As I write this,
Halloween is upon us. Yesterday (written in 2003), my daughter, two granddaughters and I
went to the zoo, where every little unicorn, princess, devil, dragon and
every other costume imaginable was represented. These children, and more
than a few adults, were living in their fantasy world for that brief
moment in time.
Why are we so
fascinated with the fantasy world? Is it because we can escape through our
dreams and imagination? Is it because, when we are in the fantasy, it
takes us back to our childhood, where all things were possible? I loved
reading fairy tales, books about people with extraordinary abilities, like Pippi Longstocking or Mary Poppins. One of my favorite books during
childhood and still (I read it every so often) is The
Secret Garden.
When I read it, I return to my childhood. It’s a wonderful story of a
young girl’s overcoming the challenge of not feeling loved. Whenever I
read it, I imagine having a secret garden tucked away, where I can go and
be surrounded by high walls enclosing the beauty that only I can see.
More recently, I’ve
enjoyed the Harry Potter books. The first book came out in 1998 and
the first Harry Potter movie in 2002. With the release of the fifth
Harry Potter book this year and second Harry Potter movie, it has been
firmly established that we do love the world of fantasy, magic, action
tales of good versus evil, castles with moving staircases and paintings
of people who actually come to life in their portrait.
J.K. Rowling’s
imagination is vivid and just as she re-ignited the desire in children to
read, J.RR. Tolkien had a tremendous impact on the world of fantasy
fiction with his three books, The
Fellowship of the Ring, The Two
Towers, and The Return of the King, the last one being published in 1955 when
J.R.R. Tolkien was 63.
The Lord of the
Rings books were a mere fragment of the body of work done by J.R.R.
Tolkien, a linguistic professor at Pembroke
College in
Oxford. Tolkien spent over 60 years creating his
world of Middle Earth, giving his world its own mythology, religions and
history. He developed several different languages, with their own
alphabet, pronunciation and grammar. Tolkien's was a truly unique body
of work.
Tolkien also
illustrated his world of Middle Earth. The movies are based largely on
those illustrations. Though they are in Tolkien's estate and not readily
accessible, you can catch a glimpse of some by visiting various web sites.
An artist who has done an outstanding job of illustrating The Lord of
the Rings stories, Ted Nasmith captures the feeling of Middle Earth
imparted by Tolkien’s books.
Tolkien has to thank
the Norse mythology for the ideas that he used in forming his Middle earth
world. The name Gandalf is found in The
Poetic Edda, Norse mythical and heroic tales told over a 1000 plus
year period of time. Gandalf is,
in some ways, reminiscent of Odin, the leader of the Norse pantheon. Even
the name Middle earth comes from Norse mythology.
Rowling and Tolkien
are current fantasy writers, with Tolkien's first book published in
1937. However, fantasy art is as old as humans. Where did fantasy art
originate? Why? It originated with the cavemen. At Altamira
Cave in northern Spain, cavemen painted bison, other animals and abstract figures. These
paintings are Carbon dated at over 15,000 years B.C. and are sophisticated
for the period in which they were drawn.
Scientists speculate
that the cavemen drew these images as a means of recording history. Others
suggest that they were actually drawing out a fantasy image of how they
would like an event to occur. The images discovered at Altamira Cave
differ from other cave drawings in that
the artists actually used the contours of the cave walls, creating a three
dimensional affect, and used as many as three different colors. Usually
the caveman drawings are one-dimensional, very flat with one color.
 As a result of the
pyramids, we have a rich history of fantasy art from the Egyptians. Their
paintings give us a great deal of information about the everyday
occurrences and how people lived. With the advent of papyrus around 4000
B.C., art and writing took on new meaning. The method of production of
papyrus was kept secret giving the Egyptians a monopoly. Not only was this
ancient Egypt's greatest export but it revolutionized
the way people kept valuable information. There wasn't a substitute for
papyrus paper as durable and lightweight until the development of pulped
paper by the Arabs.
Additionally, the
Egyptians developed the Hieroglyphics which can be connected in a
roundabout way to our alphabet. The Egyptian artist
advanced art dramatically. He realized that the paintings of the cavemen
gave only a snapshot in the moment. First, the Egyptian artist invented a
special kind of human figure where all the important parts of the body
show up equally well in one view. Secondly, the Egyptian artist wanted to
illustrate the complete story. For instance, if the artist is painting on
the walls of the inside of a tomb, and he wants to ensure that the spirit
of the dead man understands the entire story, he will relate it from
beginning to end.
If he is painting
about the harvest, he would spread figures out on the wall, only
overlapping when several of them are doing the same thing. Some figures
are extra large, to show that they are more important than the rest. If he
wanted to illustrate something far away, such as trees in background, he
would put them above, not behind, the foreground figures. His painting,
when complete, would depict the harvest from plowing and planting, to
harvesting and storing.
After the Egyptians, Romans and Greeks,
Jews, Indians, and Orientals brought their mythological stories of the
birth of the cosmos and the gods/goddesses who ruled into art. For
instance in Greek mythology, there is the story of the god, Pan - half
man, half goat, with horns on his brow and lust in his eyes. Son of Hermes
and a daughter of the Dryops, he was the God of pastoral regions and
wilderness. Special friend of shepherds, he guided and protected them from
afar as the protector of all wild things and places. His pipes had an
aphrodisiac effect on those who heard them and induced mating.
