Finding a topic for my RCS part 4

"Pátrání mne přivedlo do kontaktu s vůdčímí výtvarníky z celého světa - ve Spojených státech, Asii a na středním východě, v Kanadě a jižní Americe, po celé Evropě. Na takové mezinárodní sbírce je fascinující pozorovat rozdíly i podobnosti moderního výtvarného fantasy umění, pocházejícího z nejrůznějších zemí a kultur po celém světě.
Ta nejlepší fantasy díla nám poskytují lákavou únikovou cestu do světa uvěřitelnosti, cestu kde se smazávají hranice mezi vnější realitou, kterou všichni sdílíme, a vnitřní duševní krajinou výtvarníka. Dnes je však zjevná jistá globalizace žánru fantasy, nepochybně díky vlivu všeobecně rozšířených fantasy filmů, počítačových her a dalších populárních médií ze Spojených států a Evropy. To často vedeke vzniku děl, která se snaží přijmout podobný výklad všeobecně známých témat fantasy.
Proto jsou si dnes výtvarné styly snažící se dosáhnout elegantního efektu hodně podobné, a to zejména v oblasti designu." (McKenna 2007)

Few years ago I received a book entitled Fantasy Art Now by Martin McKenna. It is actually a collection of work from the leading fantasy artists and from aspiring fantasy artists. Going through the book I realized that I already know most of these illustrations and if not the illustrations I know the artists (there are illustrations that were published in this book for the first time).

I made few observations:

1. On the illustrations there are many times depicted characters or scenes from something I already know. Is that the reason why the artists are famous and considered the leading artists? Because they are known via the commercial sphere?

2. There are similarities that we can observe and some kind of globalization of the fantasy genre (McKenna 2007). After reading the notes from certain artist I realized that none of them actually say that they were influenced by this or that fantasy world etc. but many note that they had this or that artist as an idol. (even though their work hardly resembles that one.)

McKenna's introduction (quoted in Czech above, I couldn't find the original one) actually summarizes my second point. According to McKenna we can observe globalization of the fantasy genres most probably because of fantasy movies and computer games on the rise. This leads to art that shares a common known fantasy themes/archetypes. This often results in similar designs of fantasy art. (this formulation is pretty bad, but now I just need to grasp the idea somehow). All this most probably fallbacks to Tolkien and later published Dungeons and Dragons whose fantasy setting was directly influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien's world.

When looking for something in my room I came across TSR Collectors Art cards and calendars. Calendars were for me a collections of Fantasy Art from certain artists as I couldn't buy prints of those work as I can most probably do nowadays. Among these I came across DragonLance and Ted Nasmith Lord of the Rings calendar. As those are relatively old. The illustrations from these calendars are from 1980s till late 1990s and they have something in common. Looking at these one can clearly see that highly realistic rendition of reality (with the aspect of fantasy theme) is there. The colors though being more fairy tale like.

"His approach to illustrating Tolkien draws on influences such as 19th century 'old school' landscape and classical painting, as well as 'magic realism', fairy painting, the classic illustrators, and the visionary/psychedelic art of the 1960s.

Besides the sheer pleasure of bringing Tolkien's world to light, he sees his fantasy art as a bridge between the realm of 'everyday' and 'faerie', faerie being Tolkien¹s term for the enchanted world of our dreams and nightmares; that great ancient-realm of Story." (HarperCollins 2003, Ted Nesmith Interview)

After looking at these illustrations and reading some of the comments I would like to take similar path as Martin McKenna. He created a collection of works with artist commentary to show it. In my case I'd like to research more were the globalization of fantasy art came from.