More Fighting

Ah, but I have good news for ye.

Knowing where you land philosophically in the skirmish between Romanticism and Contemporary Art can help you determine the kind of work you want to make. If you're asking yourself, "What should I paint? Should I paint a boat?" then this might be good information for you.

Think of Art as a kind of box. The center of the box is circled "Traditional Values." This would include the most assiduous practitioners of Romantic era painting and its ideological themes (think: Wm. Adolphe Bougereau). The outer edges of the box contain the fringiest and wackiest elements of contemporary art (Schneeman's interior scroll performance?). These folks on the margins even raise eyebrows among the mainstream Contemporary set.  You are probably somewhere in the middle ring, floating at times toward the traditional, other times out to the margins. That's to be expected especially if you're a student, but some floating should be something to strive for as a professional too.

What happens when you don't fit either of these categories??
What if you're not a contemporary artist per se, with all of the edginess appurtenant to that label, but you can't see immersing yourself in fantasy wholeheartedly? Perhaps the idea of the sentimentality of the genre really turns you off.

Well, there is a third place to be....

A Fight For Reality

Mention the Romantic era painter, Bougereau, to a contemporary artist and he will make a face as if he's been forced to sniff a pile of cat poop. Try to discuss the merits of Sol LeWitt's work to a traditional painter and he will likely flip you the bird. Ever wonder about this antagonism? It's a case of sibling rivalry.

For now, I'm going to conflate Modernism with Post-modernism and the Contemporary art era for simplicity's sake-- mainly because most people tend to lump them together even though they are formally separate art periods. The Modern era of painting, as we learn in every Art History 101 class, was mainly a response to the sweeping changes brought by Industrialization. Artists and writers (as well as many other folks) were really disturbed by what they perceived as the impersonalization of mechanized life.While artists had borne witness to political and social issues in the past, this particular upheaval was so encompassing it drove the artistic output of great numbers of creatives. Many artists began to question traditional academic standards, embrace new materials (paints in tubes and the camera), and experiment with new techniques. The mid-1800s marks two artistic movements: the Romantic era and the beginning of the Modern era. Let the cat fight begin.

The Romantic movement was not just a backlash to the rise of the industrial complex, but a rejection of the Enlightenment era's rationalization of nature and man. The modern world threatened to become something monstrous and people looked for ways to escape from it. Disgusted with the smog and soot of the cities, artists painted works that emphasized the beauty and wonder of nature, while adventurers immersed themselves in it physically. Writers and philosophers elevated emotion and intuition as "natural" sources of "authentic" information. Belief in the supernatural enjoyed a resurgence in the form of galvanism, and occultism was popular. (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a perfect example of the fear that the innovations of science would change our basic human nature.) Politicians embraced traditional values and found that folk tales reflected this ideology, and an interest in the practices and beliefs of the medieval period and European historical ancestry sparked elements of nationalism.  This escape into the fantasy world away from modern fears marks the beginning of the Fantastic/ Fantasy genre in literature and art.

During the same period, the Modern era of art and literature was beginning. Artists' initial response to the industrial world was to turn a level gaze toward modernity and criticize its injustices and ugliness. Embracing new materials, ideas, and techniques (ie. photography), Modernists experimented and dispensed with traditional ways of painting and seeing. These artists were discovering new ways to see the world and thus, redefining what was considered aesthetically "beautiful." The artist's eye turned critically onto the world and all of its social and economic ills seemed to be just the opposite of escape.

And now things get really disagreeable between proponents of traditional painting and proponents of contemporary art:

Traditionalist painters, collectors of illustration, and that segment of the population that honors the Romantic era and all of its traditional values propose that contemporary art has abused Reality with its skewed perspectives and flat spaces, abuses of anatomical drawing, liberties with color, its lack of archival materials, its insistence on Wagnerian scale, and just a general disregard for beauty. All of these abuses, the traditionalists say, run counter to making "real" art, the beauty of which is thought to enhance human happiness by giving form to untrammeled nature, the fit human body, and the principles of visual reality (light, shadow, color, perspective).

Contemporary Artists would say that it is the traditional painters who have lost touch with Reality and are hiding their heads in the sand. The practitioners and admirers of contemporary art value the perceptions and experiential aspects of Art over the "Object" itself.  A work of Art in the age of mechanical reproduction, where any singular, unique piece of work can be reproduced over a gazillion gazillion times loses its preciousness as it should.  "Beauty" is subjective; the "sentimental," overrated. The traditionalists' escape into fantasy and fiction, the contemporarists say, is an an affront to Reality, which can often be ugly, but can also be fascinating and educational. Science is welcome here and Art is democratized and demystified; anyone can do it.

So who's right?? Where does that leave you in all of this?
Next: More Fighting

"Where are the girls in children's literature?"

Contributor Adrian Allen at Ms. Magazine wrote about a comprehensive study made by the sociology journal of Gender and Society for Young Adult book titles between 1900 and 2000. They found that there was a distinct difference in gender representation within YA book titles: boy protagonists figured prominently 57% of the time, with girls as the lead in 31% of the titles (the rest being made up by animal protagonists with a split of male-to-female of 23: 7.5% ).  The study indicates too, that during the period of 1990-2000, there was more gender parity than ever before, so why the fuss?

