"Forbidden Creature Virgin Whore"

In the summer of 2013, I was asked by a dance company based in Philadelphia, PA, to be creatively involved with their production of "Forbidden Creature Virgin Whore." Miller Rothlein is owned and operated by wife-husband team, Amanda Miller and Tobin Rothlein. Amanda is the creative director, choreographer, and general expert in putting together the works; Tobin is a filmographer and photographer. I'd met them both while Tobin and I were grad students at MICA in Baltimore, and was quite excited and pleased to be invited to participate.

So, you might think, what does a visual artist, illustrator, like me have to offer a dance production? Well, I asked myself the same question and expressed deep misgivings to Amanda when we first talked. I knew absolutely nothing about dance, I told her, and felt inadequate to the task. Amanda reassured me that while I knew nothing about the medium of dance, I was certainly qualified to consult with them on the storytelling as I'd done extensive research into the genre of fairy tale and mythology, and that my involvement in this would be perfect.

My fall schedule was so hectic that I only got to attend one of the rehearsals-- which blew me away. Amanda video-recorded subsequent rehearsals and sent them to me via shared online documents, and we chatted via phone about the meanings of the gestures and how each character would look and behave. Once we had a handle on the characters and their roles, the story grew organically. All that was left for me to do was to write an essay that expounded on the meaning of the piece and explained its story origins.

Here is the essay in its entirety. If you are moved to provide feedback, please do so.

Miller Rothlein’s Forbidden Creature Virgin Whore

4 Nov 2013

Paul Struck as the Forbidden Creature. Image by Tobin Rothlein.

Stories and myth have great potential and power, yet the stuff of fantasy is often dismissed as a banal and trivial pastime by academics and fine artists who insist that any serious pursuit of it is best left to children. However, fantasy is a place where the unnameable exists. When lives lack justice, the realm of the fantastic provides a place to experience psychic redress; it is a place where we can create imaginative ways to live in a hard world. Fantasy is the social safety valve when dangerous proclivities beckon. Children know this instinctively. Whole worlds of particular logic reside inside the mind that can distinguish truth from social construction. We build elaborate imaginative scaffolds to support our conclusions about the world, while ignoring hard evidence that would defy those perceptions. Our ability to bolt down stylized interpretations of reality means that we suppress our appreciation of ambiguity and individualized expression. The indelible nature of stories is a testament to this.

Any story, therefore, directly reflects the moral and philosophical mind of the writer, storyteller, or artist. It mirrors a reality, a truth that exists if only in imagined form, a truth nonetheless shaped by actual perception. Metaphors simplify the message, and the meaning can switch and swim through the centuries, ideologically aligned to the next storyteller’s social or political agenda. History is filled with this kind of cultural conquest; there is no better way to create cultural change than to write over a story’s bones with a different meaning.

Existing stories define a society, produce its identity, and reinforce group behaviors. Gender expression is one of those areas of human behavior that is rigorously policed, and in all traditions, tales of fiction are expressly used in a direct attempt to control sexual behavior. Archetypes, metaphors, and formulaic morphologies have always streamlined this effort, and sweeping generalizations function to predictably move the story forward. We wonder how we continue to be exposed to these particular efforts today if we ask: what does it mean that our male characters still must adhere to strict codes of masculine behavior? What does it mean that our female characters’ sexual natures still continue to fall within predictable and recognizable patterns of behavior? That we are living on the inside of the juggernaut hampers our ability to perceive the nuances between real gender expression and those which are shaped by social construction.  

In Forbidden Creature Virgin Whore, agency emerges as a primary force that drives each of the characters’ lives within the story arc. Each character, possessing varying degrees of agency and scope of influence, exerts the force of her/ his unique assets upon the other characters. The quality of the agency and how creatively each Archetypes can navigate within her/his proscribed roles determines the ability of our characters to move and function within the story arc. Limitations placed on human behavior produce interesting survival strategies as well as generate destructive behaviors and artificial competition between individuals. Once we set our Archetypes into motion with the initial interaction between “actives” determined by traditional stories, we can then experiment with the outcome. What does it mean for an Archetype to “play a role?” Does it need to step outside of that role in order to claim power? Can the roles be redefined, shifted? What is necessary to create the kind of outcome whereby the Archetypes can be broken and real expressions of gender can be made viable?

