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Comment
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tlchang37
Registered User
(5/29/02 5:00:12 pm)
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Modern Visionary Artists
Charles,
Thought I'd move this over to it's own thread...
What a great topic/panel for next year's convention! With any luck, I'll be able to come see you present it. :-)
Did you ever get a chance to look at Deborah Koff-Chapin's work? (www.touchdrawing.com). I had the opportunity to take a workshop from her a few weeks ago, and in addition to having very cool work, she is a lovely, lovely person (and you should see her knock out a 15x20, two-handed, fully rendered face-portrait in about 60 seconds!) Her artwork is sometimes a little 'rougher' than trad produced pieces - but it is because she draws them in reverse, only using her fingers and hands (no tools). It's a very intuitive process - especially drawing with your dominant and non-dominant hand in tandem - and the objective is to bypass your pesky analytic left-brain and *express* more directly from your sub-conscious. I found it incredibly liberating and much more symbolic in nature than how I typically produce work. For me, I think it will be a terrific method in coming up with conceptual images that can be refined by this process or by the more traditional ones I usually paint in.
Anyhow - her work is still on my mind and my fingertips are still tingling from the experience. :-)
I'm glad Wiscon went so well for so many of you. Hope to be able to experience it first hand next go 'round.
Tara
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Terri
Registered User
(5/30/02 10:01:57 am)
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Re: Modern Visionary Artists
Can photographers be Visionary Artists? If so, Stu Jenks fits the
bill. We just posted a show of his work on the Endicott site: www.endicott-studio.com/gal/galjenks/galcirc.html.
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(5/30/02 1:03:02 pm)
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The subject at hand...
All,
We seem to have started a new thread without its subject being attached. I started this on the WisCon thread and here it is:
Terri and I already planning a panel/slide show for next year,"Modern Visionary Artists". We began discussing it's subject matter right here on this board: contemporary "fantasy" artists that have developed their set of visual symbols not from specific exsisting prose but from their own personal search for archetypal imagery that has meaning to their individual lives. For those of you who don't remember the discussion, it is in the archives of this board (Sulamith Wulfing and modern fairy tale art, Sept, 2001). I set up a mini-website so that members of this board could see some of these artists work that is linked from that archived discussion. We plan on expanding on those discussions as well as presenting a comprehensive slide show. If any of you have suggestions as to other artists that should be included please let me know.With an entire year to prepare we should be able to cover some exstensive ground on this.
Here is the link to the mini-art website:
lightfallsdesign.com/fairytale.html
Hope you enjoy the pieces and if you (or anyone else) are aware of other artists that should be in this discussion please don't hesitate to speak up.
Best,
Charles
PS> Terri, I love Stu Jenks work, and had already thought of including his art. There's no reason why photography shouldn't be included? Or for that matter any mode of expression as long as we can show a slide of it...
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Kerrie
Registered User
(5/30/02 1:27:17 pm)
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Archived posts...
Here's the link to the archived posts mentioned:
../../2001/sep2001/sulamith_pg1.html
Soft whispers and valley blossoms,
Kerrie
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erzebet
Registered User
(5/30/02 2:59:50 pm)
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Re: Modern Visionary Artists
I'm wondering how everyone here feels about the work of Kinuko Craft, the illustrator who did the covers for Patricia McKillip's last several novels. Here's a link in case anyone hasn't encountered her stuff.
www.kycraft.com/Pages/kycraftmain.html
Erz
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(5/30/02 3:16:16 pm)
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The art of Craft...
Erz,
I usually love her cover work, although the comely blond maiden bit is getting a litle old ( I know that I'm guilty of this also, but I'm working on it...), never the less she has done some stunning work. It was interesting to see her art for a series of Wagner operas that appeared in last years (?) Spectrum Annual and see her handle a composition other than jacket art.
