Fantasy

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Fantasy

• Religious Fantasy
• Childlike Artwork
• Outsider Art
• Dreams and Surrealism
• Popular Imagery

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• Fantasy in Religious Art.
• Hieronymus Bosch painted The Garden Of Earthly
  Delights as an altarpiece for a Catholic church
  at the start of the 16th Century. Its vision of
  Hell is the artists personal fantasy of the
  greatest horrors he could imagine. His audience
  would have largely been illiterate. The images
  draw upon his own culture (the band) and the
  viewers of his time would pick up on references
  that are lost to us today.
• William Blake was a religious and political
  dissenter from the latter part of the 18th
  Century in England. A major poet he was trained
  as an artist and experimented with unconventional
  printmaking techniques. He claimed to see visions
  and his artworks often display his unconventional
  religious views.
• Edward Hicks was an American Quaker and an
  untrained artist. He is best known for his series
  of paintings on the theme of The Peaceable
  Kingdom showing the different peoples of the
  earth and the different animals living together
  in harmony.

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Religious Fantasy

• In a sense all religious art is Fantasy, but it
  really concerns us in this context when the
  artists allow their imaginations full rein in
  depicting religious scenes.
• Here Hieronymus Bosch shows us his own personal
  vision of Hell

From Hieronymus Bosch The Garden of Earthly
Delights c.1500
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The Bird-Headed Monster From Hieronymus Bosch
The Garden of Earthly Delights c.1500(note the
school band on the left)
Religious Fantasy
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The 18th/19th Century English artist William
Blake was a religious dissenter who experienced
visions and made a lot of images illustrating
religious themes. Here he shows the Bible story
of Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils  circa 1826
Religious Fantasy
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William BlakeThe Ghost of a Flea (c.1819)
Religious Fantasy
Blake claimed that, while he was sketching the
flea, it had explained to him that fleas were
inhabited by the souls of bloodthirsty men. These
bloodthirsty men were confined to the bodies of
small insects, because if they were the size of
horses, they would drink so much blood that most
of the country would be depopulated. The flea's
bloodthirsty nature can be seen in its tongue,
darting eagerly from its mouth, and the cup (for
blood-drinking) that it is carrying.
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Edward Hicks (1780-1849) The Peaceable Kingdom c
1848.Hicks was another religious dissenter who
painted his vision of The Peaceable Kingdom many
times over the years.
Religious Fantasy
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Edward Hicks (1780-1849) The Peaceable Kingdom
Religious Fantasy
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Childlike Artwork

• With the advent of Modern Art and the inclusion
  of Art as an element of the school curriculum
  there was a growing interest in the innocent art
  made by children. Artists valued this quality and
  some brought it into their own work.
• Among the most important of these artists were
  the Swiss painter Paul Klee and the Spanish
  Surrealist painter Joan Miro. Both adopted a free
  approach to techniques and to materials. The
  success of their approach is seen by the number
  of their works displayed in primary schools.
• Pablo Picasso changed style repeatedly over the
  years and often worked in a childlike way.

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Childlike Artwork
Paul Klee  Howling Dog 1928  oil on canvas
 H.17-1/2 x W.22-3/8 in.
Paul Klee  Howling Dog 1928  In the 20th
Century many artists began to explore the ways in
which children make art, and the kinds if images
that they make. Paul Klee was a Swiss artist and
art teacher whose work is very playful and
deceptively simple. This paintin uses his
technique of taking a line for a walk
continuous line drawing.
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Childlike Artwork
Paul Klee  Golden Fish   This painting could
easily have been conceived by a child, but the
range of techniques displayed would be beyond the
capability of most children. It is a work that
children and adults can enjoy
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Joan Miró The Policeman, 1925Joan Miro was a
Spanish artist who was a leading member of the
Surrealist group. Like Klee his work is playful
and deceptively simple.
Childlike Artwork
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Childlike Artwork
Joan Miro Personage Throwing a Stone at a Bird
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Childlike Artwork
Mother and Son (1938)
Portrait of Maya with a Doll (1938)
Picasso here chooses a childlike style when he
paints children. What aspects of these paintings
would you consider childlike.
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Pablo Picasso Self Portrait Facing
DeathPicasso is probably the most famous
artist of the 20th Century and his work relates
to almost every art movement of the period. This
drawing was made very late in his life and he
chose to use a childlike style to show his fear
of death.
Childlike Artwork
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Outsider Art- The art of the insane and the
marginalised

• The insane and marginalised often express
  themselves in their artwork. There is often an
  obsessive attention to detail, such as we see in
  the work of Richard Dadd and Nick Blinko, and
  there is sometimes an obscure agenda underlying
  the art such as in the case of Blinko and James
  Hampton.