In our first Archetype of the duality-laden Virgin/Whore, the issue of threshold, crossing over from sexual ignorance to one of knowledge is a primary characteristic. The Virgin/Whore seems initially to have the least agency of the three female archetypes. Disadvantaged by youth and inexperience, her sexual potential is rigorously policed for fear that female pleasure should discover itself and become loosed for its own sake. This name of half of the Archetype could be any of the Disney franchise’s princesses; she is also Juliet or the Bride. Yet, the other side of the Archetype has plenty of hidden agency, revealed as a cunning survival strategy of manipulation. She is Hannah Montana-cum-Miley Cyrus and her female potency is a veiled threat to order, yet it is a crucial part of society’s usual functioning. Her moral strength lies in her ability to maneuver around the restrictions placed in her way. While she remains subject to the whims of masculine desire, she is also poised to find economic security and independence.

The Domestic Goddess is another dual Archetype-- again, at once glorified and bound; her responsibilities afford her some rights by virtue of a sanctioned status. She is the holy bitch who does all the chores; she is the eternal font of physical and emotional sustenance, the giver and indefatigable doer. Call her Supermom and she is Martha Stewart feeling justifiably superior to all other mere mortals in the domestic sphere. Put her in “binders full of women” and watch how corporate competition exacts a heavy price.  Call her the Beloved Servant and we see Scott Thorsen’s face surgically altered to become Liberace’s. The Domestic Goddess is the concubine and employee; her face reflects the power exerted upon her, yet exalted by virtue of the motherhood contract: the physical creation of children and community defines her as a fully-fledged member of society, and she is protected by its moral jurisdiction. The Madonna’s strength is in her endurance, love, and fierce devotion to her children and family, and her ability to suffer rejection and loss.

The Archetype who fiercely lives outside the socially accepted norm and for whom the standard life script will not do, is The Forbidden Creature. Armed with claws and awareness, she is dangerous because she lives her life deliberately on the margin of society. This is the loose cannon that bashes holes in the sides of the social construction and subverts the normal plot. Beware of the Vampire or the Wicked Witch, this creature will kill and consume; Joan of Arc will stubbornly choose immolation over having to wear a dress. It may turn herself or her prey into something unexpected. It does the unthinkable, the unacceptable, and for that offence, the traditional story often writes her into oblivion, yet the character functions as a sharp counterpoint to the story’s “norms”; she is the uncomfortable anomaly that exists to defy our perceptions. The Forbidden Creature’s goal is to live on its own terms, and its strategy is to know itself and its boundaries. It is the unimpregnable, unignorable, unfuckable She.

Finally, our male Archetype, Everyman, is our Prince Charming. The world is his oyster. He confidently, aggressively claims the space around him, unencumbered by any restraints on his libido. Everyman’s goal is conquest and his interactions with each female Archetype are driven by his insatiable sexual curiosity. Don Juan’s effect, while sowing his oats, is to sow the illusion of separateness and competition between the Archetypes as they all vie for attentions and favors. However, the success of Romeo’s encounter with each female Archetype is shaped by the agency each is granted; the more agency she possesses, the less power he has over her. Everyman’s tremendous agency is a two-edged sword: the gift that enables him to be the ultimate Bad Boy is also the very thing that suppresses his ability to truly emotionally connect. However, it is also the key that potentially allows him to subvert his paradigm and become the Hero.

