Fantastic art is an art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

. The parameters of fantastic art have been fairly rigorously defined in the scholarship on the subject ever since the 19th century. There was a movement of science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 and fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 artists prior to and during the Great Depression, which were mainly cover art and comic book illustrators. One anthology

Anthology

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 about them is Infinite Worlds: The Fantastic Visions of Science Fiction Art by Vincent Di Fate

Vincent Di Fate

Vincent Di Fate is an American artist specializing in science fiction and fantasy illustration.Di Fate studied at the Phoenix School of Design in New York City and received his MA in Illustration at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.He is the winner for the Hugo Award for Best Professional...

] (himself a prolific SF and space

Space

Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...

 artist), with foreword by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...

.

Fantastic art has traditionally been largely confined to painting and illustration, but since the 1970s has increasingly been found also in photography. Fantastic art explores fantasy, "space fantasy" (a sub-genre which incorporates subjects of alien mythology and/or alien religion), imagination, the dream state, the grotesque

Grotesque

The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...

, visions and the uncanny, as well as so-called "Goth" art. Being an inherent genre of Victorian

Victorian

Victorian may mean:*Of or relating to Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom*Victorian era , a term derived from the lengthy 19th-century reign of Queen Victoria and particularity various styles, ideas, and trends associated with that era:...

 Symbolism

Symbolism

Symbolism is the applied use of symbols. It is a representation that carries a particular meaning. It is a device in literature where an object represents an idea.A symbol is an object, action, or idea that represents something other than itself....

, modern fantastic art often shares its choice of themes such as mythology

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

, occultism and mysticism

Mysticism

Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

, or lore and folklore, and generally seeks to depict the inner life (nature of soul and spirit).

Fantasy has been an integral part of art since its beginnings, but has been particularly important in mannerism

Mannerism

Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...

, magic realist

Magic realism

Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...

 painting, romantic art, symbolism

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

, surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 and lowbrow

Lowbrow

Lowbrow may refer to:*Lowbrow, relating to, or suitable for a person with little taste or intellectual interest* Lowbrow , describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s...

. In French, the genre is called le fantastique

Fantastique

The Fantastique is a French term for a literary and cinematic genre that overlaps with science fiction, horror and fantasy.The fantastique is a substantial genre within French literature...

, in English it is sometimes referred to as visionary art, grotesque art or mannerist art

Mannerism

Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...

. It has had a deep and circular interaction with fantasy literature

Fantasy literature

Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...

.

Historic artists and fine artists

The first "fantastic" artist is generally said to be Hieronymus Bosch. Other painters who have been labeled fantastic include Brueghel

Pieter Brueghel the Elder

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a Flemish renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes . He is sometimes referred to as the "Peasant Bruegel" to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty, but he is also the one generally meant when the context does...

, Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books – that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of...

, Matthias Grünewald

Matthias Grünewald

Matthias Grünewald or "Mathis" , "Gothart" or "Neithardt" , , was a German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.Only ten paintings—several consisting...

, Hans Baldung Grien

Hans Baldung

Hans Baldung, known as Hans Baldung Grien/Grün was a German Renaissance artist in painting and printmaking in woodcut. He was considered the most gifted student of Albrecht Dürer.-Life:...

, Francisco de Goya, Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau was a French Symbolist painter whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter of literary ideas, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists.- Biography :Moreau was born in Paris. His father, Louis Jean Marie...

, Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...

, Odilon Redon

Odilon Redon

Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.-Life:...

, Max Klinger

Max Klinger

Max Klinger was a German Symbolist painter, sculptor, printmaker, and writer.Klinger was born in Leipzig and studied in Karlsruhe. An admirer of the etchings of Menzel and Goya, he shortly became a skilled and imaginative engraver in his own right. He began creating sculptures in the early 1880s...

, Arnold Böcklin

Arnold Böcklin

Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss symbolist painter.-Life and art:He was born at Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin , was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk trade. His mother, Ursula Lippe, was a native of the same city...

, William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

, Gustave Doré

Gustave Doré

Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.-Biography:...

, Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an Italian artist famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric "prisons" .-His Life:...

, Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

, Arik Brauer

Arik Brauer

Arik Brauer is an Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker, poet, dancer, singer and stage designer. He resides in Vienna and Ein Hod, Israel. Brauer is a co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, together with Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden.Erich...

, Ernst Fuchs

Ernst Fuchs

Ernst Fuchs may refer to:*Ernst Fuchs , Austrian artist*Ernst Fuchs , Austrian ophthalmologist*Ernst Fuchs , German New Testament scholar and student of Rudolf Bultmann...

, Rudolf Hausner

Rudolf Hausner

Rudolf Hausner was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. Hausner has been described as a "psychic realist" and "the first psychoanalytical painter" .-Early life:...

, Johfra, H.R. Giger, and Mati Klarwein

Mati Klarwein

Abdul Mati Klarwein was a painter best known for his works used on the covers of music albums.-Biography:...

.

In the United States in the 1930s, a group of Wisconsin artists inspired by the Surrealist movement of Europe created their own brand of fantastic art. They included Madison, Wisconsin

Madison, Wisconsin

Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison....