However I'm probably a minority opion on this, but I really don't find her work on children's books to be consistant enough to be satisfying. I am always suduced by her covers into picking her books up to take a look but there always seems to be too many paintings in a given book that seem too quickly rushed out of her studio. When you take away that gorgeous painted surface there doesn't seem to be enough left in terms of composition and design. As a whole, I much prefer Gennady Spirrin's work as a book artist. But I could be wrong about Craft...
Also, I wouldn't classify her work as "visionary", at least in the definition that we have arrived at. VERY good illustration but not visionary.
Charles
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erzebet
Registered User
(5/30/02 6:01:49 pm)
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Re: The art of Craft...
Thanks Charles.
I find her detail to be amazing, but after a while her images tend to become repetitious and therefore bland, to me at least. I also don't see her as a visionary artist, her work lacks those elements that turns a piece into "more" than a bit of display. Hardly a professional way to describe it, I know, but there it is. Glad to know I'm not alone in this.
Thanks!
Erz
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Laura
Registered User
(5/30/02 10:40:26 pm)
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trying to understand
I've got pretty limited knowledge of the art world, so I'm trying to wrap my head around what is connoted generally by the "modern visionary" label. I have an artist I'm thinking of (Yoshitaka Amano), and I'm trying to decide if he "counts" or not. I've looked at the art and artists mentioned here, and I see what you all mean about KY Craft. Now, is it what one might call the personal touch that's lacking from her work that separates it from the other MVAs discussed? Or is it more that intangible sense of the mystic which is present in the other pieces? And on a faintly related side note, which adjective would you choose to describe Craft's work generally: baroque, rococo, or neither? (Also working on learning the difference in connotation between those 2 terms.)
Something tells me Amano is not an MVA -- I just can't quite put
my finger on why. For reference, his site is www.amanosworld.com
and he cites Gustav Klimt and Kay Nielsen as major influences.
Laura S.
Edited by: Laura at: 5/30/02 10:42:28 pm
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catja1
Registered User
(5/31/02 11:07:38 am)
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Re: visionary art
I recently came across an artist, Magda Francot, who defines her work as "illusionary realism." Her work seems a bit uneven, but there's some really interesting stuff there, in the Symbolist vein. Her website is at
www.magda-francot-art.com/newpage1.htm
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Gregor9
Registered User
(5/31/02 11:12:36 am)
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Re: visionary art
Charles,
Slightly unrelated, but as you mentioned the Wagner illos, what was the name of the graphic novel illustrator you mentioned at WisCon who has done the Ring Cycle as a huge graphic novel?
Greg
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Maatera
Registered User
(5/31/02 11:47:06 am)
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Visionary artists
So I see modern Visionary artists as a topic and already my heart is alrady beating a little faster. I read through this and the archived posts as well. There's so much I'd like to say...where to begin? Probably by saying that I really agree with what everyone said in the archives about intellectual art being more valued in our society than beauty and emotion. My husband and I went to a music/video performace over the weekend. It was called Underwater Houses and was all about whole villages in Spain that have been purposely flooded. (For irrigation I believe.) The idea of whole towns being underwater seemed to have so many possibilities. I was really looking forward to seeing what the artists did with that idea. Well, to make a long story short, it was a real disappointment. The music was akward, the video was second-rate and frankly boring. And this from two people who had been showing their work in museums in Europe. On our way home, we were discussing how the powers that be (art critics, museum curators, etc.) seem to be in love with this idea of good art only being that which is very plain and flat. The ideas around the art are more important than the art itself. Although there are contemporary artists whose work I like, few of them are likely to have their work shown in museums. It's such a shame as there are so many talented people out there who deserve some recognition. Sigh. What ever happened to depth, beauty, richness, symbolism? I want art with soul!
OK, I'm off my soapbox now. I'm not as familiar with all the illustrators you all have been naming (but I'm enjoying all the links) so I was trying to think of "regular" artists that have a visionary feel. (I actually have a wonderful little book at home called "American Visionary Artists" which is about 19th century visionary artists. I'll post the name of the author if anyone is interested.) A couple of artists that no one has mentioned that seem to me to be very visionary are Edvard Munch and Edward Hopper. Both have such lonely, beautiful, haunting paintings. I always have the feeling there is strange going on just outside the frame of the pictures. It makes me want to step inside the painting and take a look around.