The danger and delight is that we see these stories and Archetypes not merely as mental playthings to lightly entertain us but as real examples upon which to model our human behavior. The story’s power is in its synthesis of reality; it discards problematic details and exceptions for the sake of its internal logic. Human perception intuitively looks for coherence in much of the world even when it does not exist, which also means that people see the truth better when it is fictionalized. We can make use of this pattern-seeking tendency and bend the logic of a story to our own stated goals-- which is to break the stereotypes and create a plurality of expressions. We subvert the story by focusing on the personal strengths of each Archetype and amplify them so that the characters can grow and thrive. Each discovers what it needs to expand beyond the limits of his/ her roles, finding nuances in a gendered performance. The Virgin/Whore discovers her agency through female pleasure, the Domestic Goddess casts off that which binds her and sees what her creative powers can do, the Forbidden Creature becomes a uniter and teacher, secure in her Otherness, and Everyman begins to freely express his emotions. The liberation of each Archetype comes from shared agency and the willingness to connect and to honor ambiguities and differences.

*********

References

Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy, The Literature of Subversion. Routledge, London, 1981.

Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. University of Texas Press; 2nd edition, 1968.

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

Daniel Kahneman, “The Marvels and Flaws of Intuitive Thinking,” Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction, ed. John Brockman. Harper Perennial, 2013, pp 386.

Potboilers

Your best work will not be produced via commission. Your best work will come from your own vision, undiluted by anyone else's input, and achieved from long uninterrupted hours at your easel. That said, we illustrators thrive on the crazy adrenaline rush of assignments that come at us in a flurry and fly out of our studios just as quickly, leaving us wild-eyed and tired with some money in our pockets. The commissioned project can give us a sense of accomplishment and pride but cannot in the long run sustain us or boost us to the next level of individual skill or personal idea formulation. Assuming that you desire a fulfilling art career in which you get to lavish your attention and manual skills on ideas and projects that you love, then you may want to rethink what projects you take on.

A career made of fast, short projects or uninspiring commissioned work will *never* allow an artist to really hone any rigorous painting or drawing skills other than perhaps how to cut corners for speed. Duh, right? Fast short projects can occasionally be a good exercise for making the illustrator to have to think quickly, sometimes producing clever results. However, this too can eventually go awry since those initially clever solutions can become gimmicky or produce cookie-cutter responses. We see this happening in a lot of the F+SF industry; when artists are asked to design, rough out, and execute a project in color within a few days, many of the solutions become formulaic. Much of the children's science and educational industry is geared towards this kind of production as well. Schedules are often so tight that artists adopt "styles" from whatever is trending in any given season. Fine artists, too, occasionally take on uninspiring commissions for quick income and do so to their own detriment when they allow the patron to dictate the outcome.

Young illustrators looking for quick entry into the industry, the promise of "getting one's feet wet", "exposure", or the feeling of "paying your dues" are always tempted by potboilers. Female illustrators are even more susceptible to falling into the potboiler trap and never getting out. The social reality of women's lives is that mothers' and caretakers' time doesn't often include long uninterrupted hours for big projects; small assignments can be completed in very short bursts and can tolerate incessant interruptions. In an industry like F+SF where rigorous painting and drawing skills are more valued and monetized, the potboiler trap may be greatly implicated as to why there are fewer women illustrators in this genre.

Almost all artists see potboilers as a pathway to "bigger and better things." What is this "bigger and better" thing? And can't we just skip right to it?

Potboilers don't pay all that well so the bar for quality is set a bit lower; the company isn't taking any real economic risks with these works. Depending on how fast you work, you may be able to crank out a dozen or more of these in a month's time in order to pay the bills. Month after month and year after year you may have your bills paid, but will you really satisfied with a career built on throwaway commissions? If you're not spending an equal amount of time on your own personal projects, then your *career* is eroding your artistic desire and you will eventually lose your artistic integrity.

I will say it again: short, fast, throwaway projects will *never* bump you up to the level of the "big players." Why? Because quick and dirty commissioned work is not the same thing as honing your skills or developing a sustained lifetime practice in art. Ask yourself: why did you get into this in the first place?