One cannot talk about Greek mythology,
without mentioning Homer, author of The Illiad, and The
Odyssey. The
Illiad tells of Achilles and the battle between Troy and the Greeks. The Odyssey is the story
of Odysseus fantastic journey home from the Trojan wars. Taking more than
10 years, during which time Odysseus had many adventures, some of
which were outsmarting the Cyclops, receiving help from Circe, not
submitting to the Sirens’ song, and many more fantastic tales.
With the telling and retelling of
myths, witches, wizards, unicorns, dragons, knights, fairies and other
mystical creations came alive as did the gods and goddesses of ancient
civilizations. These creations provide the material used by artists and
writers of fantasy art at the beginning of the 15th century.
An extraordinary painter of fantasy art
and little known is Hieronymus or Jerome Bosch (1450-1560). A Flemish
painter, he stands apart from the prevailing Flemish traditions in
painting. His style was unique, strikingly free, and his symbolism was
unforgettably vivid. Hieronymus expressed an intense pessimism and
reflected the anxieties of his time, one of social and political upheaval.
He is especially known for his fantastic, demon-filled work The Temptation
of St. Anthony and The Garden of
Worldly Delights.
 Another much more famous artist is
Botticelli. During the Renaissance, when the Italians tried to recapture
the former glory of Rome, the classical myths became popular among
educated laypeople. These people were so convinced of the superior wisdom
of the Greeks and Romans, that they believed the myths were more than
pretty fairy tales; they surely must contain some profound and mysterious
truth.
Botticelli (1446-1510) was commissioned
to paint one of these myths, that of The
Birth of Venus. In his famous painting, Venus has emerged from the sea
on a shell which is driven to the shore by flying wind-gods amidst a
shower of roses. As she is about to step on to the land, one of the Nymphs
receives her with a purple cloak.
We cannot ignore the great
Michelangelo’s contribution to fantasy art – the most significant
piece of all time – the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Like the Egyptians, Michelangelo attempted to tell the story of mankind
from beginning to end.
During the time of Michelangelo, many
of the chapel ceilings were commissioned by the priests to be painted with
scenes to inspire people to return. It seems that congregants were
straying from church and the thinking of the Priests was that they needed
a visual to remind them of what they were coming to church for – to be
saved from hell.
A mentor, Alex Shundi, told me about a
time when he was a small boy in Italy. As an altar boy, they had to bow for
extended periods during mass with the priest standing over them. One
fateful service, he could not contain himself and picked his nose, at that
moment spying the priest, who in turn spied him. As a warning to the young
Alex, the priest pointed ceiling-ward, reminding him of the awful wrath of
picking one’s nose in the church.
In the more contemporary world of
fantasy arts, we mustn’t forget Gauguin or Rousseau. Gaugain founded a
new movement in art that he called Symbolism, a bold jump beyond the
bounds of Impressionism. Gauguin felt that Western civilization was “out
of joint;” that industrialization had forced men into an incomplete kind
of life devoted to making money, while their emotions lay neglected.
 In Rousseau we find the innocence and
strength that Gauguin felt was so necessary for the Modern Age. Rousseau,
more than any other artist, may be called the godfather of 20th
century painting. He began painting at the age of 40, a folk artist
without training of any sort. Viewing his painting, The
Sleeping Gypsy, it is difficult to escape the magic spell of this
dream in paint. What goes on in this calm desert landscape under the light
of the full moon needs no explanation, because none is possible, but
perhaps for this very reason the scene becomes unbelievably real to us.
Some of the more
successful fantasy artists of our time are Thomas Kinkade, Dale Terbush,
Vladimir Kush, Daniel Merriam, Michael Parkes, Lynn Lupetti, Denton Lund,
Schim Schimmel and Josephine Wall.
In Vladimir Kush’s
art, you’ll find normal objects or people with unusual connections. He
shows the common in uncommon situations to create a visual metaphor. He is
reaching for the realm of the incomprehensible where he realizes his
knowledge will not be enough, so he substitutes unreachable realities with
metaphysical images.
Most of us are
familiar with Thomas Kinkade’s work, the little English cottage in a
bucolic setting, New England Christmas, forest chapels. His paintings have
a mist-filled quality about them, as I would imagine my secret garden.
Schim Schimmel’s
art speaks to us of saving the animals. Daniel Merriam’s paintings are
dreams in full color. Painting is a calling, the realization of decisions
to bring his life and his art into one complete place. Denton Lund paints
beauty through the use of exquisite color, image, and a special technique. Each of these artists
expresses their fantasies for our delight.
It seems that we are
bound by a common thread. Not only are we enthralled with fantasizing, but
the myths which are the basis for many of our fantasies are actually
archtypes imprinted in the human psyche, crossing all ethnic cultures,
having similar traits as concluded by Joseph Campbell in his book, The
Hero With a Thousand Faces. Campbell studied the myths of
Egypt, Greece, and other European countries and came to
the conclusion that there is a common thread binding human consciousness
together.
“Throughout the
inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, the myths of
man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever
else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind.
It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through
which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural
manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of
primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology,
the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of
myth.” (Excerpted from Joseph Campbell’s book, The
Hero With a Thousand Faces.)
I use the word myth,
as Joseph Campbell uses it, with the understanding that the patterns and
logic of fairy tale and myth correspond to those of dream, where the long
discredited chimeras (fabulous monsters or fantasies) of archaic man have
returned dramatically to the foreground of modern consciousness.
Through fantasy art,
we touch the consciousness of all humans, either on this plane or another.
Maybe that’s why we’re so attracted to fantasy art. Through it,
we’re able to grasp the deeper concepts of humanity, we find meaning in
life, and we’re able to survive as the hero who makes the journey
through the dark unknown, battles the dragons or monsters, and returns
enlightened.
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