Fan Art

Harry Potter and his nemesis, by Hito76           



Frank Sinatra, by Hantverk

I love to look at the work of talented amateur artists. Actually the work of some of the not-so-talented is fun to look at too. Outside of the classroom setting, nowhere is this type of art so easily found as in the form of "fan art" on the Internet. Usually it comes in the form of pencil drawings and almost always it's based upon photos from fan magazine. Thus the artist is at the mercy of the celebrity photographer. The quality of these can range from Paparazzi awful to exquisitely rendered photographic studio portraits. Fortunately, most would-be fan artists instinctively choose the latter. I might add that pencil drawings are notoriously hard to capture digitally. Even with some judicious photo adjustments (which I've done with the ones seen here) the results can be mediocre at best. The examples I've chosen here are (except for one or two) well above the mediocre level ranging up to the near-professional level as seen in our old friend Harry (above). Seldom does fan art rise to this level.

 

A teenage favorite at the moment is the boy-band One Direction. Group portraits tend to be a real challenge for any artist. This artist, named Ashleigh, seems to have mastered the art. (Note: when photographing pencil drawings, half-tones tend to fall away.)

Copyright, Jim Lane

Debbie Reynolds, 1963, Jim Lane

I'm not sure how far fan art goes back. Did Shakespeare have drawn portraits mailed to him by fans? Probably not, he wasn't young enough nor androgynous enough during his most productive years, and didn't appear on stage before adoring crowds in any case. The androgyny factor pretty much permeates virtually all male fan art (bottom). It would seem the more the boys look like girls the more the girls adore them. Glamorous beauty seems to be a key factor with female stars. Needless to say, neither androgyny nor great beauty lasts forever, and in fact, age seems to have something to do with fans' choice of subject matter (teens prevail, both as artists and subjects). I'd be remiss not to mention that I've done some fan art in my time. As I mentioned before, fan art magazines are usually a repository of outstanding (though heavily retouched) portrait photography. Back in the early 1960s, I cut my portrait eyeteeth drawing pictures from such magazines. The drawing of Debbie Reynolds (right) is one of my better ones.


Harry Styles. The linear qualities
of hair lend themselves to pen
drawing. Shaded areas, not so much.

Justin Bieber. Clothing texture
half-tones are easier than the
smoothness of facial areas.



Two faces, two artists, derived from the same photo.

Insofar as fan art is concerned the two most popular teen singing stars today appear to be Justin Bieber and Harry Styles (One Direction). The two fan portraits above, by the same artist, appear to be done in the unforgiving medium of ballpoint pen (probably over a pencil drawing). Two fan portraits of Beyoncé (below) give some indication of the wide range of quality fans often send their singing idols, or post on the Internet. In some cases it's fortunate most celebrities have a sense of humor...or a broad acceptance of widely varying drawing styles (right).

Beyoncé. I'm not sure, but this
drawing has many telltale
indications of having been traced,
and somewhat poorly at that. Notice
the differences in the two hands.

Beyoncé by Liberian Gurrl.
In colored pencil.

Fan artists, especially those of the female variety, are notably different from most artists. They are often very much "in love" with their subject. It drives them to struggle and strive far beyond what they might in drawing any other subject, except for a pet or a boyfriend (though both could be considered to involve an emotional attachment).
 

Selena Gomez as created though with
the simulation game Sims 3.

Selena Gomez in traditional pencil. As
is often the case trouble with the nose.

It's interesting to note that fan artists, while they continue choose traditional pencil drawing by a wide margin, are also embracing the newest tools of digital art (top). Justin Bieber's on-again-off-again love, Selena Gomez (below), offers an interesting contrast, a pencil drawing (below, left) and a digital screen capture created within the Sims 3 game. Although the Sims 3 was never intended as a means of drawing portraits, with an astute eye for proportions and details, not to mention way too much time on your hands, it does have tools lending itself to fan art.

With most fan artists, pretty boys reign.

 

James Bolivar Manson



The Tate Museum (now the Tate Britain), London.