Connie
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Terri
Registered User
(6/2/02 5:48:56 am)
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Re: Visionary artists
" What ever happened to depth, beauty, richness, symbolism? I want art with soul!"
Connie, I couldn't agree with you more. I love nonrepresentational art that has those qualities, particularly early abstract work that was a response, in its day, to the breaking down of social conditions in Eruope leading up to, and during, the world wars. But so much art today is nonrepresentational by rote, deliberatelty flat and limited since evidence of technical skill, let alone beauty, has become so suspect in the world of fine arts. What a strange "Emperor With No Clothes" world we live in.
Some of the people in my studio building in Tucson have been talking about the possibility of someday doing a show with the discredited (and thus rather radical!) subject of beauty. One of my favorite quotes comes from Shirley Hazzard's novel Transit of Venus: "Beauty is to our age as sex was to the Victorians." Today, we're obsessed with physical beauty as a culture, but the idea of beauty as a valuable part of a work of fine art or fine literature, particularly the former, is extremely suspect. Kate and I were talking about this and came up, tongue-in-cheek, with the name of yet another new movement (riffing off all the movements that seem to be the "new this" and "new that"): The New Beautitians. Of course that immediately brings to mind an anthology of works by writers and artists with excellent haircuts. <g>
Skillful, beautiful, soulful representational art has been out of vogue for so long now that I keep thinking it's due for a comeback -- a bunch of hotshot young art stars rebelling by actually insisting that knowing how to draw and paint well is important. But there's such a *lot* of money invested in the likes of whats-his-name (I'm blanking out on it this morning) who saws cows in half and the chica who makes installations out of the names of all the men she's slept with (I'm really blanking on names this morning, sorry!) that I don't know if the moribund contemporary art establishment is actually capable of such radical shifts. What a topsy-turvey world, when the cow-slicers are the Establishment.
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(6/2/02 12:32:50 pm)
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My take
Terri wrote: "What a topsy-turvey world, when the cow-slicers are the Establishment." Wow, next you'll want to paint like Rosetti or Burne Jones. And after that. . .
You know, the more I look at fine illustration, or mytho-painting, the more I realize the poverty of so much of the so-called fine art these days. I feel the same way about stories.
Jane
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Maatera
Registered User
(6/3/02 7:51:06 am)
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New Beauticians
The New Beauticians. (tee, hee) Now that's an art movement that I want to be a part of. Ok, so I have a funny, ironic and off-topic story here. A friend of mine gave me the name of a friend of hers who runs a small gallery. She thinks he might be interested in doing a show of my art. This guy and his sister own the space. The front space is the gallery which is run by the brother. In back, his sister has a beauty parlour. Now I'm envisioning a gallery opening/hair cutting night. We'll be the toast of the town!
Connie
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(6/3/02 10:25:07 am)
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A definition...
Any of you will find, if you type "visionary art" into your search engine a vast array of websites featuring a vast array of art and art styles. I suppose the most prevelant art in the "visionary" school is the European, slightly morbid, angst ridden, surrealist school. I would think that Giger would be the most hiigh profile proponent of this style. It's not a style of art that I'm very partial too. There are a few other misc. threads also. So I thought that we might need to define or rename what it is that we mean by "visionary" art. As much as it tickles my sense of the absurd I don't think that "The New Beauticians" will do...Any ideas.
Charles
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erzebet
Registered User
(6/3/02 10:47:12 am)
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Re: A definition...
I thought we already had one - interstitial arts. To my mind this term encompasses art with a visionary, surreal or fantastic flavor which extends beyond the boundaries of those definitions. Type "interstitial arts" into your search engine and you get us! But maybe you are looking for something more stationary than this, in which case I have no ideas.