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After a trip to Egypt Richard Dadd, hearing the
voices of the Egyptian gods, murdered his father
in 1843. For the rest of his life he was confined
to an institution for the criminally insane,
where he was encouraged to paint. A trained
artist his work is meticulous and refers to
scenes from Shakespeare.
Richard Dadd Oberon and Titania 1854-58
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Actor, dramatist Antonin Artaud completed this
self-portrait drawing in 1946, after being
confined in a French mental hospital during World
War II.
'The human face is an empty power, a field of
death ... ... after countless thousands of years
that the human face has spoken and breathed
one still has the impression that it hasn't
even begun to say what it is and what it knows.'
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'In the case of British artist Nick Blinko
(b.1961), who has in the past been hospitalised,
the need to make pictures is stronger than the
desire for the psychic 'stability' brought by
therapeutic drugs which adversely affects his
ability to work. His images are constructed of
microscopically detailed elements, sometimes
consisting of literally hundreds of
interconnecting figures and faces, which he draws
without the aid of magnifying lenses and which
contain an iconography that places him in the
company of the likes of Bosch, Bruegel and the
late Goya.
Outsider Art- The art of the insane and the
marginalised
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Outsider Art
Charles Bronson No Escape (This is the other
Charles Bronson)
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Madge Gill was a Spiritualist and a
mediumGill's discovery of drawing was a direct
result of attempts to contact her daughter and
one of her sons, who had died during the
influenza epidemic of 1918, the other side. She
maintained that she was guided by a spirit she
called Myrninerest and often signed works in that
name.
Outsider Art
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Jean Dubuffet, 1901-1985 Monsieur Plume with
Creases in his Trousers (Portrait of Henri
Michaux) 1947Jean Dubuffet was not a outsider
artist, but he uses many similar images and
techniques. In France this approach, both by
outsiders and by mainstream artists is called
LArt Brut
Outsider Art
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James Hampton The Throne of the Third Heaven of
the Nations Millennium General Assembly
Outsider Art
James Hampton was a janitor in Washington DC. He
constructed this strange assemblage out of junk,
covered with silver and gold foil, in a garage.
He never explained his work or its purpose.
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Hampton kept a small notebook in which he wrote
in an unknown script.  The writing has never been
deciphered. 
Outsider Art
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Dreams and Surrealism

• From the Romantic period onwards artists became
  aware of the power of the unconscious mind and of
  dreamlike images.
• Henri Fuseli makes a picture of a nightmare and
  another Swiss artist, Arnold Böcklin, paints a
  quieter dream in his work Island of the Dead.
• In 1900 the Psychologist Sigmund Freud published
  On the Interpretation of Dreams which was a big
  influence upon the Surrealist movement, with
  artists like Giorgio de Chirico and Salvador Dali
  painting illustrations of dreams.

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Henry Fuseli The Nightmare 1781 Henry Fuseli was
a Swiss artist who worked in England. He made
dramatic images taken from his imagination. Here
he combines fantasy with eroticism
Dreams and Surrealism
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Arnold Böcklin Island of the Dead 1880 Böcklin
was another Swiss artist who painted dreamlike
pictures before the Surrealists.
Dreams and Surrealism
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Giorgio de Chirico Montparnasse Station 1914De
Chiricos paintings were a big influence on the
Surrealists. Here he distorts perspective,
adopting a high eye level, and he presents an
almost deserted landscape apart from the train.
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Salvador Dali Soft Construction with Boiled
Beans Premonition of Civil War 1936
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Salvador Dali Persistence of Memory 1931
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Popular Fantasy Fantasy and Science Fiction have
always had a strong popular appeal, particularly
with young people. It appears on record covers,
in films and posters. Among the most popular
Fantasy artists are Frank Frazetta, Roger Dean
and HR Giger.
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Popular Fantasy
Roger Dean Aura Roger Dean is an illustrator and
artist popular for his record covers and
illustrations
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The imagery of Swiss artist H. R Giger combines
elements of Gothic fantasy with Science Fiction.
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Chiho Aoshima The Rebirth of a Snake-Woman 2000
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Chiho Aoshima City Glow, Mountain Whisper 25 July
2006 March 2007 Gloucester Road Underground
Station, London http//www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/arts/pl
atform-for-art/artists/chiho_aoshima.asp