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Alfred H. Barr Jr., Director of the Museum
of Modern Art, played an important role in
defining Magic Realism in American art. In
the late 1920s Barr introduced the term
Precisionist to describe the early works
of Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth. In
the late 1920s he wrote extensively to
Gustav Hartlaub about Neue Sachlichkeit
and German art. In the early 1930s Barr
and his wife lived in Stuttgart, Germany,
and witnessed first-hand the closure of
museums and takeover by the Nazis. In 1936
he curated the exhibition Fantastic
Art, Dada , Surrealism at MoMA. Barr
observed parallels between Neue Sachlichkeit
and developments in American Scene
painting. He also noted that there was a
broad trend across the country in the
creation of a new type of special art, an
American response to Surrealism.
In 1943 Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Dorothy C.
Miller curated the exhibition American
Realists and Magic Realists at MoMA.
He defined Magic Realism as "the work of
painters who by means of an exact
realistic technique try to make plausible
and convincing their improbable, dreamlike
or fantastic visions". Influenced by both
Precisionism and Surrealism, and grounded
in the traditions of American Realism,
many paintings of the 1930s and 40s were
created outside the parameters of
Regionalism or Social Realism. These paintings occupy
a special niche.
Most were painted by relatively unknown
painters. They exhibit a timeless quality, born in
the imagination. |
