Realism and Fantasy in Art, History, and Geography

Abstract

Realism may be necessary to survival, but unless people are also touched by fantasy, they risk imprisonment in their own narrow worlds. Too much fantasy, however, can lead to isolation, to a frivolous and—ultimately—insane existence. Art, history, and geography are three intellectual-imaginative projects, all of which are imbued with varying degrees of realism and fantasy. Art, predictably, is most favorably inclined toward the uninhibited imagination: we see fantasy in the paintings of young children and playfulness in much of the works of contemporary artists. Nevertheless, in the West, art has also favored realism—that is, optical fidelity—throughout the early modern period. Treatments of the past come second in their hospitality to flights of the imagination: a consciousness of the past may give rise in one people to realistic narratives (history), but in another people, it can generate fantastic myths and legends without risking their physical survival or even their cultural efflorescence. Geography, in contrast to representational art and accurate history, is necessary to survival. Geography is universally realistic. Yet it is also rich in fantasy. Realism and fantasy are constituent elements of the human world. Geography, for all its realism, would be a sterile subject without the occasional tug of fantasy and a useless subject without, in some sense, a prognostication of “utopia'’in it. The nature of geography can be illuminated in a variety of ways. One way is to compare it with the aspirations and achievements of art and history.

Key Words:

• realism
• fantasy
• art
• history
• geography
• myth
• imagination