Better commissions pay more, have lengthier turnaround time, and offer the artist more say in the conceptual process. By paying the artist more, the company is taking more risk and investing in the artists' vision.These are rare commissions and seasoned illustrators are more likely to secure them. If you aren't able to get these commissions right now because you need to build up your "artistic vision capital" within the industry, then the bigger and better thing is having your own "fine art", personal work to do. It is better to spend your time working on your own ideas. stories, and developing a rigorous practice than to waste your time and effort on crappy commission work.

It is the luxury of time spent on a project that an artist needs most of all. Time to conceptualize an idea and plan out a series of images that best carry that idea. Time to grex and mull over the drawings and make revisions if necessary. Time to plan the color and value structure. Time to luxuriate in the medium. It is quality studio time only that will produce excellence in the artist.

You Don't Know How I Feel

If you are a female, having a career within the art world means that you will be confronted with several issues with which your male counterparts won't necessarily have to contend. To women working in the narrower field of illustration and the F+SF genre in particular, some of these issues are more glaring and others less obtrusive, but all still meriting our attention. Since inception in 1985, an anonymous band of feminist artists called The Guerilla Girls, have been bringing these issues to the fore with its sharp and funny insight into the corporate art institutions' sexist, racist, and corrupt practices and policies, The group has illuminated for over a generation what remains unfair and patently ridiculous about corporate arts culture.

Several of the issues that the group has identified are: unequal representation in museums and national shows, the almost complete lack of representation for artists of color, the fetishization / glamorization of violence against women, unequal pay in the marketplace (women artists earn only *1/3* of what male artists do), having to choose between a career and parenthood, being seen only as another's protege, reinforced hetero-normative values, having your work labeled as "feminine", and so on.

Ingres creepy extra-vertebrated creature gets a reboot.

Are any of these issues personally familiar to you?  You will have, as a female artist, person of color, or different sexual orientation, undoubtedly bumped up against some aspects of this culture at some point in your career. Many other illustrators who've worked in the publishing industry for any length of time will recognize many parallels in their own working sphere.

When we examine more closely the specific experiences of women illustrators working in the F+SF field, we find that many of these issues are simultaneously nullified and amplified.

Of the many artist friends with whom I've conversed about these issues admit to mostly having difficulties with spousal support of their career. Artists who are also parents are expected to automatically shoulder the domestic and child care duties in addition to busy careers, particularly if the spouse with whom s/he shares a household  is a higher wage earner.  Some aspiring young artists feel that they are inevitably faced with a choice of career vs motherhood, and decide to forego the latter entirely. Though partnered, these artists are still expected to attend to the daily household chores. Laundry, cleaning, shopping, cooking, etc., take a substantial chunk of time, time that could be spent on one's career.

And let's be honest for a moment: for a man, choosing a career in art it is thought to be his "calling." He is considered a professional artist. His wife becomes the high priestess in service to his mission, both of them working hard to ensure that he "makes it big" someday. But the reverse commitment is rarely true. A woman's choice to have an art career is not often heralded with equal enthusiasm and may be dismissed as only a dabbler, a dilettante. Oh dearie me, an art career? Well, you need to get married so someone can support your hobby. Yes, this double-standard really exists.

Persistent issues of fewer work hours, lack of domestic support, and general lack of emotional support of women's artistic endeavors are tied insidiously into the issue of lower pay. But add to this the industry's insult by way of "ghettoization' of women's creative work, and you have a perfect system that makes it incredibly more difficult for women to successfully establish themselves as professional creatives. That the publishing industry labels women's work as "feminine" and perceives it as a liability is a well-known fact. It is why many female authors choose male pen names and often write about male heroes and protagonists instead of female ones.

