magic realism: defining the indefinite

Magic Realism: Defining the IndefiniteAuthor(s): Jeffrey WechslerSource: Art Journal, Vol. 45, No. 4, The Visionary Impulse: An American Tendency (Winter,1985), pp. 293-298Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776800 .

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Magic Realism:

Defining the Indefinite

By Jeffrey Wechsler

T he vast quantity of art that includes imaginative, fantastic, or odd imag-

ery has provoked its 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 Surreal- ism. 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, triple- termed inventions as "visionary/imagist/narrative" show an understanding of 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 denominator of the many styles discussed in this Journal issue is a shift- ing 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

times, that it has taken many forms, that it has been called Surrealist, magic realist, fantastic, Symbolist, visionary, ec- centric, and so on, and that it has been practiced by groups with common theo- ries 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 encoun- tered 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. Nev- ertheless, 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 recog- nize 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 classi- fications."''

One of the very rare attempts at defining magic realism is found in H. H.

Arnason's encyclopedic textbook, His- 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 dif- fers 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.

She 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 manipulated just enough to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. A pleasant day at the beach becomes,

Winter 1985 293



Fig. 1 Jared French, State Park, 1946, egg tempera on composition board, 231/2 X 231/2". Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Donnelley Erdman, 1965.

Fig. 2 Francis Criss, Astor Place, 1932, oil on canvas, 32 x 40". Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase.

through little more than a stiffness and stylization of form, a rather frightening experience. The extremely mannered pose of the lifeguard, looking as if he were cast in concrete, is particularly disturbing.

Magic realism affords a surprising latitude of psychological effects, although it is pinned in, as it were, between realism and Surrealism. Con- sider the following three paintings, arranged to present a scale of increasing strangeness. Astor Place by Francis Criss (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 dem- onstrates, by occupying the low end of the magic realist scale, the hazy borders of our topic. Magic realism is utterly dependent for its existence on the pro- duction of some sort of vague mood of

uneasiness or puzzlement, hardly an effect conducive to objective measure- ment or study. To someone seeing noth- ing 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, wind- whipped costume, heightens the mystery. The picture is rendered in an extremely detailed and precise manner, and this contributes to that quality of stillness so important to magic realism. Although similar in effect and technique, as well as locale, to French's State Park, Fire on the Beach suggests somehow that there is a symbolism to be penetrated, as the two men watch and tend the small fire that separates them from the enigmatic woman.

Apparent symbolism is another frus- tration 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 Cadmus, John Atherton, Alton Pickens, and others, were included by Kirstein in an exhibition he entitled Symbolic Realists, which was shown at the Edward Hewitt Gallery in New York, and then traveled to London. In an introductory brochure for the show, Kir- stein stated that the selected artists "take painting for an intellectual more than a manual profession." Thus, only seven years after The Museum of Mod- ern Art's American Realists and Magic Realists exhibition, knowledgeable observers were further subdividing the artists so identified into new groupings.

A further step on the magic realism scale is seen in George Tooker's High- way (Fig. 4). Here, a complex environ-

Fig. 3 Henry Koerner, Fire on the Beach, 1950, tempera on canvas, 411/2 x 50". Private collection.

ment is developed and manipulated to create not just strangeness but a definite sense of menace. Unlike many magic realists, Tooker has been rather consis- tent 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-stanchions to suggest the individ- ual'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 fore- ground 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 delight- ful 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 manufac- ture 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 accommo- date remarkable goings-on. The Belgian artist Paul Delvaux has often been labeled a Surrealist, but a very large proportion of his art remains within the bounds of magic realism. Delvaux's sig- nature themes are certain locations- railway 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, profes- sorial-looking men, who usually ignore them. The women may march unclothed in processions, clasping lighted candles or bouquets, past the overhead electrifi- cation towers and cables of the railways; they may lounge naked on divans in rooms opening onto mountainous land- scapes, while the professors study min- eral 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.

294 Art Journal



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 realism flourished in the

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 move- ments that preceded it or were contemporary with it. Magic realism actually paralleled the development of Surreal- ism 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 fash- ionable 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 nec- essarily gain adherents from this expo- sure; 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 stan- dards in painting was not limited simply to some disgruntled viewers of modern art. Among the best-known practition- ers of magic realism were many who shared with certain other American artists a renewed interest in traditional art

