ、また夢への強い志向や高度な幻想性を持つユンガーの立場は、ドイツ固有のシュルレアリスム、あるいはシュルレアリスムのドイツ的代替として評価されている(Karl Heinz Bohrer:Die Aesthetik des Schreckens.)。またフランツ・カフカ、ギュンター・グラスも魔術的リアリズムにカテゴライズされることがある。
◇ Magic realism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Etymology
While the term magical realism in its modern sense first appeared in 1955, the German art critic Franz Roh first used the phrase in 1925, to refer to a painterly style also known as Neue Sachlichkeit (the New Objectivity),[4] an alternative championed by fellow German museum director Gustav Hartlaub.[5] Roh believed magic realism is related to, but distinctive from, surrealism, due to magic realism's focus on the material object and the actual existence of things in the world, as opposed to the more cerebral, psychological and subconscious reality that the surrealists explored.[6] Magic realism was later used to describe the uncanny realism by American painters such as Ivan Albright, Paul Cadmus, George Tooker and other artists during the 1940s and 1950s. However, in contrast with its use in literature, magical realist art does not often include overtly fantastic or magical content, but rather looks at the mundane through a hyper-realistic and often mysterious lens.[7] The extent to which magical elements enter in visual art depends on the subcategory, discussed in detail below.Determining who coined the term magical realism (as opposed to magic realism) is controversial among literary critics. Maggie Ann Bowers argues that it first emerged in the 1955 essay "Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction" by critic Angel Flores. She notes that while Flores names Jorge Luis Borges as the first magical realist (some critics consider him a predecessor, not actually a magical realist), he fails to acknowledge either Alejo Carpentier or Arturo Uslar-Pietri for bringing Roh's magic realism to Latin America.[6] However, both Luis Leal and Irene Guenther, (referencing Pietri and Jean Weisgerber texts, respectively), attest that Pietri was one of the first, if not the first, to apply the term to Latin American literature.[8][9]
Surrealism
Surrealism is often confused with magical realism as they both explore illogical or non-realist aspects of humanity and existence. There is a strong historical connection between Franz Roh's concept of magic realism and surrealism, as well as the resulting influence on Carpentier's marvelous reality; however, important differences remain. Surrealism "is most distanced from magical realism [in that] the aspects that it explores are associated not with material reality but with the imagination and the mind, and in particular it attempts to express the 'inner life' and psychology of humans through art." It seeks to express the sub-conscious, unconscious, the repressed and inexpressible. Magical realism, on the other hand, rarely presents the extraordinary in the form of a dream or a psychological experience. "To do so," Bowers writes, "takes the magic of recognizable material reality and places it into the little understood world of the imagination. The ordinariness of magical realism's magic relies on its accepted and unquestioned position in tangible and material reality."[59]
Visual art
Historical development
The painterly style began evolving as early as the first decade of the 20th century,[68] but 1925 was when magischer realismus and neue sachlichkeit were officially recognized as major trends. This was the year that Franz Roh published his book on the subject, Nach Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus: Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei (translated as After Expressionism: Magical Realism: Problems of the Newest European Painting) and Gustav Hartlaub curated the seminal exhibition on the theme, entitled simply Neue Sachlichkeit (translated as New Objectivity), at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in Mannheim, Germany.[69] Irene Guenthe refers most frequently to the New Objectivity, rather than magical realism; which is attributed to that New objectivity is practical based, referential (to real practicing artists), while the magical realism is theoretical or critic's rhetoric. Eventually under Massimo Bontempelli guidance, the term magic realism was fully embraced by the German as well as in Italian practicing communities.[70]
New Objectivity saw an utter rejection of the preceding impressionist and expressionist movements, and Hartlaub curated his exhibition under the guideline: only those, "who have remained true or have returned to a positive, palpable reality,"[71] in order to reveal the truth of the times,"[72] would be included. The style was roughly divided into two subcategories: conservative, (neo-)classicist painting, and generally left-wing, politically motivated Verists.[72] The following quote by Hartlaub distinguishes the two, though mostly with reference to Germany; however, one might apply the logic to all relevant European countries. "In the new art, he saw"[72]
a right, a left wing. One, conservative towards Classicism, taking roots in timelessness, wanting to sanctify again the healthy, physically plastic in pure drawing after nature...after so much eccentricity and chaos [a reference to the repercussions of World War I]... The other, the left, glaringly contemporary, far less artistically faithful, rather born of the negation of art, seeking to expose the chaos, the true face of our time, with an addiction to primitive fact-finding and nervous baring of the self... There is nothing left but to affirm it [the new art], especially since it seems strong enough to raise new artistic willpower.[73]
Both sides were seen all over Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, ranging from the Netherlands to Austria, France to Russia, with Germany and Italy as centers of growth.[74] Indeed, Italian Giorgio de Chirico, producing works in the late 1910s under the style arte metafisica (translated as Metaphysical art), is seen as a precursor and as having an "influence...greater than any other painter on the artists of New Objectivity."[75][76]
Further afield, American painters were later (in the 1940s and 1950s, mostly) coined magical realists; a link between these artists and the Neue Sachlichkeit of the 1920s was explicitly made in the New York Museum of Modern Art exhibition, tellingly titled "American Realists and Magic Realists."[77] French magical realist Pierre Roy, who worked and showed successfully in the US, is cited as having "helped spread Franz Roh's formulations" to the United States.[78]