There's an old saying in business, "Everyone rises to their highest level of incompetence." Actually, I've seen it happen often enough to elevate those words to "rule" status. Think about it. You get a job, you're successful in that position. Your boss notices, gives you a promotion. Once more you succeed, you get another promotion, etc. Finally, a few more promotions later, though you've gained a great deal of knowledge and experience along the way, at some point in time, you find yourself "in over your head." You're incompetent. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll get fired, only that you've risen to your highest level of incompetence and are not likely to be promoted again. The British painter, James Bolivar Manson knew all about that phenomena. He was the most incompetent director in the history of London's Tate Museum--that is, when he wasn't falling down drunk.

 

Mrs. Crump's Garden, James B. Manson

Manson was an Impressionist painter born in 1879. His father was the literary editor for London's Daily Chronicle. At the age of sixteen J.B. Manson left high school hoping to enroll in art school. His father, however, had other hopes for is son. He ended up as an office boy for a magazine publisher where he was so prone to obnoxious practical jokes he was fired. He moved on up to the position of a bank clerk, a job he loathed--more practical jokes augmented with bird imitations. All this time he studied art at Heatherley School of Fine Art from 1890 and then Lambeth School of Art. By all accounts he loved what he was doing, though he was by no means exceptionally talented in doing it.

Summer Day Doëlan Brittany, James B. Manson

Notre Dame, Paris, 1903,
James B. Manson

In 1903, Manson married Lilian Beatrice Laugher, a violinist. They moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris and rented a room for the ghastly sum of one pound per month. Even in 1903, you didn't get much of a room for one pound a month. They probably could have put his picture next to the definition of "artiste affamé" (starving artist) in the French dictionary. In his spare time (which was likely considerable) Manson studied at the Academie Julian, which in that era meant he studied Impressionism. After a year, they gave it up and moved back to London and a two-room top floor flat. Lilian Manson gave violin lesson in the front parlor, J.B. set up his studio in the kitchen. They must have slept on the couch.

 

James B. Manson Self-portrait, 1913

In 1910, Lilian Laugher Manson became the musical director of the North London Collegiate School for Girls. There she produced operettas for which her husband designed the costumes. The following year, things began to look up for J.B. Manson as he became friends with the director of the Tate Museum (now the Tate Britain), where he worked as a volunteer hanging shows. Charles Aitkin was sufficiently impressed to offer the struggling artist a job as a clerk. Manson really didn't want the job, but with a nagging wife and two daughters, the salary of 150 pounds per year looked attractive. He became a weekend painter. During that time, he talked his reluctant boss into embracing Impressionism and eventually, the work of another struggling artist, Walter Sickert.

Still Life Tulips In a Blue Jug, 1912, James B. Manson

J.B. Manson's work at the Tate was considered important enough that he was able to get a military exemption during WW I. He was promoted to Assistant Keeper. Manson was primarily a flower painter who managed his first solo show in 1923. Despite some success, and while wishing to become a noted artist, Manson was riddled with (quite legitimate) self-doubt unwilling to give up his day job, fearing he'd be unable to support his wife and family as an artist. Then, in 1930 he was named director of the Tate. He had achieved his highest level of incompetence. He was unfulfilled as an artist, wanting only to be a respected painter. On top of that, Manson had an unhappy marriage, he drank to excess; he suffered from depression, blackouts, and paranoia causing long periods of calling in sick.

Early Spring Flowers, James B. Manson

In all fairness, it wasn't easy being director of an art museum during the world-wide depression days of the 1930s. There were no funds from the government to acquire new works, and even if there had been Manson would have been reluctant to do so. Money was so scarce he was forced to decline the loan of a painting by Camille Pissarro for lack of funds for transportation and insurance. It was an awkward period for art too. Conservative boards of trustees still considered Impressionism a risky investment while up and coming names such as Matisse, van Gogh, Henry Moore, William Coldstream, and others were seen as dangerously avant-garde. Manson himself was no fan of Post-Impressionism. In 1938, he asked Sir Robert Sainsbury if the Tate could borrow A Study of Eve by French sculptor Charles Despiau. Sainsbury agreed on condition that the gallery also show the 1932 Mother and Child by his friend, Henry Moore. Manson's response was, "Over my dead body."