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 Renais- sance artists in designing a major com- missioned work. Blume plans the entire project thoroughly by means of scores of preliminary drawings, sketches, finished renderings, progressively larger versions of details, and full-sized cartoons. The resurrection of 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 dis- semination 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 demonstrated the egg-tempera technique to Jared French and Paul Cadmus, who became major pro- ponents 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 emo- tional effect of American magic realism has prototypes in Renaissance art. The magic realism of Tooker and French in particular is conditioned by the dignif- ied 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, 281/2 X 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 reso- nate in the monumental calm and sym- metry 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 disturbing juxtapositions 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



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 characteris- tics" including "a peculiar restlessness and compression of the new pictorial

architecture,.... a style of restrained

romanticism full of intense adoration of nature and poetic content."3 In the same year, Franz Roh took an overview of the artists practicing this style in Germany, along with a few artists in other coun- tries whom he saw as demonstrating similar stylistic tendencies, and produced a book that offered the style not one name, but two. Roh's book, Nach- Expressionismus, Magischer Realis- mus-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 Ger- man magic realism predated Andre Bre- ton's Surrealist Manifesto of 1924. Thus, magic realism, as a mode of painting, has a slight chronological edge on Surrealism, while both styles are pro- foundly influenced by metaphysical art.

Curiously, with respect to sources, German magic realism is based almost as much on the metaphysical art of Carlo

Carrt as on that of De Chirico.

Carrd often used extremely reduced visual incident in his works, a single manikin form in a bare room, for instance. Thus arose the almost obses- sive 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 selec- tion of new objectivity/magic realism painters, including Dix, George Grosz, Oskar Schlemmer, and George 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

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

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 important source for Ameri- can magic realism was the work of the French painter Pierre Roy. Rather a forgotten figure today, Roy was remark- ably successful and well regarded in the United States in the 1930s. In Novem- ber 1930, Roy was given a large one- man show at the Brummer Gallery in New York. A glowingly positive review of the show by Ralph Flint in Art News

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 (Ameri- cans at that date had enough trouble adjusting to Surrealism, let alone sepa- rating 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 incon- gruous 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 ten- sion between the possible and the irra- tional, 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.

F rom the nearly simultaneous phe- nomena of Surrealism, magic real-

ism, 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 inter- pretations 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 affilia- tion with Surrealism. Some of the "historical precedents" for Surrealism pre- sented 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 photo- graph 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 sepa- rately recognized category of magic realism. But the show's organizers hedged their bets by jointly displaying

296 Art Journal



Fig. 9 Pierre Roy, Danger on the Stairs, 1927-28, oil on canvas, 36 x 235/8". The Museum of Modern Art, 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 differen- tiated 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 extraordinary things are possible by simply painting them as if they exis- ted."4 That is rather a fair description of 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 fanta- sist), 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.5 Nevertheless, the exhibition was a pioneering effort in the display of American magic realism.

Three decades after American Real- ists and Magic Realists the ques-

tion of definition remained unanswered. In 1975, the Whitney Museum of Amer- ican 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-

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 nit- picking 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 empha- sizes 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 head- quarters 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 sub- jects 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 shat- tered Brooklyn Bridge populated by a strange assortment of people, including a harpist with small buildings substi- tuted for his head. It was in the realm of magic realism, where subjective judg- ment plays a role in determining the effect of the work, that the knottiest organizational questions arose.

Criss's Astor Place was deemed suffi- ciently mood-provoking to be included,

as was George Ault's New York Roof- top (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 opin- ion 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 col- lectively 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 twenty- one 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 awk- ward; furthermore, that title would neglect social Surrealism. Some consul- tation on the matter with Patterson Sims, an associate curator at the Whit- ney 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 201/4". Collection of Raymond J. Learsy. Winter 1985 297



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.

Fig. 12 Philip Evergood, Lily and the Sparrows, 1939, oil on composition board, 30 x 24". Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase.

Notes Parts of this article are based on previous writings by the author on related topics; specifically, the exhibition catalogues Surrealism and American Art: 1931-1947 (1977) and Realism and Real'i- ties: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940- 1960 (1982), both organized by The Jane Voor- hees Zimmerli Art Museum (formerly: Rutgers University Art Gallery), Rutgers, The State Uni-

versity, New Brunswick, New Jersey. I am grate- ful 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

Suba, Patrick J. Sullivan, Stow Wengenroth, Andrew Wyeth, Zsissly.

6 The full listing of artists exhibited is as follows: Barbara Adrian, Ivan Albright, John Atherton, Peter Blume, Paul Cadmus, Clarence Carter, Federico Castellon, Alex Colville, Joseph Cor- nell, Edwin Dickinson, Philip Evergood, Jared French, Adolph Gottlieb, Stephen Greene, O. Louis Guglielmi, Philip Guston, Henry Koern- er, 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.

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

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magic realism: defining the indefinite

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