Fine art and the fantasy genre

[Rusti]

I find that my sister, who is not an artist herself, tends to gravitate toward abstract pieces, but pieces full of pattern and color, where she’s allowed to make her own image. There’s a set of paintings in the St Louis Art Museum that are basically a field of black with squiggles, slashes and stripes of lighter color that she decided looked like a rainy window at night.

She likes Monet (to a certain extent, the Art History Minor in me does too, having had to copy a painting of his, that mess is harder than it appears) but we both kind of stopped to look at each other with absolute confusion over an installation in the Art Museum that was nothing more than five identical gray boxes hung on the wall. Not even titled.

Used to be (back, way back, in the day) that to be a master painter you had to apprentice for years. I wonder if the issue now is that academia has had a little too much say in what’s considered ‘high’ art. Perhaps we’re still suffering from Dadaism, or artists have become too obsessed with trying to ‘say something’ instead of making something.

You guys will at least be amused to know that while I didn’t get to cover it in class, in my Modern Art History book, towards the more recent years in the back of it, they began covering anime and manga. 😉

[Akeyla]

(warning, this reply was written without coffee, read at own risk…lol)

I’ve always been struggling being a fantasy artist and going to a school that focuses on contemporary artwork. (those being very painful experiences, that in the end made me understand what is going on and where I can place my art)

From what I have learned it has various reasons:

1. Most Fantasy art is in the classical section of swords-elves-mainstream-dragons, in short, those book covers you find everywhere on books of lesser quality (I’m sorry, fact. Not all fiction is good)

2. Fantasy depicts something that has no reality to compare to, basically you “do your own version of a dragon”, leaving out the interpretation of a viewer. (this IMO is the biggest crux. When I do fantasy work for myself now I put that question at place nr.1)

3. Fantasy involves a lot of color, thus children love it (do I need to say rainbow unicorn), which puts it in a category of “kids stuff” and also merchandise. At the same time its subject is narrowed down to be suitable for younger audience. And that judgement sticks to the subject.

4. When Fantasy is connected to adult audience it can get the feel of “escaping the real world” (which is actually something cool) but if the subject arises around here it quite soon the sentence falls “did you hear of the one who locked himself up to play the game forever?”.
I’m saying this, because if you talk to average folks, that is something I often hear.

5. Most important and also the most important lesson to me, most fantasy art out there (85%) is purely ornamental. There is no real deep critic, shake of the mind, something that clings to you (except “pretty, wow, nice scales!).I keep saying: If its poster suitable then its not art anymore.
Thus, this many years later I no longer call myself a fantasy artist, I have realized that most of my pieces are productions, ornaments, finished stories, pure portraits. Thus not the Art we have now, not what you will find at big exhibits.

6. Fantasy is a very very broad theme (try to say where fantasy starts and ends… right, it has no rules) and has been used for centuries. On one side its the artists that need to be aware of that and thus shaking the audience. “sit down and try harder” I tell myself.

Fantasy art yet can still be found out there, Skeeterdee’s version is a great sample (oh, must look him up!), but its not the illustrations as we all know them and grew up with them.
For example, Damien Hirst (http://static2.slamxhype.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/hirstaucttwo4.jpg (beware, decapitation, perhaps NSFW) made me think over my whole view on fantasy and how I depict it, mostly along the venue of what do I want to tell the observer.

Some words of encouragement: Fantasy is definitly moving into the big ART, if you ask me. But its slow and every move has its hard beginning of bashing and trampling. However, its not classical fantasy as how its usually depicted, “sit down and try harder” and “look twice”.

But, since this was a big bugging to me (from 2004-2009, some of you may recall) I will keep an eye to contemporary Fantasy Art (outside of covers and such, Maybe we can keep a small thread of sightings

[Pegasi1978]

I started thinking about this and it’s not just true of fantasy being considered “low brow” in art, but in literature as well.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten comments along the lines of “aren’t you a grown up? so why are you reading that [fantasy/sci fi]?” from my mother.

Yes, there is some bad fantasy and sci fi out there, but there’s just as much bad romance/western/general fiction out there. And there’s just as much good fantasy/sci fi literature as well.

[Adaneth]

pegasi1978 wrote:

I started thinking about this and it’s not just true of fantasy being considered “low brow” in art, but in literature as well.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten comments along the lines of “aren’t you a grown up? so why are you reading that [fantasy/sci fi]?” from my mother.

Yes, there is some bad fantasy and sci fi out there, but there’s just as much bad romance/western/general fiction out there. And there’s just as much good fantasy/sci fi literature as well.

Yes, my thought too, since fantasy is what I write. I’ve read a bit about how the ‘literati’ sneer at the fantasy and sci-fi genres, not to mention romance! Though at least authors like Le Guin have gotten some literary appreciation, but she’s the exception.

And since my art is primarily illustrations of my fantasy writing, it’s doubly ‘low-brow’ 😆 😆

Perhaps not surprisingly, the one art museum I really enjoyed visiting was the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming. I wished I lived close enough to visit more often.

[Jessie]

Some really great thoughts… Definitely some soul-searching.

Akeyla wrote:

2. Fantasy depicts something that has no reality to compare to, basically you “do your own version of a dragon”, leaving out the interpretation of a viewer. (this IMO is the biggest crux. When I do fantasy work for myself now I put that question at place nr.1)

5. Most important and also the most important lesson to me, most fantasy art out there (85%) is purely ornamental. There is no real deep critic, shake of the mind, something that clings to you (except “pretty, wow, nice scales!).I keep saying: If its poster suitable then its not art anymore.
Thus, this many years later I no longer call myself a fantasy artist, I have realized that most of my pieces are productions, ornaments, finished stories, pure portraits. Thus not the Art we have now, not what you will find at big exhibits.

I’ve been truly struggling with this. In school, there was such a focus on “WHAT is this piece telling you? what’s the point of view? how does it make you feel/think/respond, etc?” So when I draw a pretty picture of a cat with wings, I’m at a loss of it being something of true “substance”. Sure, lots of people think its cute and want me to draw one of their kitty but… all in all, its just a pretty picture. I am definitely challenged to create something that invokes a conversation with the viewer.

Akeyla wrote:

For example, Damien Hirst (http://static2.slamxhype.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/hirstaucttwo4.jpg (beware, decapitation, perhaps NSFW) made me think over my whole view on fantasy and how I depict it, mostly along the venue of what do I want to tell the observer.

Ahhh…. Damien Hirst. I saw his butterfly “paintings” in a gallery in Beverly Hills. Isn’t it awesome that his stuff sells for multi-millions when he doesn’t even do his own work? /sarcasm.

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