Fantastic realism in literature and painting

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Fantastic realism is one of the trends in art that arose in the 19th century. It developed especially brightly on the basis of both literature and painting. This term is applied to various artistic phenomena.

Some researchers attribute his invention to F. M. Dostoevsky, some to Friedrich Nietzsche. Later, in the 20th century, theater director Yevgeny Vakhtangov used it in his lectures. And then domestic theater critics began to define Vakhtangov's creative method as "fantastic realism."

General concept

Under the direction we are considering, we mean such a trend in art and literature in which the author, depicting reality, tries to understand and explain it through the creation of fantastic images. Its main features are:

• Inconsistency with objective reality, the lack of conditionality of a person's character by connections with the outside world. In a fantasy worldthere is a contact of people with a different reality, their essence is considered as a phenomenon.
• Double perception of reality. Writers and artists create fantastic, conditional worlds in which completely "human" heroes or characters with a demonic bias are placed.

Thus, "fantastic realism" can be described as the union of two worlds - material and spiritual. As a result, a third, "unobservable reality", a new aesthetic quality is created.

Fantastic realism in painting

This direction also appears under a different name. It is called the "Viennese School of Fantastic Realism". It originated in Austrian art in 1948 at the Vienna Academy of Arts. It was founded by a group of students who were students of the Austrian artist and poet Albert Gütersloh.

This school was mystical-religious in nature. Its representatives were engaged in the study of deeply hidden corners of the human soul. They raised eternal themes, they focused on the traditions inherent in the German Renaissance.

In the early 60s of the 20th century, this group begins to create a new style and a new school of fantastic realism. In the future, the course continued in the style of "Visionary Art", based on the image of what a person contemplates while in a state of altered consciousness, meditation. Among the recognized masters of the direction are:

• Wolfgang Hutter.
• Anton Lemden.
• Ernst Fuchs.
• Rudolf Hausner.
• Arik Brauer.

Fantastic realism in literature

Its prominent representatives in the 19th century were A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, F. M. Dostoevsky. In the 20th-21st century, some works by such writers as the Strugatsky brothers, Haruki Murakami can be cited as an illustration. Consider brief examples.

• "Nose" by N. V. Gogol (1836). This work presents a story about the incredible events that happened in the life of Kovalev, a collegiate assessor. One day, when he woke up, he found that he was left without a nose.
• “Demons” by F. M. Dostoevsky (1871-1872). A novel-prophecy, in which the plot is based on real events related to the case of the revolutionary Nechaev. Members of the revolutionary circle kill their comrade, who decided to retire. Here the writer studies the features of the Russian soul, which was inhabited by "demons".
• Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers (1972). The work tells about the Zone - a place that looks through a person, being, as it were, a test that controls the human soul.
• "1Q84" Haruki Murakami (2009-2010). The action takes place in a world in which some see not one, but two moons in the sky. It is inhabited by a little folk that comes out of the mouth of a dead goat and weaves an Air Cocoon.

In the works of Pushkin

In terms of following Pushkin's "fantastic realism", literary critics consider The Queen of Spades, Count Nulin, Little Tragedies, Poltava, written by him. He portrays life for the first time"insignificant heroes", accompanied by unexpected, fantastic plot twists. In doing so, he deviates from classical romanticism.

Fantastic images of the poet are presented in the form of allegories, as well as philosophical, historical and psychological generalizations. For example, in the "Queen of Spades" the mystical component is used to reveal the metamorphosis that occurs with the player. Deeply immersed in excitement, Herman falls into a frenzy.

In the works of N. V. Gogol

They reflect a special style, which is an interweaving of fantasy and reality, grotesque and detail, tragic and comic. An example is his "Petersburg Tales", "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", "Dead Souls". In them, he continues the theme of the "little man" raised by A. S. Pushkin, and explores the life of such a person using fantastic and fairy-tale motifs, masterfully combining the real and the fictional.

In Dostoevsky's novels

This writer has a display of true human nature in situations called borderline. And he also depicts lost souls who are tormented by obsession. This is Raskolnikov in the novel "Crime and Punishment", and Shatov in the novel "Demons", and Ivan Karamazov in "The Brothers Karamazov". The researchers see the essence of Dostoevsky's "fantastic realism" in this.

To reflect the originality of this writer's work, literary critics used such terms as "experimental realism", "experimental realism", "ideal-realism". His view of reality was often criticized. It has been described as violent, exceptional, and fantastic. The writer did not agree with this opinion. He believed that the fantastic and the real should be in contact with each other to such an extent that the reader could believe in the reality of what is written.