Here is Adrian Allen's article on it:

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/05/25/where-are-the-girls-in-childrens-lit/comment-page-1/#comment-29580

Of course the big question among feminists is how do we improve on this trend ? The author describes it as a kind of "symbolic annihilation." Does this mean that there are fewer female children's book writers than male writers? Some will cite that, as it is in all the arts, male artists/writers are the norm; they are taken more seriously at pursuing the calling of such craft, and as such, proliferate and exist in higher numbers. There is the belief that until women artists and writers "get a wife" (nanny, cook, housemaid, etc.) they will be always relegated to an afterthought in the art world. To much of this I agree....

But here's another thought:  Just because the demographic of women to men is about 50/50, doesn't necessarily mean that the protagonists in kids' books should break down into similar numbers. If there are as many female writers as there are male writers, then perhaps many women writers actually prefer to write about boy heroes (JK Rowling's Harry Potter?), in which case, that would cause us to ask different questions such as: why would women writers choose to write instead about boys and not about girls? 

What does this say about our expectations about the stories that we think writers-- and, by extension, artists-- should create?


And does the genre of the story dictate the kinds of heroes that are acceptable / plausible? (ie. No one really buys the armored girl in the medieval story unless it's about Joan of Arc-- and she was killed.) Perhaps these gender numbers would have more parity within sci-fi stories for young people because it's a more plausible setting.

Another Place To Inhabit

With all of this recent anticipation of the Hobbits movie and the "brohood" of the Ring, I've become quite sick of Tolkien lately.  The Fantasy genre is positively swimming with creative folks embroidering ad nauseam the world of Middle Earth and its inhabitants. You'd think there were no other worlds to inhabit.

The Romantic era gave us medievalism, and with that all of the traditional values conferred upon the practice and valuation of all things from the western European Middle Ages: chivalry, nationalism (tribalism), traditional gender roles, religion /magic, dragons, folk tales, and general pagan shenanigans. And with the advent of the barbarian, a whole industry was born that centered around a particular masculinity that still beats its chest in culture today.

I really don't fit into this genre at all. It's a new feeling of late and so my portfolio doesn't yet reflect this realization. None of these Middle Earth stories have any real appeal to me as there are no characters for whom I feel any sympathy. Not that there aren't heroines (or people of color...?) in these traditional stories, I just can't get enthused about the roles they *do* play. Guinivere? Seriously, come on. How about Eowyn? You mean Joan of Arc?  The idea of exalting the methods of any woman's immolation via beautifully crafted paintings is a kind of aggrandizement of which I'm psychically not capable. Others will suggest that I invent a strong female character to insert into this world. Yeah, that's been done before and no one really buys it. This world exists for a very specific segment of the population and functions in a specific way.  This is a closed story.

The Neo-medieval Time Capsule manifests as any number of permutations but is basically a world of metal-plated men with swords battling valiantly against a cantankerous beast (or each other?) for a maiden. She might be a warrior, --some assistance here, please!-- but is otherwise unable to make it on her own.   Vladimir Propp would be pleased and amused that his theory of the formulaic fairy tale still holds true. Aren't we tired of these stories yet?

The romanticism, the nostalgia of this genre is what I haven't been able to navigate. I should have known I'd personally have trouble with this genre when, long ago, I was told that my science illustration needed to be softer, less real-- We don't want to scare the kiddies! What I didn't know then that I do now is that much of the publishing industry and its illustration complement in general  is colored by the rose-tinted spectacles of Romanticism. The casting back to the past, the valuation of  traditional painting, the seeming non-existence of heroic non-white, non-males in stories, all painfully point to the fact that I really don't belong here.

So where *do* I belong? I don't lean towards the sentimental or romantic. I'm a forward-thinking person who loves science and technology in particular. Growing up I read a lot of Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert... Well, you guessed it. And I should have a lot sooner.

Science fiction is a platform for the new and innovative; it embraces new technology, ideas, people, genders, identities, and orientations. Diverse biological forms can walk around and technology and democracy is the rule. Here is a place where the improbable is made possible by science and progressive ideas. If you are feeling icky about all of the implications of medievalism in fantasy, fear not: there are lots of other places to inhabit.

Two Questions

Comic book illustrator, Lynda Barry, created an awesome story about the epic struggle of the artist, summed in Two Questions: Is this Good? Does this Suck?

See full comic here on TheoPhantasmagoria:
 http://theophantasmagoria.blogspot.com/2010/08/two-questions-is-this-good-does-this.html

It's a difficult yet worthwhile journey. I hope this will help inspire you to keep drawing and searching.

No Criticisms, Please!

A reader of one of my recent posts expressed his ire at my suggestion that one could be a better illustrator (and or artist) by relying on one's observation, memory, and imagination.  I did expect some kind of angry reply from somebody, for which I wrote a preemptive paragraph of apology. Let me again say that while I acknowledge the fact that Art is intensely personal, I also understand that it can be a strong source of one's identity and that any suggestions about how to improve the execution of it can naturally, be seen as a threat. Heck, I know how it feels; I went through hell in grad school where I was torn stem to stern ideologically -- it was a kind of artist's boot camp-- so that I would begin to question every aspect of my art-making. And it turned out to be a good thing for me.

If you continue to read this blog and appreciate it, then you can expect to receive similar advice about questioning all aspects of Art and one's ideology that is so interconnected to it. Am I a great illustrator yet? Maybe not (yet). Am I better artist today than I was before school? Most definitely. I'm blogging about some of my observations and hope you will benefit-- or will at least engage me in a nice chat over your concerns. Yes, I can take criticism.

