Art History Guide

Hello! I’m Sherrie Hibbs (S. P. Hibbs) and have recently joined 451 Press. Thank you for allowing me to be apart of your team. This week I will be doing posts on fantasy art, artists and featuring an amateur artist. Now, to the feature blog.

Fantasy art is a genre of art that depicts magical or other supernatural themes, ideas, creatures, or settings. While there is some overlap with science fiction, horror, and other speculative fiction art, there are unique elements not generally found in other forms of speculative fiction art. Depictions of ancient myths and legends, as well as depictions of modern day fantasy in the form of divine interventions and other magical or supernatural forces, are very common elements, and help distinguish fantasy art from other forms. Dragons, wizards, fairies, and other fantastical and mythical creatures are common features in fantasy art.
Fantasy art is strongly linked to fantasy fiction. Indeed, fantasy art pieces are often intended to represent specific characters or scenes from works of fantasy literature. Such works created by amateur artists is fanart.

There is a large subculture based around the creation of amateur fantasy art. This is largely centered around websites such as Elfwood. Such sites are noticeably less male-dominated than some other pursuits related to the fantasy genre.
Fantasy art should not be confused with the fantastic art genre, which can contain fantastical elements that are not always considered “fantasy” per se.

Fantasy Art and High Culture

Despite the technical skill of many of its practitioners, and despite (or arguably because of) its popularity, Fantasy art is not considered part of the ‘canon’, or ‘fine art’, in the sense that it is not hung in galleries, subsidized by governments, studied in art schools etc.

A few works that are ‘canonical’, particularly surrealism or Pre-Raphaelite works, have many characteristics in common with fantasy art. For example The Castle in the Pyrenees by Rene Magritte, and The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, would almost certainly be accepted as fantasy art if an artist who presented them as such had created them recently. As with much fantasy art, the latter illustrates a scene from another work. Other modern fantasy artists use the Art Nouveau Movement and other high culture art movements with the contention that fantasy or faerie art should be critically evaluated and noticed by academic institutions. Finucane defines his art stylistics as “Neo-Medieval”, rather than using the escapist terminology of “fantasy art” to define his work. Historical standards of what is high art or what is not high art was a common problem for now famous artists like the Glasgow School, who were also unfairly defined as inferior artists in their time.

Nonetheless these works are accorded the status of fine art, and not considered to be connected to fantasy art. The situation could arguably be compared to the way in which certain critically-esteemed works may be treated as if they had no connection to non-’literary’ genres, for example Nineteen Eighty-four and science fiction.

Click HERE to check out the complete entry from Wikipedia with some examples of fantasy art.