Some may say that the more disturbing aspect of swimming in these testosterone-filled waters, where the industry's profits come mostly from the discretionary money of white males 14-40,  is feeling that one must cave in to creating the work that the industry wants. Because gratuitous violence, aggrandizement of war, and gratuitous female nudity (masturbation melons?) is the bulk of we see in the comic book industry /F+SF, many of us conform to this industry standard by offering up the same kind of work, a general regurgitation of the sanctioned stories within the accepted formulas that has been in force since the genre was born.

Well, what's wrong with it? You might decide that it's perfectly okay to reinforce the status quo and perpetuate the sexualization of violence, misrepresentation (or entire lack of representation) of women and other people on the margins, the romanticization of specific gender roles, etc. You can do this by creating work that is exactly like what has been published for several generations in the western market.

Or you can do something more fun. You can subvert it. Use the form and turn it on its head.

Several contemporary realist painters offer some insight into how this might be done. In an earlier post, I mentioned the work of contemporary fantastic painter, Odd Nerdrum. I offer his work as an example of a classical, Renaissance-style painter who is not a romanticist. John Currin's another one. His beautifully rendered work, while amusing, is deeply disturbing in its candor. And Lisa Yuskavage's seductively grotesque work "one-ups masculinity" by amplifying the female body in all the right places, adding that touch of a soft romantic glow in the colors and value structure, yet the combination of her style and the content leaves the viewer feeling more than a little queasy about one's suddenly realized assumptions.

These painters have taken the traditional form of romanticist realist painting and subject matter (formal portraits, the fantastic-heroic, and sexuality) and have used it to subvert that which it was originally used to aggrandize. Their combinations of fantasy and realism help to drive home their message of the myth and how it depersonalizes. They insist that we take an uncomfortably close look at the ways in which we have fetishized ourselves.

Now that more women than ever are working as illustrators and artists, we have a big opportunity here to change the industry from the inside out. We are on the cusp of a big paradigm shift. Ours is one of the few industries in which its practitioners have actual first-person control over the ways in which we can represent ourselves and tell our stories. It's a huge advantage and we should make the best of it while we can and set some higher, better standards. Are you on board?

Is Fantasy Escapism?

I was at a women's symposium in Penn State in 2011, and after my talk, one of the lecture attendees asserted that F+SF is just plain "escapism." "Why," she asked, should we as feminists consider this [F+SF genre] as serious? What does it do for us except provide young people (read: males) with a means for fantasizing about sex? It is just a means for escaping reality!" Thus, to her, F+SF was a bad thing to be avoided and dismissed.

Recently, a young artist friend of mine writing to me expressed the opposite sentiment and illuminated for us the great utility of the genre: fantasy literature and art provided her a means of mental escape during a violent and ugly childhood. However, her current definition of the genre's use still extends mainly to cover what we might consider the typical-beautiful -- the light-filled, innocent, colorful images that populate children's books and fairy tales. That her use of it didn't go so far to include the genre's typical-horror (such as the work of popular HR Giger, designer of the Aliens trilogy) means that F+SF, like any art, is experienced through the subjectivity of one's own life.

These views are not unanticipated. To the first woman's complaint, I point in the direction of my friend's statement: the genre does indeed provide a place for escape from "the real world." As Jack Zipes has written in his book, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, the fantasy genre has long been the place whereby the storyteller (writer) and listeners (readers) generate a certain psychic outcome for a reality that seems to lack justice. In early western Europe's era of feudal rule, where law and justice was a random occurrence, life was hard and bleak. Obtaining a just outcome for a wrongdoing was often not possible, so redress was sought by other means. Fairy tales and fantasy satisfied the need to feel that the world was right somehow and that life was worth living.

The main thing that I pointed out to the woman at the conference was that the genre provides an imagined space for safe existence. In addition to providing a child an emotional escape to a better family life that was full of love instead of pain, the F+SF genre was also home to the early underground LGBT movement: the mass market Pulp Fiction paperback genre during the 40s and 50s is yet another perfect example of the way in which this genre functions to allow that element which doesn't exist; for the unnamed, it is a place to be.