The aforementioned reader suggested that it was arrogant (my words) of me to offer any advice or critique about such an intensely personal pursuit as Art because no advice was sought. I don't think anyone forced him to read my article, but he felt compelled to read it because he cares so much about Art that he had to reply. We had a meaningful conversation about it and he expressed his feelings about how he makes art.  He said be basically presents what he intends and if the audience doesn't like it they can pound sand . He also said that he doesn't accept any criticism of his work as he considers himself to be finished growing as an artist. It's the art philosophy of  don't ask, "Is it good? but rather Do I like it?"  Of course, an artist is completely justified in taking this stance at any time.

I must assume that he is a professional artist and no longer requires anyone's input for his work to remain professional, edgy, and relevant to an audience. Or, maybe he's just a very independent and introspective thinker and happy making art without the feedback.  But doesn't one's work naturally change over a lifetime of searching?  Especially as your interests in life change, wouldn't your work naturally shift and, yikes, grow? School really pushed me into exploring facture and content with relevant contemporary issues so much more than I had been doing, and I learned how to make my practice sustainable.

For you, that "something new" might be to go to school, or take community classes, or maybe join a forum of artists and maybe even just read a few blogs written by some random illustrator. After all, if you're still reading this, you might be seeking a little advice.

Changing Tides

In my undergrad, I took feminist courses in which the class, Women in Religion, really stood out. It became a defining semester for me. During the course, our professor explained that in old Judaism, they used stories to delineate the law. Stories became the Talmud, the book of the covenant between a people and their god. This very specific set of stories, The Old Testament, became the foundation upon which the Christian Bible was made. What I didn't know is that modern feminist theologians have been looking at these stories for a while to find ways to pull apart the stories and “re-read” them for a different interpretation. 

Sometimes these reinterpretations and reading in-between the lines of story lead to different conclusions in the stories. Huh? Of course, re-interpreting is what many translators have done for centuries, but why would anybody do this? Because if you change the interpretation of a story, then you can ultimately change the law that protects the story. Wow and duh. Laws protect, and enshrine in a way, the stories of a group of people; the laws that govern a people are based on stories. Who tells these stories? Well, anybody who wants a hand in shaping culture.

What does it matter if the law changes? Who cares? Well, millions of women in 1920  cared when they got the right to vote. Millions of blacks cared when slavery and segregation was abolished. And when marriage laws change, gays and lesbians can live their lives without being criminalized or treated differently.

The persistence of one story over another is the essence of cultural struggle. We can witness it today in the political arena between the conservatives' stories about the plight of the business class vs. the progressives' stories about the plight of the poor. Stories are packages of information that disseminate the ideology of the teller. 

Le Petite Chaperone Rouge, or Little Red Riding Hood, once a pagan folktale to help girls to psychically navigate female sexuality, menstruation, and rape, was “moralized” by Charles Perrault, to reflect conservative French court values of marriage.* This version has persistence because of the Christian church’s hold on western culture and the subsequent wide dissemination of said story in the technology of publication. Parents today may be frustrated if feel that they have no say in the ideology of a culture that bombards their kids incessantly with flavored stories.

However,  you actually DO have a say in culture, and as an artist you are in a unique position to do so. You have an interesting weapon to change the predominant ideas and stories out there in culture. Every science fiction illustrator has contributed to the imaginations of countless science professionals, geeks, dreamers, anyone who thinks that going to the stars would be the coolest thing ever. Every funny political YouTube video-maker out there has the power to influence an audience (I'm looking at you, Nicepeter!).  Every creator of a graphic novel, whether building worlds or tearing them down, is offering the viewer some other alternative to the present state of things. Inch by inch, we move culture forward. Inexorably. Surely.

  

This is how bigotry and small-mindedness is changed in America. One story, one image at a time.

* Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. Psychology Press, 1991.

They're Invading

Direct observation of a group of folks exhibiting work at a fantasy and science fiction conference that I love and have been attending over the last few years tells me that there is something exciting and interesting going on in the fantasy illustration world. 

Someone on another F+SF illustration blog posed the question as to why there didn't seem to be an equal number of women artists in the F+SF genre as there were men. Immediately some smartypants posted that "gals just weren't as good at drawing that stuff" as the guys were (I can point to Julie Bell and Terryl Whitlach and adamantly disagree); others mused about whether the "gals" just weren't as interested, but studies show that numbers, while still disproportionate, are steadily rising in the gaming community and could influence a rise in numbers of female artists.  Still, the current ratio of women artists to male artists isn't so high: it appears that fewer than 1:10 females to males working professionally in the genre if you count up the names in specialized publications and directories on the genre.  

There was the typical gender and color disparity during this last show, where out of 50 exhibitors, there were only 3 female heavy-hitters and not one brown face. (This was not the fault of the show organizers. Whoever submits work to the show jury is considered as an exhibitor.) However, I was particularly struck by the fact that in the sub-show-- the show of up-and-comers--  that  almost HALF of the exhibitors were women. 
And while I have seen the excellent work of a few professional artists of color in this genre (Thomas Blackshear and Eric Wilkerson notably), the numbers are quite low for that general demographic.  