A Light Lunch, 1917, James Bolivar Manson

Pinks in a Vase, ca. 1940,
James B. Manson

Manson also rejected all works of Surrealism and German Expressionism. He did, however, supervise the installation of electric lights in the museum (1935), cherry trees out front, and additional toilets. During the Post-WW I period the Tate could applauded, or at least tolerate, conservative tastes in art. Alcoholism and bad manners, were another matter. Tales of Manson's drunkenly presiding over board meetings were commonplace. In one instance, he cut loose with loud, obscene, drunken outbursts at a museum-sponsored dinner party where he was said to have "precipitated himself" (whatever that means) on the wife of an ambassador with amorous (perhaps even lethal) intent, all of which brought things to a head in 1938. He was asked to resign for "health" reasons.






Following retirement, Manson continued to paint as his mental health permitted. He abandoned his wife and daughters "to get away from women," but managed to show at the Royal Academy from 1939 until his death in 1945. His final, sad words: "The roses are dying and so am I."
 

Still-life with Flowers,
1919, James B. Manson

Renaissance Cities--Barcelona

Barcelona's Gothic Quarter, the old central city, about
as close to the Renaissance as possible today.

By the time you read this, my wife and I will be on board the Allure of the Seas on our way to Barcelona, Spain. We've been there before, in 2001, but mostly what we saw was through a bus window from the airport to the seaport where we boarded the Grandeur of the Seas for a seaborne romp around the western Mediterranean. We had hoped to see at least a little of the city when our ship returned. We had some time to kill before our plane left in the afternoon. However, when it came time to commence our abbreviated tour I couldn't find an English speaking taxi driver, nor did I have enough Spanish currency (in the days before the Euro) to afford one in any case. So, we took a bus provided by the cruise line to the airport and sat around for something like five hours before boarding our plane. It was, to say the least, hardly what you'd call a visit to Barcelona. This year, I'd like to spend a couple days there before taking the high-speed train north to Paris.

An artist's rendering of Barcelona in Roman times. The Mons Taber is in the background.

The Barcelona Cathedral.

There is lots to see in Barcelona, it's a very, VERY old city, dating back to the pre-Roman, Carthaginian days around 300 BC. The Romans planted a military outpost there about 15 BC, laying out a typical, walled grid of streets, the "city" fed by two aqueducts from the mountains to the west. The place had a good harbor, lots of flat land, and in emergencies, an easily defended hill they called Mons Taber. There are still a few remaining vestiges of the old Roman wall if you know where to look. Mostly though, in visiting Barcelona today, tourist center their interest on the Spanish architect, Antoni Gaudi, and his vision of the Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family) church as well as his apartment complex most often referred to at Casa Mila. Both are in the Art Nouveau style of the early 20th-century. The church (begun in 1882) is still under construction, expected to be completed in 2026. Just to avoid confusion, Gaudi's church is not the Barcelona Cathedral (right). It dates from the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. Its ancient-looking façade actually not all that ancient. It was completed in 1913. You'd think they'd want to finish one church before they started another one.

 

The Aragon Empire (in blue) during the 15th century.

A street in the Gothic Quarter.

Barcelona during Renaissance times (similar to the street scene at left) was a city in decline. For centuries, though good times and bad, invasions, sackings, and other important happenings, had been the capital of the Catalonian area of Spain called Castile. The Castile empire stretched as far east as Athens, Greece, while also including Naples, most of Italy, Sicily, and all the dry land in between. That all changed in 1469. Isabel of Castile (central Spain) married Ferdinand II of Aragon (the area surrounding Barcelona), forming the roots of the present-day Spanish royal family tree (King Juan Carlos). The capital of Spain became Madrid. Together the couple drove out the last of the Moorish invaders (Muslims), financed Christopher Columbus (below), raised five kids, and the rest, as they say, is history. (Their youngest daughter, Catalina of Aragon, became the first wife of England's Henry VIII thus becoming Queen Catherine of England and the mother of Mary I, Queen of Scots--it's a long story.)



