Willink, like many Magic Realists, was greatly influenced by the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, who used architectural and urban settings accompanied by symbols and strange figures to create uncanny and surreal scenes. This disjunction in time creates a mysterious subject, heightened by the fact that none of the men interact with one another, although inexplicably, the man in the brown suit looks out toward the viewer. While the men's tuxedos and suits date them to the Weimar Era in which Willink was painting, the smoking volcano in the background suggests the far past just before the fateful eruption. In this eerie scene, four men stand amidst the ruins of Pompeii, the Italian city entirely destroyed in a matter of moments in 79 CE by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Oil on canvas - State Museum for Art and Cultural History, Oldenburg, Germany German critic Franz Roh initially described Magic Realist paintings as "enigmas of quietude in the midst of general becoming." Unlike his Neue Sachlichkeit colleague and friend Otto Dix, Radziwill opted not for biting cultural satire but for rendering the strangeness of a rapidly changing world that encroached on traditional ways of life. Additionally, the lighting of the scene and the strange rocks that punctuate the beach seem to have fallen from another world, marking the work exemplary of Franz Radziwill's Magic Realism. Its purpose, its passengers, its destination all remain mysterious. Here, in this quiet, rather normal looking, beach scene, an airplane, which seems to lack a propeller and whose body resembles the hull of a ship, flies into the scene, perhaps about to land near the idyllic house. He often depicted this ambivalence in his paintings. He was both enamored by and reticent about the encroaching technology in this small town. While most Magic Realists avoided stinging satire and social critique of the most strident Neue Sachlichkeit artists, many explored the state of society and culture in a more nuanced way, often making commentaries about the feelings of alienation and isolation felt in the modern era.Īfter spending a couple of years in Berlin, in 1923 Radziwill settled in the town of Dangast, a coastal city on a bay off of the North Sea. By focusing on such devices, instead of fantastical or made-up elements, the artists create spaces that are more universally understood and that do not rely on specialized knowledge.
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