A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is a literary tale by Gabriel García Marquéz. The title sums it up. It's a tale about an winged old man that arrives in a town.

William Morris wrote about it in the Motley Vision, in the second part of his Magic Realism analysis.

Magic Realism

So, what the hell is Magic Realism?

Magic Realism is an artistic movement in which supernatural events occur in reality. The main characteristic is that the event itself is not seen as magic in this setting (the characters don't see it as magic), it's just "another event".

The term was coined by art critic Franz Roh to describe imagery of an altered reality, and it was also used by Arturo Uslar-Pietri to describe the literary works of Latin American writers, like Gabriel García Marquéz and José Saramago.

Much of the imagery described as Magic Realism is quite famous, like the works of Salvador Dalí, Rob Gonsalves and René Magritte. Tim Burton (movie director and designer) touches Magic Realism in some of his productions, being Big Fish the most proeminent example.

Why should it matter?

It should matter because Magic Realism usually helps us understand how someone sees (evaluates) something. Much of what we hear about turn into an exagerated stereotype, which leads us to (unfulfilling) expectations about something. Watching Big Fish is a great way to understand how something that we don't believe can be real, taking the "too much" out off it.

Kevin J. Maroney brought up an interesting answer by García Marquéz: that there's no magic in One Hundred Years of Solitude". Maroney also states that "Gabo uses magical imagery to help us rediscover the real world".

I've been editing and publishing a lens on Magic Realism on Squidoo.

Hidden Workings of our Minds

Do we really know what's going on while we're creating? Why do solutions come to us? How do they come? Jeremy Dean, from PsyBlog, talks about the unconsciousness of our creative processes. His blog post can be found here.

Also, I recommend exploring the PsyBlog. There are some very nice posts there.

Pink Floyd's The Wall (cinema)

The Wall (movie, 1982) is the full development of Pink Floyd's The Wall (album, 1979). The movie is a result of the thoughts of Roger Waters (PF bassist at the time), Alan Parker (director) and Gerald Scarfe (cartoonist) combined. It's 84 minutes long.

Why should it matter?
The Wall is about society imposing consecutive stings of pain on individuals. As a result of painful events, Pink - the main character - isolates himself behind a barrier, inside the Wall. Mixing isolation, frustration, alienation, cyclic aspect of life, corruption and redemption, The Wall is one of the most well-written modern artworks.

Bret Urick has written the most famous analysis for the The Wall movie in his site, The Wall Analysis. Many suggestions and additions have been made since he originally posted his analysis, completing what's probably the most comprehensive (and larger!) analysis for the movie.

Here it is the movie online on Imeem.

Non-exhaustive movements listing

Third and final list of art movements that will be eventually covered here.

- Dark Romanticism
- Magic Realism
- Modernism
- Surrealism and Neosurrealism
- Symbolism

Non-exhaustive ideas listing

Here it is the listing for some of the topics that will show up in this blog eventually:

* Butterfly Effect
* Chaos Theory
* Cyclic Aspect of Life
* Creative Processes
** Unconscious Processes
* Mental Disorders
* Spiritual Beliefs
* Stimulated Reality

Non-exhaustive artworks listing

I won't exactly cover every existing artwork, since every work of art is related to thoughts and/or feelings. But there are some works of art that co-relate a lot of different aspects of human beings and are artisticly astonishing. So here it is, a very first list of artworks:

Cinema:
A Beautiful Mind
Matrix
Stay
V for Vendetta
The Wall by Pink Floyd

Music:
Be - Pain of Salvation
The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd

Theater:
Arcadia - Tom Stoppard

This list will grow, as I write about the topics.

Welcome

Welcome to The Inner Breath, a blog about artworks concerning psychologic events, feelings and related subjects. This is a space to help us all to understand human beings, by trying to get the spotlights off artworks and turn them to real people. I hope you enjoy the posts.