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The decision to work in a non-representational style for my latest project (or one of many, really) came out of a lot of churning over what makes, well, Art. Which is a ridiculously large and unspecific question, so framing it as it relates to my life: can illustration be Art? Can fantastic art be Art? And what, really, separates the wheat from the chaff?
My answers for the first two have always been yes and yes, but those have been knee-jerk, instinctual responses and that doesn't cut it for me these days. Being educated in a very rigid fine arts environment, my arguments focused more on using historical examples both modern (Mucha, Rockwell) and classical (most of the great masters, illustration scenes from mythology and the Bible) to show that, clearly, dismissing illustration as a field salted by commercialization was a presumptuous mistake based in ill-educated snobbery. I required wearing the mask of the snob myself to argue the academic record, and that worked often enough that I never actually had to define what it was about those masters that elevated them from commercial illustrators to adored artists. Alas, because I never defined that, I've hit a wall in my own work. So now I have to ask my third question-- in the spirit of intellectual and artistic honesty, at least.
( ... )
My answers for the first two have always been yes and yes, but those have been knee-jerk, instinctual responses and that doesn't cut it for me these days. Being educated in a very rigid fine arts environment, my arguments focused more on using historical examples both modern (Mucha, Rockwell) and classical (most of the great masters, illustration scenes from mythology and the Bible) to show that, clearly, dismissing illustration as a field salted by commercialization was a presumptuous mistake based in ill-educated snobbery. I required wearing the mask of the snob myself to argue the academic record, and that worked often enough that I never actually had to define what it was about those masters that elevated them from commercial illustrators to adored artists. Alas, because I never defined that, I've hit a wall in my own work. So now I have to ask my third question-- in the spirit of intellectual and artistic honesty, at least.
( ... )
