Fantastic art
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Fantastic art is an art genre. The parameters of fantastic art have been tentatively defined in the scholarship on the subject ever since the 19th century. However, the genre had to wait for the inter war period to be mentioned by name at the "Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism" exhibition of winter 1936/1937 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which displayed pre-surrealist works such as The Titan's Goblet by Thomas Cole.
Fantasy has been an integral part of art since its beginnings, but has been particularly important in mannerism, magic realist painting, romantic art, symbolism, surrealism and lowbrow. In French, the genre is called le fantastique, in English it is sometimes referred to as visionary art, grotesque art or mannerist art. It has had a deep and circular interaction with fantasy literature.
Fantastic art explores fantasy, "space fantasy" (a sub-genre which incorporates subjects of alien mythology and/or alien religion), imagination, the dream state, the grotesque, visions and the uncanny, as well as so-called "Goth" art. Being an inherent genre of Victorian Symbolism, modern fantastic art often shares its choice of themes such as mythology, occultism and mysticism, or lore and folklore, and generally seeks to depict the [inner life] (nature of soul and spirit).
Fantastic art should not be confused with fantasy art, which is the domain of science-fiction and fantasy illustrators such as Boris Vallejo and others.
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Historic artists and fine artists
Fantastic art is a loosely defined art genre. However, the first "fantastic" artist is generally believed to be Hieronymus Bosch.
Middle Ages and Renaissance
The first "fantastic" artist is generally said to be Hieronymus Bosch. Other medieval artists who have been labeled fantastic include Matthias Grünewald, Hans Baldung Grien, Brueghel and Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
In Italy, the fashion for grotesque art starts.
17th century
18th century
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Henry Fuseli, Francisco de Goya.
19th century
William Blake, Gustave Doré, Gustave Moreau, Arnold Böcklin, Odilon Redon, Max Klinger. Lesser known artists include Charles-Frédéric Soehnée.
20th century
Salvador Dalí, Rudolf Hausner, Johfra, H.R. Giger, Odd Nerdrum and Mati Klarwein.
United States
In the United States in the 1930s, a group of Wisconsin artists inspired by the Surrealist movement of Europe created their own brand of fantastic art. They included Madison, Wisconsin-based artists Marshall Glasier, Dudley Huppler and John Wilde; Karl Priebe of Milwaukee and Gertrude Abercrombie of Chicago. Their art combined macabre humor, mystery and irony which was in direct and pointed contradiction to the American Regionalism then in vogue.
In postwar Chicago the art movement Chicago Imagism produced many fantastic and grotesque paintings, which were little noted because they did not conform to New York abstract art fashions of the time. Major imagists include Roger Brown, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, and Karl Wirsum.
Contemporary artists
Bibliography
- L'art fantastique (1961) - Marcel Brion
- Dreamers of Decadence: Symbolist Painters of the 1890s (1969) - Philippe Jullian
- Quatre siècles de Surréalisme (1973) by Pierre Belfond
- The Occult in Art (1990) - Owen S. Rachleff
- Les peintres du fantastique (1996) - André Barret
See also
- Ornamental prints of Nicolas de Larmessin II and Ennemond Alexandre Petitot
- Fantastic architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée, Claude Nicolas Ledoux and Jean-Jacques Lequeu
- Dream art
- Surrealism
- Neosurrealism
- Fantastic Art Centre
- Society for the Art of Imagination
Further reading
- Coleman, A.D. (1977). The Grotesque in Photography. New York: Summit, Ridge Press.
- Watney, Simon (1977). Fantastic Painters. London: Thames & Hudson.
- Colombo, Attilio (1979). Fantastic Photographs. London: Gordon Fraser.
- Johnson, Diana L. (1979). Fantastic illustration and design in Britain, 1850-1930. Rhode Island School of Design.
- Krichbaum, Jorg & Zondergeld. R.A. (Eds.) (1985). Dictionary of Fantastic Art. Barron's Educational Series.
- Menton, Seymour (1983). Magic Realism Rediscovered 1918-1981. Philadelphia, The Art Alliance Press.
- Day, Holliday T. & Sturges, Hollister (1989). Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920-1987. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art.
- Clair, Jean (1995). Lost Paradise: Symbolist Europe. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
- Palumbo, Donald (Ed.) (1986). Eros in the Mind's Eye: Sexuality and the Fantastic in Art and Film (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy). Greenwood Press.
- Stathatos, John (2001). A Vindication of Tlon: Photography and the Fantastic. Greece: Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
- Schurian, Prof. Dr. Walter (2005). Fantastic Art. Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8228-2954-7 (English edition)
- beinArt collective (2007). Metamorphosis. beinArt. ISBN 978-0-9803231-0-8