The Return of Christopher Columbus; His Audience
before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella by Eugene Delacroix

Ferdinand II of Aragon, ca. 1515

Isabel of Castile, 1519

Among Barcelona's many events of historic proportions was the establishment in 1401 of the Bank of Barcelona, the first public bank in Europe. (Venice and Genoa followed suit shortly thereafter.) Also, the first European meter as a unit of measurement originated in Barcelona in 1794. A world's fair in 1888 brought worldwide prestige to the city. On the negative side, the years 1650-54 brought Bubonic Plague to the city, reducing the population by as much as a half. During the 19th century, Napoleon was not kind to Barcelona, nor was Generalissimo Franco, the Spanish communists, and various anarchist groups which ruled the city during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). However Barcelona began to prosper during the mid-20th-century through industrialization and tourism, aided by the Olympic Games in 1992. Today, the city is once more growing, despite the general problems of the European economy, boasting an estimated population of 1.6-million. In a few days, my wife and I will be boosting that number a little.

Antoni Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia, 2014.
Neo-Gothic it's not.

 

Etch A Sketch Art

Famous Ohioans by George Vlosich. Each drawing takes about 70-80 hours.

When I was a kid my parents recognized my interest (if not my talent) in art. Every Christmas and sometimes on my birthday, I'd get some sort of art related gift. I don't remember precisely what year it was, but sometime in the early 1960s I got an Etch A Sketch. Actually, the whole family played with it. No one considered it an art medium, just a clever, fascinating, time-killing toy. I never got very good at drawing with it, though I did enjoy drawing freehand city skylines (quite easy with the simple, horizontal/vertical axis principle of the thing. Although somewhere around one-hundred million of these toys have been sold world-wide, for the benefit of those deprived of the frustration of trying to draw a neat diagonal line with two rotating knobs, I suppose I should stop here and explain what an Etch A Sketch is.

An Etch A Sketch autopsy. The knobs move the rods, The rods move the stylus.

First of all it's red. It looks a little like a fairly flat, black and white TV screen with two white knobs. One changes the channel the other turns up the volume (no, just kidding). One knob controls the vertical movement of an enclosed stylus, the other the horizontal movement (above) as it removes from the back of a plastic screen a thin line of extremely fine aluminum powder leaving a dark gray image with a light gray ground. It's a little like drawing with a soft pencil on light gray paper. As simple as that sounds, they're devilishly hard to master and probably one of the most unforgiving art media known to exist. If you make a mistake, you just turn the thing face down, shake it a few times, the image disappears. Then you're ready to make another "fatal" mistake. 

If Leonardo had owned an Etch a Sketch, he might have done something like this.
(Vitruvian Man, 1490)

The Etch A Sketch is made by a small toy company called Ohio Art in Bryan, Ohio (far northwestern corner of the state near the Michigan and Indiana borders). The company started out in 1908 stamping out metal photo frames, then moved on to cheap metal toys (windmills and the like) before graduating to faux wood grain metal sheets used to make faux wood grain metal picture frames. The original drawing device was invented by a French electrician named Andre Cassagnes in the late 1950s (the only electricity involved might be the static kind). He called it the Telecran. Ohio Art ended up with it through a complicated chain of events involving various Ohio Art investors. In any case, the first red plastic toy slid off their assembly line on July 12th, 1960. For all I know my mother may have bought the first one. I don't know what ever happened to it but I recall it lasted for years. As anyone who has ever tried to open up the back of an Etch A Sketch in an attempt to preserve their painstakingly drawn masterpiece will tell you, they're practically indestructible.

 

George and Greg Vlosich, ca. 1989.

I don't know who might have been the first to consider an Etch A Sketch as a valid, 20th-century drawing medium (I doubt Ohio Art even knows) but it was probably some ten-year-old kid from Cleveland like George Vlosich. Today, his Etch a Sketch original drawings bring up to $10,000. From his boyhood mastery of the device, George went on to study at the Cleveland Institute of Art and today owns a thriving graphic design firm featuring all things Cleveland, and any thing Etch A Sketch. He describes the process as first choosing a perfectly functional model, then completing a detailed rough draft on paper. Work with the device itself begins with a carefully manipulated line drawing. This is especially important in producing a portrait. Then shaded areas are developed much like the fine lines drawn electronically on an old black and white TV screen. Vlosich works from light to dark, drawing the lines closer and closer together to make them darker. Sometimes crosshatching is involved. Once the image is complete, the back must carefully be pried off, and all the powder and stylus mechanism removed before once more sealing up the case. From that point on the image is safe, even withstanding shipping by mail.


