*****

Francis Bacon 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 a little bit further and say that if one could photograph it, there was no sense in painting it. I thought I should like to clarify this thought further.

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 paint reality exactly as the camera sees it? The camera can do such a better job at it and can do it much faster. There are those folks, too, who take a photograph of a scene/object and then they slavishly reproduce the photograph on to their canvas. Why this second-hand observation? If everything is perfect in the photo , 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 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 would be a preferred method.

If you're not now considering a shift to the medium of photography and paint and graphite is still "your thing", then I might suggest an entirely different thing.  It might even seem radical to you, so hold on to your hat.

Artists all the way up to the advent of photography drew from live models. These drawings then became their "reference", used very much in the way that we today use photo reference. Back then, the drawings were a way to learn to draw the figure, and then they were looked at as reference or perhaps were utilized for finished work.  Many artists today work from live models to learn to paint and draw the figure and then use photographs to augment their knowledge for their finished studio pieces. British figurative painter, Jenny Saville, works from live models to start, but to execute a finished piece, she works exclusively from photographs. However, Saville is careful to "paint out" the effects of the photo; it other words, she doesn't make it look like the photo. But the figures look like they are from Saville's "world". Other artists like Frank Frazetta and NC Wyeth used live models for practice, but relied on their memory of the figure to create their works, giving the figures and faces a trademark look. Frazetta guys and gals are remarkably cut from the same cloth. NC Wyeth's people look unmistakably like Wyeth folks; Charles Dana Gibson's "Gibson Girl" is a type endemic to his work. We can point to Michelangelo's people and see some genetic similarities among them, just as we can see Goya's distended people are morphologically related. Mark Zug's people and creatures are definitely from a particular Zug-universe. 

What is happening here? Without leaning heavily on the 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 the crutches of exclusively using photo reference, is then able to capture nuances, a feel, a look, a fleeting moment. There are fortunate accidents that happen when the brain is working and not merely copying. That image of a specific girl, there in the photo, replaces any of the uniqueness of one's creative thought about what is special and unique about "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 it is important to note, especially to the art student, that it is still important to learn the "rules" of reality-- perspective, color, and light. Of course, the best way to practice this is with live set ups, still lifes, live models, plein air landscape painting, etc. It is time well spent. When one gets proficient, one can then later break the rules later doing their own work.)

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. Art in the age of mechanical reproduction-- cameras and computers-- is no longer about how closely one can render reality in paint or pencil or copy something. Art is a sharing of what the artist sees about the world--it becomes more closely associated to a social / political act. It is personal, indeed, because it is a baring of one's philosophical lens. Whether you are painting still lifes or fantasy art of the most imaginative kind, art is ideological.

An astute student in my illustration class recently sent me this question: "Because some 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 looked at 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 deSade 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 science and fantasy 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 of behavior and propriety 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 of decorum may differ quite a bit. Those forms of art that come along to rock the boat of conventional norms 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 economic clout somebody like Steve Jobs had when talking about charter schools and dismantling public education...   Adherents of certain forms of music, literature, art, all have their own status to maintain, and they tend rigorously to these hierarchies for their own existence. Are they any different?  The carrot and the stick methods remain the same: sometimes it's heaven in an afterlife or economic boom in this life, we pay attention to their ideologies because 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 one 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? Gandhi's methods may work very well for stoking social change. But what else can we do?

To be continued...

1) I am currently 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 was not a nice man, but his work 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 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/gentically 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.

Oral stories from the pagan 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 need a bit more gore to ignite our industrial-sized imaginations. 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.

Blogger Adrian Allen at Ms. Magazine recently 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 the disheartening results 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% ). 

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

My own take on it ( I have posted this comment in the Ms. blog) is 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. (See Linda Nochlin’s excellent essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”) Perhaps this is part of the underlying reason for the higher numbers of male protagonists in the YA titles.

When women artists/ writers are taken more seriously and begin to demand more emotional and physical support (household and childrearing duties) from their partners/ spouses, we shall see higher numbers of female writers/artists creating more works with strong, non-stereotyped female leads.

In the fantasy genre, we see plenty of women kicking ass and offing the bad guy just as well as the male heroes do. The genre's images are empowering; it gives women and girls participating in role-playing games (RPGs) and reading the stories the idea that they too, can be efficacious and strong.  In these imagined worlds, women are treated equally, having the same rights, powers, and responsibilities that they might not enjoy in their real lives. And there are protections and polite regulations in the game/ story that they may not enjoy in reality.