I'd like to think that a few boundaries are slowly being dismantled to allow for more F+SF artists of color and women : 

Because Art requires long unbroken stretches of time to really delve into such a difficult practice, it is a Herculean task for a person with kids, a daily manual labor job, or pulled in seventy different directions, to develop the excruciating, necessary skill sets for becoming a professional illustrator /artist. However, one can do it with dedication and a lot of patience for how much time it'll take. But you know the old joke: the young newbie asks the old illustrator how to succeed in the biz, he is told to "get a wife".  Actually, it's not really a joke... the "wife" is the laundress, the cook, the nanny, the housekeeper, etc., a domestic arrangement that most (male) artists have benefited obliviously from for many generations. However, things are merrily changing at a rapid clip; it is much more common today for couples to share domestic duties, and or be childless. 

How about the generational thing? It's only a matter of time before the artist ratio equilibrates and becomes more representative of the up-and-coming group, mainly because there exist more artists who enjoy gaming as a pastime vs. those who don't. Young people attracted to F+SF are generally gamers with boys  outnumbering the girls in gaming activities only 3:2. (But that doesn't explain the fact that there aren't more young men of color working in the genre.)

And perhaps the genre and industry itself is changing. What if the the industry, which tended to favor certain kinds of work is now admitting other kinds of styles and genres? By "conversation," I mean not only the content that is addressed  and subject matter that is used, but the way in which it is executed.  The look and speed of digital work has had much influence on this shift. Romantic Era (traditional) values have driven the industry for a long time and will probably continue to do so within some very narrow sectors of the industry (mainly for collectors of "fine art"). Heroic epic narrative and oil paint and canvas are as per usual placed at the top of the hierarchy, but there are some really great artists working in watercolor on paper and in digital media.  In that sector of the Industry, it's all about the idea, baby. 

Additionally, self-publishing has allowed more artists in general to get their work out there and not have to be dependent on any sector of the publishing industry where considerations of time, style, or content may keep them from participating.

For more on women in the arts, see Linda Nochlin's Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? 

Audience

One of the more frustrating things to figure out as an illustrator/ artist is trying to identify your audience. I mean, after all, you want sell your work / be hired by someone.  Identifying an audience is a kind of critical distance; it's the ability to see your work from another's perspective.

Ok, so many of you will say, "Well, I just want to make the work that I like. To heck with my audience." This works alright for well-known commercially successful fine artists who have the luxury of experimenting midstream, or for art students because they are expected to experiment with their work. But like most professional fine artists will tell you, upscale gallery representation usually comes when an artist's work is finally consistent in style and content. We have often heard the word, "branding," discussed in relation to this.

In the illustration world, clients generally seek to hire an illustrator for a certain style and content year to year; abruptly changing the look and feel of your work can have deleterious effects. Of course, an illustrator will often be able to work in many different markets depending on the age-appropriateness of the art, and will often have a portfolio with ranging styles and content. Such a portfolio should be separated as much as possible because those disparate categories attract different audiences. For example, you wouldn't send a dark and edgy sci-fi cover illustration to a gardening magazine. This separation allows you to seek out the appropriate clients for the different kinds of images you're making.

And now you're saying, "That's easy; there's the market-- it pretty much dictates the styles and content out there for us to place our work."  And so it does. But are you making work to fit the market or are you making your work (with a certain genre in mind) and allowing the market to make a place for you? The former is not the best situation to be in. It leads to a lot of copying of other's styles and an adoption of preconceived themes and ideas that are not your own. Making work to simply fit in with other work out there is not the most unique kind of work. You want clients to want you because your work offers them something that no one else's does.

On the flip side: what if your work is so unusual and different that you're having a hard time getting illustration work from traditional publishing clients? If you're not considering having gallery representation of your work, maybe you should. However, for illustration, this is a good place to be as it probably offers the most opportunities.  Your work is more in a position to be able to shift and change, for one. Other possibilities include self-publishing your work as a small volume or writing a story around the art (see Katie Sekelsky's blog). Sales will tell you what and who is your audience. If something sells, ask yourself what "thing" did it have; if something doesn't sell ask yourself what did it lack?

You will, as an illustrator, have (hopefully) a long career. But to remain interested and happy with your artistic journey means to have a sustainable practice. To do this, one *must* experiment with new ideas, new materials and ways of working with them. By identifying the correct markets and audiences,  you will be able to better place your work and create the images that you want.

"Oh, it looks just like the photograph!"

I grexed about putting this this post up because I know it'll ruffle a few feathers. Let me preface this by saying that is not my intention to hurt anyone's feelings; rather it is my hope that these ideas and questions will spark civil dialogue and cause the reader to think a little differently than before. People can be touchy about art-- as with any deeply held ideology-- and maybe even more so because it can be so personal an endeavor. If you get anything from my posts in this blog, it should be how seriously I consider the field of Art and its potentially powerful social and political impact. 

*****

Edward Hopper once said (and I paraphrase) that if you could explain a thing in words there was no sense in painting it.  Art speaks to us in its own way that is beyond language. Its meaning is unbounded by the constraints of language, making its opening as wide as the semiotics of human culture. Recently, I posted a comment on one of my favorite art blogs saying that I would take this sentiment a bit farther and say that if one could photograph it, there was also no sense in painting it. I should like the opportunity to clarify this thought.