However. Helen and Laura and I decided one night at WisCon that we needed to have a name for we modern fairy tale enthusiasts, sort of the second wave following in the footsteps of those we admire (or trying to, at least) and with Heide's kind permission, we are now the SurLaLuners, or SurLaLunelles, depending on our mood.
cheers,
Erz
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(6/3/02 11:25:25 am)
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New title
I'd like any movement title to include the idea of mythos. Or the word numinous. I am not sure that "interstitial" does that for me, because I use that word to mean a small, intervening space, ie a crevice. And that makes small and demeans what I recognize as art that has a kind of cosmic interface.
Of course I may be all wet here.
Jane
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erzebet
Registered User
(6/3/02 11:45:20 am)
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Re: New title
I see what you're saying, Jane. I like the word numinous myself, but I'm not sure how it would work its way into the name of an entire movement. I feel that the art in question hints at things beyond our senses, beyond what we know to be true. Cosmic, certainly. And yes, always mythic, extending forwards and backwards through that murky thing called time and hitting us in the face here in the present.
I'm rambling now, so I'll go back to the book.
Erz
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(6/3/02 2:56:13 pm)
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Well, how about...
Come to think on it, why not simply calling "our" set of visionary art, Mythic Art, especially since almost all the artists in the gallery section of the Endicott Studio for the Mythic Arts are examples of this art?
What do you think Terri?
Charles
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tlchang37
Registered User
(6/4/02 10:16:16 pm)
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Re: Well, how about...
In thinking more about this Art of Mythic Numinousity... (or whatever it's being called now :-) ), it occured to me that you could easily include a bunch of James Christensen's work - all those flying fish and surreal wardrobes - as well as some of Thomas Blackshear's - especially the things he's done for the Greenwich Workshop, some of Mark English's work (who T. Blackshear studied with, btw) and possibly Stephen Mackey's work. The list of contemporary mythic artists has been pretty short in the *male* department thus far...
And a couple of days ago I picked up David Christiana's "The Tale I Told Sasha" (written by Nancy Willard). Golly! Loved it! I've always liked his illustrations, but I loved how this one was put together.
Another illustrator who keeps popping up for me lately is Yvonne Gilbert. She's done a couple of children's books, fantasy book covers, a bunch of fairy tale posters, and some Celtic illustrations in various volumes of the Time Life/Enchanted World series. She works predominately in colored pencil and has a very textural, decorative style. (see www.thorogood.net/illustration for some samples of her work).
These last two may not be 'mythically numinous', but worth looking at.
Tara
Edited by: tlchang37 at: 6/4/02 10:18:03 pm
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Terri
Registered User
(6/5/02 6:53:25 am)
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Re: Well, how about...
"Mythic Art" is what I've been using at the Endicott Studio, a name I've been trying to popularize in general, so I'm certainly in favor of using it. In Endicott Studio usage, it doesn't mean that all art using myth is automatically Mythic Art -- I wouldn't put Frazetta or Whelan in that catagory for instance, even though both have used mythic creatures in their work. But rather, at Endicott, we use it to mean a particular kind of visionary art with its roots in myth, folklore, and fairy tales. I curated a Mythic Art exhibit last summer as part of an art festival in my village in Devon. It was just local artists, but since those local artists were Brian and Wendy Froud, Alan Lee, Virginia Lee, and Marja Krujt Lee, it was a gorgeous show. Mind you, there are still a lot of other artists in the area who dismiss the lot of us as "just illustrators". Including the organizers of the festival, who were very dubious about the whole Mythic Art idea, and surprised (though not aesthetically convinced) by how popular it was. Can you imagine -- people looking down their noses at artists of the cailbre of Alan Lee???? The mind boggles.
Tara: I've loved Yvonne Gilbert's work in the past, but haven't seen any recently.
Edited by: Terri at: 6/5/02 6:58:58 am
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