We see the same kind of ruthless play in the corporations and the boardrooms across the US. Does playing like the guys really change the status of women? We see women leaving the corporate world for "more quality lives", having children, starting their home businesses, enjoying a higher sense of purpose and happiness. We also saw women trying to fit into the corporate world by adopting certain roles (http://www.oprah.com/money/The-Corporate-Dominatrix) in order to appeal to a corporate male mindset. Still, others have decided that the way that they think differently, placing emphasis on customer care and networking, is changing the corporate world from the inside http://excelle.monster.com/benefits/articles/1118-how-women-succeed-in-corporate-america ,

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2009-01-01-women-ceos-increase_N.htm.

When I began drawing A Mutiny, all I was thinking was, "What if women were pirates?" What would they look like and in what situation would I place them? In this case, I ended up deciding that they would be involved in a mutiny, throwing off whatever colonializing power was there.

Mutinous pirates that sail the Seven Seas on a stolen ship might be from a bygone era (and is a good thing), so the image is one for the fantasy books. But there are still so many real things to address in today's social milieu that require upstart thinking and radical action.

 This drawing is now a painting-in-progress. :)

This one, like many of the recent fantasy drawings, "The Giantess", was drawn in late Dec of '09 or early '10 for my thesis work at MICA. At the time I was desperate to finish school and get out of the science work that I'd been doing and wanted badly to get started in the F+SF field. So, I was perusing a whole lot of fantasy artwork at the time -- mostly from Wizards of the Coast's, "Magic The Gathering", and was struck by the fact that there were few (if any) images of female Trolls, Giants, Dwarves, or Orcs. However, there were more than a few beautiful Elves, Sealies, Humans, Wizards, etc. in this wide pantheon of fantasy characters. As long as the species being represented had some aspect of the beautiful (slim, proportioned, elegant), the artists found themselves quite able to lavish a lot of attention (but not a lot of clothing) on the females of that species. 

For the other species? Not so much.  Where are their females?  Merchandising culture is not just a devastating experience for people with bodies that aren't a perfect Size *2*, but actively makes those bodies disappear entirely from the media.  The f+sf and gaming companies with their slick illustrations and animations seem to be as unable (or unwilling) to do much to help correct this very myopic view of what real women look like. 

My research tells me that the f+sf demographics are 96-98% males, ages 14 to 40; so, of course, the tastes and discretionary money of this demographic obviously drive this market. 

So, as a feminist looking to create images for this genre, there are several things I must consider: What are the ramifications of a gaming culture that gears its product to a specific demographic in which traditional female stereotypes of beauty and gender are insidiously reinforced? How can one induce cracks in the current visual system and begin to introduce and encourage new ideas and images to empower women and girls rather than demean them? Is this the market in which to attempt that? If not, then can I create a new illustration market that does?

I've said it before, the f+sf and gaming company that realizes that they need to begin to tell women's and girls' stories will begin to garner that "other" demographic and will see their profits rise.

I started with a few small compositional ideas to get the general layout of the space and the perspective that would allow for a panoramic view of a wide river and a tent city in the distance.  Once the client settled on what he thought could work for the story, I began to flesh out the scene, adding discrete characters, clothing, accoutrements, and other important elements to the story like the dogs and dragon companions.

 There are still a few more small things to be worked out in the sketch, but I will post updates on this project as it evolves into underpainting and color.

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 the marriage laws soon change, millions of gays and lesbians can live lives without being criminalized or treated differently.

Look at what Charles Perrault did to the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Perrault was from a wealthy family; he’d studied law and literature and was appointed to the French court of Louis XIV. Later in his life, Perrault devoted himself to collecting the folk tales of the peasantry so that he could influence the general moral values of children. His moral certainty came from the fact that the royal court felt that its superior duty, perhaps right, was to be the seat of judgment and arbiter of moral truth. Thus, Le Petite Chaperone Rouge, once a story to help girls to psychically navigate female sexuality, menstruation, etc., was “moralized” to reflect more formal Christian values of waiting for marriage. This story’s persistence over the centuries attests to not only the Christian church’s ideological strangle-hold on culture, but of the willingness of publishing houses to make money on such an ideologies. What does it say about parents' obliviousness to these dominant ideologies and their willingness to mindlessly saturate their kids with it?

The reason I am telling you this big long story is that you actually DO have a say in culture, and as an artist you have a unique 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 political cartoonist has influenced his viewers --whether they grudgingly accept, smile and shake their heads no, or laugh out loud in their helplessness about the truth of a political situation.  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.

Many feminist writers such as Jack Zipes, Maria Tatar, and Angela Carter, who take on the task of writing and rewriting the stories of childhood are determined to explode the myths that culture builds to keep us goose-stepping to the same old lies. Musicians like Melissa Etheridge, fiction writers like Alice Walker and Tony Morrison, artists like Keith Haring and Sue Coe, have done much to change the hearts and minds of culture by sharing their stories and ideas with the rest of us.  

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

Can't wait for my free copy!