In an age of mechanical reproduction*, is there art in mimesis? If one's aim is to reproduce what one sees *exactly* as the camera sees it, the question should be why? Why try to re-create reality exactly as the camera sees it? The camera can do such a better job at it and can do it much faster. Its job is to record. There are those folks who take a photograph of a scene/object and then they slavishly copy the photograph onto their canvas or paper. Why this second-hand observation? If everything in the photo is perfect, then why not just let the photograph be the art? Photography, after all, is a time-honored art form all to itself, with all of the elements of art, composition, lighting, selection, cropping, etc., figured out and set up before the shutter clicks.  For dyed-in-the-wool painters, wouldn't it be faster to cut out the photo of the model and collage it onto the canvas and then paint on/ around it? Digital artists of course, have found this an expedient way to work with photo-realistic results in Photoshop. And in an age where time is money, I would think that this cut-and-paste product would be a preferred method.

If you're not now considering a shift to the medium of photography, and paint and graphite are still your preferred media, then I might suggest an entirely different thing.  It might even seem radical.

Artists all the way up to the advent of photography drew exclusively from live models. They had to, as there was no other way to capture reality except to record it by hand. These drawings then became their "reference", used very much in the way that we today use photos as reference. Back then, figure studies were reference prior to creating finished work. Many successful artists today often work from live models to learn to paint and draw the figure and then use photographs for details only to augment their drawing studies to make finished studio pieces. British figurative painter, Jenny Saville, uses photographs to finish a painting, but starts with live models for her compositions and value studies. Saville is careful to "paint out" the effects of the photo; it other words, she doesn't make it look like the photo.** And subsequently, the figures look like they are from Saville's "world".  NC Wyeth's people look unmistakably like Wyeth folks; he too used his imagination and memory for his work. Charles Dana Gibson's "Gibson Girl" is a type endemic to his work. We can point to Julie Heffernan's paintings and see the similarities among her figures, just as we can see Goya's distended people are morphologically related. Other recent artists like Frank Frazetta used live models for studies and practice, but relied on his memory of the figure to create his works, giving the figures and faces his trademark look. Mark Zug's people and creatures are definitely from a particular Zug-universe. 

What is happening here? Without leaning heavily on a photo, the artist has to filter visual information through his/her conscious and subconscious brain and begins to rely on memory and his or her own artistic proclivities. The act of creating art becomes one of presentation rather than representation. The artist, when freed from  exclusively using photo reference as a crutch, is then able to capture nuances, a feel, a look, a fleeting moment. There are fortunate accidents that happen when the brain is creating and not merely copying. That image of a specific girl there, in the photo, replaces any of the uniqueness of one's idea of "girl-ness" and replaces it with a static and too specific a representation. It becomes that specific girl, that model in the photo, and not one's own idea. Better to draw the girl first and *then* find reference to bolster one's ideas about posture, clothing, or an expression.

Here I must emphasize, especially to the illustration student, that it is important to learn the "rules" of reality--of physics, really: perspective, color, and light-- firsthand. Photographs are secondhand sight when copied directly by an artist. Observation is best with live set ups, still lifes, live models, plein air landscape painting, etc. It is time well spent. Learn the rules first before you begin to break them. This applies to the realistic painter as well as the abstractionist painter; both require dedication to firsthand observation in order to develop one's own special filter for creating art.

The artist's universe-- the way he or she sees the world-- becomes apparent to us when the artist's sensibilities and experiences are allowed free rein. Precisely because of cameras and computers, Art in the age of mechanical reproduction can no longer be about how closely one can copy something. Art is a sharing of how the artist sees the world, and how one presents what one sees is a selective act. It then becomes more closely associated to a social / political act. It is personal, indeed, because it is a baring of one's philosophical lens. 

* Walter Benjamin (1968). Hannah Arendt. ed. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Illuminations. London: Fontana. pp. 214–218

**Jenny Saville.  Gagosian Gallery, Rizzoli, 2005.

...Upending Paradigms: Part 3

What is this thing, Art? It is a particular way any given human being (or community) sees the world. It is their filter for Being. It is a summation of their worldview, their ideology. Art is often used to create group cohesion, or it can be used to challenge social views. Like any kind of human convention, art can be used to maintain the status quo or it can be used to subvert social norms:

Witness the huge recent ideological shift in Brazil. Traditionally Catholic country, it has recently shrugged off papal dictates for contraception and now its women are having fewer (or no) children (see "Brazil's Girl Power"). They are experiencing an economic and educational boom like never before. How did this happen? Economists and demographers have pointed to several factors, not the least of which is the female population's recent interest in televised "soap operas". The stories feature independent Brazilian women with small families, making their way in business or other successful economic ventures, replete with modern sexual relationships-- much to the chagrin of Catholic authorities.   

The anti-war songs of the 60s peaceniks like Neil Young , Bob Dylan, were powerful; protesters were fortified and buoyed by the music scene and successfully agitated to end the war by Nixon's presidency. A  similar event in the music genre occurred after 9/11. There were lots of catchy militaristic songs for killing the bad guy, songs for /about soldiers-- particularly within the country-western genre. People wanted to be fired up about their ideology and felt justified waging a war of retribution against the non-western, non-Christian. When the Germans attacked and sunk the Lusitania in WWI, or the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, artists created war propaganda posters and enlistment rose. Women were encouraged to "enlist" in helpful ways by seeking jobs in munitions factories and planting "victory" gardens. Rosie the Riveter was thus born.  Art and stories are powerful forms for social upheaval and can be used for peaceful or warlike ends.

