What, exactly, is Magic Realism, and what does it have to do with Vermont? The Bennington Museum’s “Green Mountain Magic: Uncanny Realism in Vermont” presents answers in a thoughtful, wide-ranging and well-curated exhibition.
The exhibit articulates magic realism as a movement originated by art historian Alfred H. Barr. Barr, as the first director of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), curated the 1943 exhibition “American Realists and Magic Realists.” 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.”
In contrast to the Surrealist movement, in which painters like Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington actively mined dreams, mysticism and fantasy for imagery, Barr’s magic realism identifies artists who create realistic representations of the everyday which are at the same time numinous, fantastical or deeply symbolic. Some of the exhibit’s 12 mid-century painters were represented in the original 1943 MOMA show. All had ties to Vermont as area faculty, summer visitors and full-time residents.
In the show’s introductory wall text, curator Jamie Franklin muses: “What was it about Vermont that drew these artists and served as an inspiration for their visions? This exhibition, while exploring themes of mortality and metamorphosis, isolation and human connection, covert activism, and the power of fantastical world-building for those othered by mainstream society, seeks to answer that question while asking many more.”
Viewed through the lens of today’s racialized and anxiety-ridden society, paintings by George Tooker remain haunting and relevant. In “Mother and Child,” a mother clad in deep blue robes holds up her baby. Unlike a traditional Virgin Mary, with whom the Catholic Tooker was doubtless familiar, his version portrays a brown-skinned, black-haired woman who assumes a pose typical of a Renaissance painting.