St. Basil, J. Labowitch

Taj Mahal, Ron Morse

Of course Vlosich is relatively young and the Etch A Sketch is relatively old so there were probably dozens of skillful artists creating these mechanical images long before he was even born; but today, there's little doubt he is among the best. As a child, Vlosich was so consistent in winning Etch A Sketch competitions sponsored by Ohio Art that the company sent a representative knocking on their door to ascertain in person that it was actually a young boy, rather than an adult creating the images. Having proven himself in their presence, they sent his work on tour to various museums around the country. Perhaps the greatest beauty of the Etch A Sketch is the range of skill levels through which its use may be enjoyed. The device is recommended for ages four and up but I can see no reason why a child of two or younger couldn't have fun developing the all important eye-hand coordination so vital to skilled drawing ability (or playing video games). Recently someone about my age noted that as he was growing up, the Etch A Sketch was his "computer." It had only one app--drawing.

President Obama, George Vlosich

Gone With the Wind, George Vlosich

------------------------------

Here's how it's done:
















 

Joe Machine

2-2, 2014, Joe Machine

Torch the Tate It's Not Too Late,
Alice in the Art World Series,
2014, Joe Machine

Throughout the history of mankind, when a group or a movement goes too far, there always seems to be a contractive reaction. Some (myself included) have likened it to pendulum swing. Isaac Newton enacted the entire phenomena into law: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Some time ago, I invented the analogy of society breathing, especially with regard to art. The definition of art expands, then it contracts, taking in life-giving oxygen, expelling life-giving carbon dioxide for which the plant world owes us an immense debt of gratitude. Nowhere is this more evident than during the past fifteen years or so in England. The art world there took a deep, (some would say pretentious) breath, expanding its art definition to include all manner of conceptual art. In 1999, a group of twelve deeply disturbed painters (disturbed by the onslaught of unmade beds and dead animals showing up in art galleries and museums, if nothing else), aimed their pointy paint brushes at this "inflationary" trend and pricked it, not bursting it by any means, but letting some of the hot air out, causing the conceptual art movement to exhale. British artists Charles Thomson, inspired by the outrageous outraged anger of Tracey Emin, labeled the group he co-founded with fellow artist, Billy Childish, "Stuckists." The name stuck.

 

Joe Machine in his studio. (Is that a prison uniform?)

I Used To Be a Thief and
Murderer, Joe Machine.

Among the dozen or so co-founders of the Stuckist group was Joe Machine. Many of the founders and subsequent members espousing Stuckism are highly trained artists with impressive academic credentials. Joe Machine is not one of them. As you may have guessed by now, that's not even his real name. Joe was born in 1973, named by his parents Joseph Stokes. He grew up in Chatham, Kent, on the Isle of Sheppey, (near the mouth of the Thames). His family is of Romany background, an ethnicity arriving in Europe from India some one-thousand years ago, (sometimes referred to a Gypsies). Joe's background may not include formal art training, but it's certainly one of the most colorful among the Stuckist group. As a boy, he was sent to what we Americans used to call "reform school" for theft of scrap metal, and again later for burglarizing a greengrocer. He once stabbed his teacher in the hand with the business end of a drawing compass. Violence runs in his family. His grandfather, with whom he was quite close, was a bare-knuckle boxer.

 

My Grandfather Will Fight
You, 2001, Joe Machine

Joe Machine's art is not easy to take. Roughly half of it is so obscene as to be out of bounds for a blog like this. This art resides in a category of it's own. It's way too violent and crudely drawn to be traditionally erotic, yet it bears the redeeming qualities of personal creative communication lifting it out of the quagmire of pornography. Machine's work has been called by critics raw and autobiographical, as if that's a bad thing (below, left). Both comments are valid. Machine grew up in a rough part of town on the "wrong side of the tracks." Before taking up art, he made ends meet running the family amusement arcade and breeding Rottweilers. His world was rife with naval uniforms, loose women, coarse, violent, homicidal men, and low-life ugliness of the most disgusting genre. It's who he was...perhaps still is. In any case, he's married now with five kids. He's represented by reputable art galleries and participates regularly with the other Stuckists in their periodic shows.

