FUCK ART, LET'S KILL

AAAAAAARGH, I ANGER

I recently had an art critique at my school, where I had to bring in the personal work I've done over the summer. To be frank, it's always weird- almost embarrassing, in fact- to show them that I'm a fantasy/science fiction artist. I mean, here I am, drawing chicks with big guns and dragons, when everyone else is experimenting with impressionistic portraiture, or playing with line tension in photography, or trying to portray anger as a color or whatever. It makes me feel belittled, even though I know I shouldn't be.  I think the main reason why my genre is looked down upon so much is because people feel it's not contributing to the art world; that it's repetitive, overdone, and not looking into anything "deeply" enough. During the critique, people were only discussing the subjects of the picture... Not the art itself, or how it was executed, or the colors I used, or the way I portrayed space. Just things like, "wow, that gun is pretty big. You like drawing women, don't you?" and that really fucking pissed me off. I feel as if they tolerate scifi/fantasy work simply so they can compare their own work to ours, so they can feel more important.

3 Things: One, our line of work is one of the OLDEST GENRES OF ART EVER MADE. There were fucking rennaissance painters, nay, cavemen doing this shit long before Picassos and Matisses started showing up, so maybe they can have an ounce more respect for a field of art based in tradition. scifi/fantasy not part of a fucking shallow stepping stone to "higher" art, it's your ROOTS. Second, just because it is steeped in tradition doesn't mean it can't change. Sure, it is based on a system of realism, but these realities are all shown in different ways. I've seen scifi/fantasy art that touches on areas like futurism, impressionism and other types, styles that make realities work even though they shouldn't by any means. There are many artists that do convincing work without having to use photographic realism. Do you know how mind-numbingly complex it is to make a 200 foot robot look convincingly part of a reality? Do you know how much knowledge and creativity it takes? The reason why so much focus is put on the subject of scifi/fantasy pieces rather then the technique used to execute the picture, is because the technique is so flawless that people look past it. They understand the reality SO SEAMLESSLY that they don't understand it as art- they understand it as another world. And yet, it isn't real at all. Our ability to manifest reality is our specialty- How we manifest these realities is what makes us individually unique.

Second, just because it's not based on anything real doesn't mean it can't deal with real issues. Like photography works with the "been there" experience, scifi/fantasy works with the "are there" experience. The impact of being in an imaginary scene where something unspeakably awesome and moving is happening hits you like you are a spectator watching it happen. The problem with some people looking at a scifi/fantasy piece is that they won't allow themselves to be put in this reality, even though they are already doing so involuntarily. This is probably out of fear of being lost in an alternate reality that they can't get out of, and that dettaching themselves for a little while will do permanent damage to their psyche and harm their touch with reality, or something else equally retarded.

My art was also digital, so it also pissed me off that they kept saying things like "computers can do so much these days, they can make wonderful things," like I had just scanned the picture and Photoshop magically did everything else for me. I fucking HATE that! It's as if no one can respect computer art as an artistic medium. Little do these people know that the computer will dominate the art market within the next decade, if that. But, that's another story.

Sorry about my soap box, I'll calm down now...