The fantastic realism is a movement which knew its hour of glory in the Années 1960, relayed by the review Planet , and whose founding document was the book of Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels entitled the Morning of the Magicians , subtitle Introduction to realism fantastic , and published in October 1959.
A current of thought
It is in the foreword of the Matin of the Magicians that the name of this movement appears which is presented in the form of a current of thought and research to scientific vocation, and which has as an aim the study of fields generally excluded by official science: paranormaux phenomena, Alchimie, disappeared civilizations, UFO, etc Its followers defended the idea that the human brain had quasi-unlimited capacities, and that humanity had established contacts with Extra-terrestres, in particular via old disappeared civilizations.At the origin of this current, the chemical engineer and writer equipped with a field crop Jacques Bergier were posed of intellectual heir to Charles Hoy Fort, which had undertaken to count and explain various unexplained phenomena, and it prefaced the French edition of the Livre of damnés the . Bergier succeeds in gaining with his cause the journalist Louis Pauwels (future director of the Figaro Magazine ), whom it met in 1954 and which had just published a book devoted to the thinker esoteric Georges Gurdjieff.
Contrary to the classic authors who directed themselves towards a fantastic approach of the account, like Balzac, Maupassant, Goethe or E.T.A. Hoffmann, the theorists of “fantastic realism” attempted to show the influence of surreal on reality and not to illustrate it by the means of fictions. In their work founder, Pauwels and Bergier underlined besides that the “fantastic” term was to be included/understood with another definition: “One generally defines the fantastic one as a violation of the natural laws, like the appearance of the impossible one. For us, it is not that of the whole. The fantastic one is a manifestation of the natural laws, an effect of the contact with reality when this one is perceived directly and not filtered by the veil of the intellectual sleep, the practices, the prejudices, conformisms. ”
The ideas of fantastic realism are inspired by many authors quoted in the Morning of the Magicians : thinkers esoteric or mystical and essay writers (Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, Charles Strong Hoy, Pierre Teilhard of Chardin), personalities scientific (the anthropologist Loren Eiseley, the biologist J.B.S. Haldane), writers of science fiction (John Buchan, Lovecraft, Arthur C. Clarke), storytellers (Jorge Shine Borges), etc
The review Planet
See also: Planet (re-examined)
The unexpected and fast success of the Matin of the Magicians encouraged its authors to create in March 1961 a review entirely devoted to fantastic realism: the review Planet , which will exceed the 100 000 specimens per number.
The publication of this review will create the environment favorable to the emergence of a cultural movement gathering of other authors and the artists like Clayette, Monasterio, Triffez and Claude Verlinde. Other painters are asserted by holding of fantastic realism, like Carel Willink or Escher.
The review Planet in addition puts ahead several artists that it compares to the movement fantastic realism, as Soulages and Pierre-Yves Trémois as well as photographers like Edouard Boubat or Lucien Clergue. In May 1964, the painter Mathieu publishes in the review an article entitled “I join you”. In 1973, the editions CHOSE publish a book of art devoted to the painters of fantastic realism.
To prolong the effect of movement and to rejoin the public with the ideas of fantastic realism, Bergier and Pauwels imagined the “Conferences Planet ”, which proceeded through France, in various countries of Europe, in Quebec and Mexico and as far as Argentina, with the participation of J.L. Borges. Cultural “Dinner-debates Planet”, stays and series of spectacles were also launched under the aegis of the review.
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