Mother's Last Cigarette, Joe Machine

Joe Machine is prolific, though his paintings are far from any British "best seller" list. His work is important because he's a charter member of the Stuckist group and the Stuckist group is important because it's the first totally 21st-century painters' group having a major impact on the world of art. Along with it's counterparts in countries all around the world, Stuckism is also a vital counterbalance to Tracey Emin and the other conceptual artists of the YBA (Young British Artists). Moreover it's a much-needed prickly thorn in the side of the Tate. It's evidence that British art today is very much alive and well and breathing regularly.

Painting of Joe Machine, by fellow Stuckist, Bill Lewis.

 

 

Juan Luna

Spolarium, 1884, Juan Luna

Juan Luna Self-portrait, ca. 1870s

It's no great secret today that wealthy entertainment celebrities often "get away with" behavior which would land most of us in the slammer for years. In centuries past, the definition of "celebrity" seldom included entertainers. Usually most of the celebrity slots were filled by royalty. However, famous artist, painters in particular, were often written about and thought about as being celebrities. There was apparently something special about anyone who could almost magically draw, and then paint a realistic (believable) image on canvas, which elevated them to what I guess you could call iconic status. And, like celebrities today, they sometimes did things that landed them before the "court" of public opinion, if not literally in court facing charges. Caravaggio and Filippo Lippi were two such artists. In more modern times, Salvador Dali fit this description as did Picasso, Lucien Freud, and a few others. One of the other "few" was the Filipino painter, Juan Luna. He literally got away with murder.

 

The Roman Maidens, 1881, Juan Luna

Juan Luna Novicio was born into a large Filipino family of seven children (he was the third) around 1857. In 1861, the family moved from the northern part of the Luzon to Manila in the south. The family was relatively well off, several of Juan's brothers quite prominent in the early history of the nation around the turn of the century as the islands transitioned from Spanish rule to American dominance and finally independence in 1935. One of Juan's younger brothers, Antonio, was a leader in the independence movement. Another, Jose, was a doctor; and yet another, Manuel, was also an artist, actually considered a better, though less well-known, painter than Juan. He was, in fact, his brother's first painting instructor. He was not, however, the last.

 

The Death of Cleopatra, 1881, Juan Luna.

One might even go so far as to say that Juan studied art most of his life, first in his homeland, then in Rome, followed by Paris, Madrid, and finally back to Paris. Each place he won awards for his work, a silver medal in Paris in 1881 for his Death of Cleopatra (above), followed by a gold medal in Madrid in 1884 for his massive Spolarium (top) among others. Along the way, he picked up the Romantic influences of Delacroix, Rembrandt, and Daumier. It was in Paris, in 1886 that he met and married the beautiful Maria de la Paz Pardo de Tavera. They honeymooned in Venice and Rome before settling in Paris where Paz gave birth to a daughter (who died in infancy) and a son named Andres. Juan was fond of painting his lovely wife (below), but also prone to physically abusing her and accusing her of adultery (maybe, maybe not).

The Parisian Life, 1892, Juan Luna--his wife...before he killed her.

In any case, it all came to a head in Paris some six years later on September 23rd, 1892. That's when, after a violent argument over his wife's alleged infidelity, Luna shot and killed her, then killed her mother, and wounded her brother when they tried to stop him. Luna was arrested and tried for murder. Incredibly, he was acquitted by reason of insanity under a 19th-century unwritten law by which the murder was deemed a "Crime of Passion." The French forgave husbands for killing unfaithful wives. Luna as ordered to pay his wounded brother-in-law $1,651 francs (and 83 cents) plus an additional twenty-five francs for postage. Postage?


Daydreams of Love,
1890s, Juan Luna

The Battle of Lepanto of 1571, painted in 1886, Juan Luna



Juan Luna, on the street outside his home.

Shortly thereafter, thinking it best to leave Paris before they changed their minds, Juan took his son and returned to the Philippines after an absence of seventeen years. Although he traveled in the Far East some after that and actively supported the Philippine Revolution, Luna painted little during the final years of his life. He died in 1899 at the age of thirty-eight. Today Luna is considered the greatest painter the Philippines ever produced. His house in Manila has been turned into something of a museum shrine with his bronze statue out front while the backyard garden has been made into a unique outdoor gallery displaying, large, full-scale reproductions of his work. All of which presents the natives with something of an awkward situation, having turned a murderer (twice over, no less) into a national hero.

The Juan Luna garden gallery shrine.