Dictionary of Fantastic Art [antikvár]

Preface The fantastic is attracting an ever-increasing public; fantastic literature, for example, is experiencing a boom, and the numerous new editions of the classics of the genre have engendered debate, in Germany, France, England, and the United States, over the difficult problem of the function and nature of the fantastic. Fantastic film is also enjoying great popularity, enhanced by television retrospectives. Some of the most successful films of recent years, such as The Exorcist and Don't Look Now, are eloquent testimony to this popularity. Hence it comes as no surprise to see similar interest growing within the realm of the fine arts. Important theoreticians like Mario Praz, Claude Roy, and Roger Caillois acknowledged years ago that the fantastic has been a constant in the history of Western art. It is likewise no new discovery that certain eras and movements in art history have been particularly receptive to the fantastic; note the clear examples of mannerism and romanticism, and in twentieth-century art, surrealism particularly. Since the concern here is with periods that could be called mannerist in the sense that Ernst Robert Curtius and his pupil Gustav René Hocke use that term, the notion is confirmed that in tumultuous times, people look upon the fantastic as a particularly appropriate medium of self-representation. In such historical moments existing secure conceptions of reality begin to falter. The basic attitude of the fantastic is subversive; it questions the prevailing perception of reality without offering a new reassuring model of reality. Even in its mildest form, the fantastic is always disturbing; it is never affirmative, and therefore has never been popular in societies that avoid questioning their basic principles. This analysis harmonizes with the fact that the fantastic in art always appears against the backdrop of the realisdc, and only there can fantasy be effective. Without a firmly established conception of reality, even if the concept has grown unsteady, 7