- Franz Roh
Franz Roh (
February 21 ,1890 -December 30 ,1965 ), was a Germanhistorian ,photographer , andart critic .Roh was born in
Apolda (Thuringia ), Germany. He studied at universities inLeipzig ,Berlin , andBasel . In 1920, he received his Ph. D. inMunich for a work on Dutch paintings of the 17th century.In his 1925 book "Nach Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus: Probleme der neusten europäischen Malerei" ("After
expressionism : Magical Realism: Problems of the newest European painting") he coined the term "magic realism ".During the Nazi regime, he was isolated and briefly put in jail, a time he used to write the book "Der Verkannte Künstler: Geschichte und Theorie des kulturellen Mißverstehens" ("The unrecognized artist: history and theory of cultural misunderstanding"). After the war, in 1946, he married art historian
Juliane Bartsch .Roh died in Munich.
Roh was an Art Historian, photographer, and critic. He absolutely hated photographs that were to be like a painting, charcoal, or drawings. Roh was briefly imprisoned for his book Foto-Auge (Photo-Eye).
Roh and
Magic Realism Roh is perhaps best remembered as the critic who coined the term
magic realism --a translation of his "Magischer Realismus"--which he first used in 1925 in "Magic Realism: Post-Expressionism," an essay about the visual arts. But, though the lineage is direct, his magic realism has a very different meaning from the one used to describe the work of writers such asGabriel Garcia Marquez andIsabel Allende that dominates our current understanding of the term. Roh, celebrating the post-expressionist return of the visual arts to figural representation, utilized thephenomenology ofEdmund Husserl andMartin Heidegger to emphasize that "the autonomy of the objective world around us was once more to be enjoyed; the wonder of matter that could crystallize into objects was to be seen anew." [(Zamora and Ferris 1995)] Roh was, then, emphasizing the "magic" of the normal world as it presents itself to us (i.e., how, when we really look at everyday objects, they can appear strange and fantastic) and not the world of magic (in which objects are literally transformed into something fantastic) that the literary school emphasizes. Roh himself, writing in the 1950s and perhaps already seeing the confusion his term had caused in this regard, emphasized that his use of the word magic was, "of course "not" in the religious-psychological sense of ethnology." [(Roh 1968)]Roh's magic realism, though not often written about in recent years, is nonetheless an important contribution to a phenomenological or existential theory of aesthetics. This link is emphasized by the fact that it was the Spanish phenomenologist
José Ortega y Gasset 's disciple Fernando Vela who translated Roh's essay into Spanish, thereby setting the stage for its appropriation by the literary movement. Magical Realism is about magical events that depict on mind, body and soul of rock.References
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title = Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community
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quote = Contains translation of Roh's original essay
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title = German Art in the 20th Century
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publisher = New York Graphic Society, Ltd.
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quote =External links
* [http://www.phmoen.no/english/english_index.html?/english/magic_realism/what_is.html&main What Really is Magic Realism?]
* [http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/margin/nonficEvans.html Magical realism and its meanings: a not so necessary confusion]
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