 And what was it about Star Trek that inspired a whole generation of kids to become scientists, computer geeks, and social activists in the hope of creating a shiny modern world that was free of xenophobia and other institutionalized forms of classism? Art and stories possess the ability to unify and inspire people to action.

Art is irrepressible. Anyone can do it; it is democratized by virtue of its accessibility to any and all who want to access it. Some will employ it more effectively than others, but it remains a powerful tool for communication.   

To many in our audiences, Art simply functions as a pretty thing with which to decorate the walls. To others, it is about aggrandizing a collector’s vanity, or it comprises the bulk of their soft-porn collection.  But Art is—can be—so much, much more than a narcissistic pursuit. Art is the signpost by which we understand what is happening in our culture. We, as artists, are conduits that channel and synthesize the meaning within our world. However, since we cannot single-handedly change culture-- it is too big, too wide, and has too much information-- we can contend ourselves with being a part of a flow of shared information. Which flow we choose to associate ourselves with is the question: Are we perpetuating the dominant cultural paradigm that abets power and privilege, or are we going against the flow? Are we naturalizing the oppression of others by making it look beautiful? Are we in financial bed with institutions that undercut our political and personal freedoms? Or do we understand that we need to be creating signs and images that point out the danger and offer alternative ways of seeing and Being?  Are we aware of how powerful this form of communication really is?

...Upending Paradigms: Part 2

In a real way, everything we do is political -- the Civil Rights activists and the feminists of the 60s and 70s said that "The personal is political."  And the political is personal. Every social structure in place affects us on a personal level whether we know it or not.  Lawyers codify the law, and speakers and organizers are the catalyst for laws, but much has to happen socially before these issues get into the arena of law.  Before it becomes a real "movement" there are the artists, musicians, poets, dreamers, who tell their stories. They tell the stories of those who cannot tell their stories. One of the most effective political moves Barack Obama did in his campaigning speeches in '08 was to tell real stories about real people who were struggling to make it.  By speaking about other people's experiences, he was able to capture the imagination of a population which then aligned itself toward his ideology of "Change." It is still an effective strategy.

Stories are ideological. Stories can create a kind of psychic break in the social system; a story can mete out punishment and justice where there is none in real life. Stories can generate sympathy for the oppressed. Stories can offer a glimpse into the real life of another person’s experience, they allow the audience to understand an alternate perspective, or suggest how life might be if things were different. We have tons of fantastic / science fiction stories in our modern era that give us alternate realities, glimpses into the future given a particular paradigm. These stories have their lineage in the imaginative stories of our pre-histories, the tales of Ulysses, the mythologies of the Ottomans, and the Upanishads from India. We tell stories not only to fix in our minds the importance of certain events that changed our world, but to create a place for our strange notions to exist. 

Sometimes our ideas have nowhere to exist except in our stories, and sometimes these ideas have no possible way to be verbalized, but must be given form in drawing/ painting/ sculpture. How would the makers of Stonehenge possibly explained their awe of the Equinox/ Solstice and the workings of the Earth's revolution around the sun within a solar system? The powerful sign of the circle of Stones placed just so admitted its worshipers into the wonder of it.  Its sign is as powerful to us today as it would have been then.

How much easier is it for Jenny Saville to demonstrate the impermeable boundary of human flesh, the breakable baggie that we call our bodies, that thing that leaks and breaks and tears, than to use oil paint as a metaphor for skin? In another way, painter Francis Bacon paints the body from the inside out, examines the connection of the psyche to the visceral. In his work, we feel the body's desire and the way it sits uncomfortably next to our intellect. We feel that connection and it rattles us. Shakespeare's poetic nuances make us unable to ignore the vast possibilities of meaning in language, and how connotations can shift with a single word or placement. It unsettles us and has changed the way we think about how we communicate.

To be continued...​

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Making Small Fissures in the Status Quo to Upending Paradigms: Part 1

An astute student in my illustration class recently sent me this question: "Because some art material/idea(s) is frowned upon, does that make it worthless? Why should anybody have to fear what society might think? As artists, shouldn't we be the front-runners to confront social norms and boundaries?"  As a student, you may have studied Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" DeKooning's "Women", Judd's minimalist sculptures, the "drip" paintings of Pollack, Matthew Barney's "Cremaster series",  all reviled for their "outlandishness", their "insensitivity" to materials, their violence to "proper" anatomy, their strangeness or lack of convention.  But all of them stood the test of time and are now considered important works. Why? Why do we say that Marquis de Sade was a vile man with violent notions of social behavior within his literature, but that his work was important? What does the "fine art" establishment today have against comic books, illustration, and graffiti art? Why do the mavens of "high" western literature frown upon  fantasy and science-fiction? Why do the critics of opera and classical music generally turn their noses up at urban hip-hop and rap?  What gives here? Do the conventional norms feel threatened? Obviously. 

Social norms tend to want to dictate what is acceptable. First of all, we should ask: what and who are these agents of social norms? They are our religious institutions, family structures, and governmental agencies; they are also our educational institutions, corporate structures, and our media sources. You might be able to think of some others. They are all the things which envelop and bind us to what we deem is acceptable and proper to a relationship with others. These social norms are a kind of contract for living harmoniously within a larger social group. And of course, these social norms differ between groups--witness the difference in what is considered polite in your own family and that of another's; the expectations for decorum may differ quite a bit. Those works of art that come along to rock the boat with unconventional forms and content may initially take a beating but they can stand the test of time if they speak the underlying truth about our conventions.