If we extend these rights to all seekers of the unimagined, then we must admit the less attractive underbelly of F+SF also lives there. All of this too, has a function, which I've discussed elsewhere on this blog.

The woman at the conference saw F+SF as just a haven for the unexamined privilege of a ruling class. While her assessment is absolutely right, the face of it is rapidly changing as the digital world democratizes the medium. This also means that there are more audience members, thus more eyes on monitoring the edges of the social contract and contributions made within all aspects of speculative fiction.

One last thought: imagining a better world for people doesn't mean you need to sugar-coat it. Children, in particular, deserve to know the truth of our world so that they can negotiate their way through it and out of harm's way. Safety of the escape doesn't mean that one turns one's back on the truth; it just means that one has to find ways to deal with it, let it out, find coping mechanisms for the ugliness. It means to find ways to not succumb to the darkness, but confront it, identify it, name it, and show it in all of its terrible aspects. This is how we can, as a social species, take evil's power away and reclaim it for the good.

WisCon

Billed as the biggest feminist F+SF writers' convention, WisCon is one of the most interesting --and perhaps one of the longest running (37 years!)-- conventions out there for the creative writer or artist.  If you have ever felt that your work just doesn't fit the standard model of F+SF genre, you need to look into this event.

In another article on this blog, I have written about the importance of making work that speaks to one's authentic experience as an artist and to not just make work to fit an industry. This is a more difficult road, of course, and one that is ultimately more rewarding. Making work to fit what one thinks the industry wants, just to make money and without any regard to one's own inner voice dilutes the message and we end up with a resented, hollow career. Instead, we can and should make the work that best represents us and our "voice", and allow the industry make room for it. Those interested in hiring us for the unique thing that we offer will find us. That said, those of us making work "on the margins" sometimes find a guard posted at the door: the mainstream publishing industry and its marketed demographic actively polices its aesthetic, indirectly silencing that which doesn't quite fit into the box.

So, conundrum. Where can the non-standard creative go to find community and like-minded people who support them spiritually? Where can we go to find the publishing industry heads who make things happen and can offer economic opportunities that are in alignment with our ethics and aesthetic values? Where can we find other creatives with whom to collaborate on serious imaginative projects? Look no further, WisCon is the place.

Capped at 1000 members, WisCon is a small conference. And $40 is a cheap attendance fee, but the con is run entirely by volunteers, all of whom *are* the members. The conference is a writer's conference, and as such, the 80-or-so discussion panels and seminars offered by academics and professionals in the genre over the course of four days are geared towards writers and other literary types, academics, and enthusiasts. The intense atmosphere and sparklingly erudite content delivered was most definitely worth the forty bucks.

Do I hear you mumbling under your breath and wringing your hands? What? The word feminist in the title? Pfft.  Fear not, for there are plenty of dudes in attendance; they have their offspring strapped onto them just like their female counterparts do. All this means is that the people who enjoy what WisCon has to offer understand that to be a feminist simply means to liberated from society's tired old misogynistic, racist stereotypes and egregiously harmful ideas. People there are happy to mingle with and appreciate all kinds of people-- young and old, with or without kids, brown, blue or green hair, tats, kilts, khakis, gays and lesbians, cisgender and transgender folks, steampunkers and superheroes. There are believers side by side with non-believers (the majority, actually) all gleefully discussing such things as the time-shift merits of the series, Fringe, or the consent issues Octavia Butler raises in her Xenogenesis Trilogy --and any other cultural offerings that address class, race, gender, identity, sexual orientation, age, environmental responsibility, and differing abilities.

Did I mention kids? Yes, people can bring their kids to the conference. Children have their own age-appropriate programming in separate suites with experienced facilitators so that member parents can attend the day programming. Other events include: an opening dessert party, a book dealers / publishers' ballroom, a bake sale, a clothing swap, an Art Show, a closing banquet, the Genderfloomp dance party, and much much more.

