Irrealism
Irrealism is a critical term used across philosophy, literature, and art for works that are not merely unreal but estranged from our accepted sense of reality - so that the impossible quietly undermines the everyday. In literature it was applied in the 1970s to the post-realist 'new fiction' of Donald Barthelme and John Barth, and later to the dream-logic fictions of Kafka, Borges, and Calvino. In painting, critics have read Giorgio de Chirico's shadowed, empty piazzas and Remedios Varo's private allegorical machines as irrealist, and the Australian art press has detected a 'New Irrealism' of ghostly, low-key canvases. Unlike fantasy or magic realism, irrealism offers no coherent secondary world: it stages a zone of irreality - 'that which is beyond the real' - that offsets and threatens the real, and as the artist Tristan Tondino insisted, it has no single fixed style.
Defining characteristics
- Everyday detail rendered precisely so a single impossible element reads as matter-of-fact
- Estrangement from accepted reality rather than a self-consistent fantasy world
- Dream-logic narratives whose means absurdly rebel against their intended ends
- Uncanny stillness, long shadows, and empty twilight spaces (de Chirico's piazzas)
- Private allegorical systems built from Christian, classical, or scientific symbols rearranged
- Open endings and felt meanings that resist clear resolution or interpretation
Key figures
- Franz Kafka (1883-1924) — Fiction such as The Metamorphosis is the touchstone of irrealist estrangement
- Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) — Metaphysical painter of shadowed, uncanny city squares cited as irrealist
- Remedios Varo (1908-1963) — Painter of personal allegories, such as The Juggler, read as irreal
- Donald Barthelme (1931-1989) — Post-realist 'new fiction' writer first labeled irrealist in the 1970s
Example works
- The Metamorphosis — Franz Kafka (1915)
- Cosmicomics — Italo Calvino (1965)
- Ficciones — Jorge Luis Borges (1944)
Sources
- Irrealism (the arts) - Wikipedia encyclopedia