The agents of social norms have quite a bit at stake maintaining the status quo. After all, the agencies themselves (churches, governmental bodies, corporations, etc.) place actual people in positions of great power to head up these organizations. Think and compare how much moral and social power the Catholic pope has when he talks about birth control, and think of how much clout somebody like Steve Jobs has when talking about charter schools and dismantling public education...   Promoters of certain forms of music, literature, art, all have their own status quo to maintain, and they tend to rigorously guard these hierarchies for their own existence and access to power. Are any of these less culpable? Do they use methods any less ideological? There is always a carrot and a stick: sometimes it's heaven in an afterlife or economic boom in this life, we pay attention to these ideologies when their view of the world is in alignment to ours in some way. 

But what if they aren't? What if we don't agree? What if a worldview is completely antithetical to ours? What if the ideas of another culture, another generation, another religion, another political system is so damaging to our way of life that we are marginalized?   This is a depressing situation to find oneself, particularly if that paradigm is one in which we currently live, one that dictates our station in life, our economic status, our social worth, class, or our actual ability to life and thrive? What do we do? Think of the activist in Palestine, or the student in Tiananmen Square, or the folks at Stonewall. Do we riot, throw rocks, stand in the way, set up tents in a park near Wall Street? Yes, and perhaps Gandhi's methods work just as well for provoking social change. 

But what else can we do?

To be continued...

The Giantess

Whatever your philosophical or ethical reasons are to love or hate the Venus De Cupertino i-dock, you've got to admit that it's quite charming aesthetically. Designer Scott Eaton really captured the soft, curvaceous lines of the figure and the warmth of the material of his design: 

I imagined the Mac design department fretting, "Uh, why don't you slim her down a bit-- you know, maybe more like Kate Moss proportions." I then got a visual of a her with all elbows and knees... it just didn't inspire a cuddle up. The thing that is quite grand about this Venus *is* her proportions. If we imagine that her head is normal adult human-sized, and if she were to stand up, she would be a giantess. Eaton has given her heroic proportions. 

I think there ought to be another prototype-- a figure of a similarly-massed man would be nice-- and maybe in brown. 

As a F+SF artist, I'm constantly reminded of the dearth of unusually- or massively proportioned females in the fantasy genre. Certainly there are no ugly ones.Sure, there are the male orcs and trolls, and such "uglies", since it's considered charming or appropriate (?) for some males to be ugly, especially if they're the baddies. But you don't often, if ever, see the females-- it's as if they don't exist. (They must be at another photo shoot.) However, if we're talking about the subjectively beautiful races-- Elves, Sealies, Humans, Wizards, etc., there are often females portrayed (scantily clad, at best) and they are beautiful by Media standards: slim, well-proportioned, delicately muscular, yet elegant. 

For the other species? Not so much.  Where are their females?  Where are the massive wrists and ankles that portray incredible strength and endurance? Where are the females with massive shoulders and hips that bear the warrior's children? Where are the wrinkles, bumps, and cuts from a lifetime of wear? And is it such a stretch to imagine that there might be fat female elves? If these impossible species exist for the realm of Fantasy, then can't we get our imaginations to work just a little harder?

Merchandising culture is a devastating experience for people with bodies that aren't a perfect Size *2*. It actively excludes those bodies from the media and effectively makes them disappear. Because, if all you ever see are the Size 2s, then you can conclude that the Size 22s don't exist except in the imagination-- or by accident.  The f+sf and gaming companies could do much to help correct this very myopic view of what real women look like by challenging their consumer demographic of young men and women with images that celebrate body differences and surprise us with real gender permutations. If traditional male and female stereotypes of behavior, beauty, and gender are insidiously reinforced at every turn, how are we to encourage positive body images and fresh perspectives in our young people?

The f+sf and gaming and or publishing company that realizes that they need to have characters that are more representative of their demographic's sizes, shapes, and genders will begin to garner that "other" demographic and will see their profits rise.

("The Giantess"-- Kristin Kest. 12" x 12", graphite on vellum. 2010.)

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Let all that lurks in the mud hatch out...

Several things conspired to cause this entry, not the least of which is my fascination with the *function* of fantasy and art:

1) I had been reading Rosemary Jackson's book, Fantasy, The Literature of Subversion (Routledge, London, 1981)

2) I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about an art student of his whose work was, to say the least, non-academic; you could say it was downright scary.

3) Recently on G+ I had the great fortune to be in conversation with a thoughtful fellow from Antwerp who posed the following question: "Is there an aesthetic and moral limit to what may be phantasized about?"

Immediately, my mind leapt to 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade, who wrote many of his more famous works while in prison or asylums for about 30 years of his life. Sade takes the reader on a very catalogued and detailed journey to the depths of the human fantastic concerning sex, social taboo, and depravity, all the way to a complete break with the social contract. He does this in order to examine the fine line between what titillates us and what horrifies us. A very interesting read, but not for the faint of heart. Sade may not have been a nice man, but his work still has social value.