The beauty of the conference is that it is a place whereby feminist writers and academics who love the genre can foster and cultivate the next generation of writers (and artists). Those who love the genre purely from a reader's point of view can rub elbows with them and discuss the issues about which they care deeply. Through the seminars, creatives are encouraged and reminded to think of their privileged role as having the potential to influence culture, to create a whole new society of ethical and responsible people through stories and imagined places.The seminars suggest ways for creatives to marry their ethics to their aesthetics and to build a genre that fits them and is inclusive. Therefore, the overarching intent of the conference is not just to celebrate the beauty and strangeness -- and difference-- within the F+SF world, but to dream other, better possibilities into existence.

Intensity's Overflow

A good friend of mine asked me to comment on the following quote:

Imagination and artistic passion must stem or at least be easier to retrieve from our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind contains the runoff of emotions that are so passionate that although our brain produces them, they are inappropriate to express within normal social limitations. Perhaps the brains of true creative geniuses produce more emotions than most individuals or they merely suppress more emotions. However these so called geniuses definitely do have the gift of expressing these emotions. --"Creativity, the Subconscious, and Daydreaming" by Melissa Hoba 

I've often thought about why some people are driven to art. And I've thought about why art has permeated the culture like it has since the dawn of humankind. There's something about it that just can't be ignored or expunged. Artists will make art whether they make a living from it or not. Funny that the media can change (digital/ high tech) and the definition of art can change (ranging from traditional, modern, contemporary, to allographic), but the way in which it functions within the human psyche is still the same.

Yes, CREATIVITY: poetry, visual art, music, dance, are definitely a "spilling over" of the emotional experience-- it's the avenue for us to express that for which we have no words.  Our human experience is unique for each individual, yet, there's something similar in the way we function as humans that allows us to use art as a medium to reach any other person(s) as our audience. I think, for some, art may be sought and valued in the same way others might seek a religious or experience. Some would say that that experience (whatever that may be) is our connection to the sublime and allows us to contemplate our existence as something which has more value than just material consequence. Art imparts meaning, an inter-connection with others, and deepens our definition of what it means to live as a human.  It's quite a unique thing.

Additionally, I think every human being possesses the capability to create art and to be creative, so in the above quote, the word "genius" bothers me. Since art is the spilling over of similar emotions that we humans mainly seem to share, it is possible to for everyone to express themselves-- especially in this day and age where leisure time for such pursuits is more common. However, as it is with all things human, because some feel more intensely than others, some will be driven more than others to make art, so not all humans will make art. All can, however, think creatively, or be encouraged to do so, and it can be taught. 

Art also gives us a space to express taboo subjects. It's a perfect way to live vicariously through the characters which "speak" within a story.  This "make believe" place has been-- and remains-- the one place by which people can express that which oppresses them when they have no other psychic outlet. It's a safety release valve for society-- people can see themselves "doing" and "being" that which is currently impossible. It's a way to dream the future into being. It's a way to seek redress for injustice where no justice currently exists.  In other words, if your life experience is full of pain and anger based upon real social or personal injustice, your art is a way to create another virtual reality in which you can escape to live within a facsimile of normalcy. This other function of art that allows us to imagine other realities makes me wonder if the current rash of violence in our world could be channeled and defused if art as a serious subject was again available in all schools. Just a thought. (Of course, not all artists use their art to release negative emotions-- some use it to express joy and love, curiosity and fascination about the world, etc.)

As an educator, teaching students how to think creatively is my main pursuit. The strategies of drawing include far more than just the way paint and color functions, or how line and mark is applied; there's an entire philosophy of Being to take into consideration. We can encourage our students to think about their own unique stories and draw upon them for inspiration. We can encourage them to think beyond the literal image-- to pull from their subconscious-- that mark, that gesture, that symbol, that color, which imparts meaning to the image beyond merely recording. The sharing of our experiences and emotions through Art is the glue that holds society together-- it's a tenuous prospect....

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

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.

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? 

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.)

​

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.