The college student caused a lot of concern for my teacher friend when the student handed in a little book of fiction whose eponymous antagonist rivaled the exploits of a good serial killer novel, with a dose of necrophilia for good measure.  Needless to say, this was of serious concern for the school's "risk assessment" authorities who questioned his motives and intentions. Short of expelling him, the authorities confronted him well enough that he felt inspired to transfer to another school.

But I couldn't help but wonder about the limits to our infringement on artistic and self-expression. In the news recently, an artist was questioned by the police for his paintings of burning banks. This artist was able to formulate a cogent thesis about his idea of the of the financial system being in peril and his work was simply a metaphor. Perhaps if the art student was able to intelligently formulate some ideas about exploring the boundaries of the social construct, he might have escaped such scrutiny. But alas, he was just a sullen mook with a foul attitude.

Then I began to think of all the horror genre artwork in the fantasy and sci-fi conventions and websites I'd seen and thought: what is so different about them and this kid? Sade? Or the latest horror author/ filmmaker? One famous artist had a seasonal "little shop of horrors" in his hometown where he'd hung hand-sculpted latex human thoraxes with bloody entrails from enormous rusty iron hooks for gleeful Halloween patrons. And when I see paintings and digital images of hacked up/ decapitated/ mutilated/genetically modified female bodies or zombies of same I wonder, what is the function of this?

Rosemary Jackson's Fantasy, the Literature of Subversion explains that the function of the fantastic is to express "desire". The fantastic not only manifests or makes apparent any form of desire, but can conversely, work to expel it if it threatens cultural order. In this way, the fantastic serves to point out the basis upon which cultural order rests. Fantasy literature and art (beginning with the likes of Hieronymus Bosch) often shows that which is silenced and unseen in culture. It is a manifestation of what lurks in the mud of the social subconscious. It's a social "safety valve." 

However, I think that our deeper psychological problem with the creepy art student or Sade is that there is no hero at the end of a very sad and horrifying story.  It doesn't even try to be campy. It is why the horror and fascination with Jack the Ripper is eternal. We (Americans, at least) prefer our fantasy with some kind of closure. We like our stories to have happy endings where the bad guy gets his due and the dragon eats the knight's sword. Perhaps it is this part of the social contract-- the justice part-- that is the main reason we even *have* a fantastic genre. The creepy art student had no clue that the Fantastic is a very powerful tool; used incorrectly or clumsily can result in various kinds of social expulsion or censure. That's what society is supposed to do; it monitors the edges of the social body and negotiates and fixes the leaks and cuts with moral outrage or laws.

Pagan oral stories warning of the edge of the forest reminded listeners that to wander alone from the safety of the group was to pit ones self against the untamed forces of the wild, of un-civilization and that *It* would strive to kill whomever was stupid enough to stray. Perhaps in these modern times, with slasher video games and violent movies, we require a bit more gore to warn us. But hey, art dude, it's supposed to be *fantasy*, not a manifesto.

Camille Paglia said it: there should be no censure on the limits of our imagination for it serves a direct purpose as a social safety valve. In the act of fantasizing, we will always be reminded of the social contract and its limits and reasons for existing, the rights and humanity of others, but by questioning those boundaries, it enables us to widen the quality and wonder of that which we call humanity.

On Resisting

Occasionally, an illustrator finds herself with a commission that ends up being creatively less than desirable. This usually entails the “dumbing-down” of the content either by over-zealous protectors of the public welfare (eg. those who think that somehow a less-realistic artistic approach to science material will be more “friendly” to their markets). Let us not confuse this with genuine art direction where good design and concept are real objectives. The first brush with an art director might leave your ego a tad bruised, but a false ego should be checked at the door when it comes to a collaborative career like illustration. However, you will find that art direction takes into consideration much more than concept and design when you are dealing with certain markets. As we know, illustration is about storytelling-- and storytelling is rooted very deeply in ideology.

Does one resist or cave to the standards and expectations of an industry that makes its dollar on public opinion? That depends on a great many factors. You will find during your career as an illustrator that you will dig your heels in at times and at other times concede your position. You will consider questions like: How badly do I want/ need the job? Is conceding my position or view worth the money they are paying me? What issue is it that I am I dealing with and how critical is this to my future with this company? Will this damage my integrity or self-esteem?  Can I live with my decision after I've made it? Will my decision make it easier or difficult to do the work? There are a hundred more.

There are of course other ways of dealing with industry standards other than just giving in or telling the publisher to take a hike. Some artists will make the work they are expected and treat it just like it’s “a job,” giving it no more thought than if they punched a time card in a factory. Most of us, though, consider illustration to be more like a calling, so this is usually a less-than-satisfactory strategy.  Some artists will do the job, making whatever obligatory changes for the publication, but when the artwork is returned to them, they change the image back to the way they first envisioned it. This strategy is one which takes into consideration the idea that an illustration can have a legacy beyond its publication. There is yet another alternative to consider. One can be subversive. One can embed meaning into an image that undermines its original intent. One can create images that defy public opinion or even help to overturn it. Of course there are professional risks to this as well.

An illustrator can be more than just someone who makes pretty images for hire. An illustrator can use her considerable skills in building an image to challenge the accepted meanings and ideas within a culture.  An industry such as publishing which makes its living by reinforcing the cultural and ideological status quo will obviously try to hire illustrators who augment its view. But the illustrators who subvert or invert the stories of the dominant paradigm help to move culture forward an inch at a time by making visible the alternatives. This is a certainly a political position.