-based artists Marshall Glasier, Dudley Huppler and John Wilde

John Wilde

John Wilde was a painter, draughtsman and printmaker of fantastic imagery. Born near Milwaukee, Wilde lived most of his life in Wisconsin, save for service in the U.S. Army during World War II. He received bachelor and master degrees in art from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught...

; Karl Priebe of Milwaukee and Gertrude Abercrombie

Gertrude Abercrombie

Gertrude Abercrombie was an American painter based in Chicago. Called "the queen of the bohemian artists," Abercrombie was involved in the Chicago jazz scene and friends with musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughan, whose music inspired her own creative work.-Personal...

 of Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. Their art combined macabre humor, mystery and irony which was in direct and pointed contradiction to the American Regionalism then in vogue.

In postwar Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 the art movement Chicago Imagism produced many fantastic and grotesque paintings, which were little noted because they did not conform to New York abstract art

Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

 fashions of the time. Major imagists include Roger Brown

Roger Brown (artist)

Roger Brown was an American artist who was a member of the Chicago Imagists, a group in the 1960s and 1970s who turned to representational art. His paintings are owned by many of the most important art museums in the US.He was born in Hamilton, Alabama and raised in Opelika...

, Gladys Nilsson

Gladys Nilsson

Gladys M. Nilsson is an American artist, one of the original Chicago Imagists, a group in the 1960s and 1970s who turned to representational art...

, Jim Nutt

Jim Nutt

James T "Jim" Nutt is an American artist who was a founding member of the Chicago surrealist art movement known as the Chicago Imagists, or the Hairy Who...

, Ed Paschke

Ed Paschke

Edward Francis Paschke was a Polish American painter. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons, as well as his father's creativity in wood carving and construction, led him toward a career in art...

, and Karl Wirsum

Karl Wirsum

Karl Wirsum is an American artist. A member of the notorious Chicago artistic group The Hairy Who, he helped set the foundation for Chicago's art scene in the 1970s. Wirsum is primarily a painter, though he has worked with prints, sculpture and even digital art.He received a B.F.A...

.

Contemporary artists

• Zdzisław Beksiński
• Gerald Brom
  Gerald Brom
  Gerald Brom is an American gothic fantasy artist and illustrator, known for his work in role-playing games, novels, and comics.-Early life:Brom was born March 9, 1965, in Albany, Georgia. As the son of a U.S...
  
  
• Roger Dean
• Larry Elmore
  Larry Elmore
  Larry Elmore is an American fantasy artist whose work includes creating illustrations for video games, comics, magazines and fantasy books. His list of work includes illustrations for Dungeons & Dragons, Dragonlance, and the comic strip series SnarfQuest...
  
  
• Can Emed
• Frank Frazetta
  Frank Frazetta
  Frank Frazetta was an American fantasy and science fiction artist, noted for work in comic books, paperback book covers, paintings, posters, LP record album covers and other media...
  
  
• Ernst Fuchs
  Ernst Fuchs (artist)
  Ernst Fuchs is an Austrian painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, architect, stage designer, composer, poet, singer and one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. In 1972 he acquired the derelict Otto Wagner Villa in Hütteldorf, which he restored and transformed...
  
  
• H.R. Giger
• Peter Gric
  Peter Gric
  Peter Gric is a Czech painter living in Austria.-Biography:* 1968 - born in Brno, Czechoslovakia* 1980 - emigrates to Austria* 1988 - 1993 Studies under professor Arik Brauer at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna* 1995 - 1996 Alternative Service...
  
  
• Judson Huss
  Judson Huss
  Judson Huss was an American-born painter and sculptor of fantastic art.Born in Durham, North Carolina, he later moved with his family to Los Angeles, California where he began to study art. He was also a rock musician, playing guitar and bass with many bands, including Smith...
  
  
• Oleg A. Korolev
  Oleg A. Korolev
  Oleg A. Korolev is Russian artist whose paintings have beenexhibited and represented in the private and corporate art collections of Russia, Europe, North America, and Australia.- Education :...
  
  
• Odd Nerdrum
  Odd Nerdrum
  Odd Nerdrum , is a Norwegian figurative painter. Themes and style in Nerdrum's work reference anecdote and narrative, while primary influences by the painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio place his work in direct conflict with the abstraction and conceptual art considered acceptable in much of his...
  
  
• Max Magnus Norman
  Max Magnus Norman
  Cal Henrik Max Magnus Norman is a Swedish artist, painter, and sculptor.Norman was born in Sundsvall, Medelpad, he currently lives and works in Ekerö, Stockholm. He paints visions and dreamlike images as accurately as possible, which results in paintings with a photorealistic quality...
  
  
• Keith Parkinson
  Keith Parkinson
  Keith Parkinson was an American fantasy artist and illustrator known for book cover and game artwork for games such as EverQuest, Guardians, Magic: The Gathering and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.-Early life:...
  
  
• Donald Pass
  Donald Pass
  Donald Pass is a British painter whose art has been compared to that of William Blake by a reviewer in an Oxford newspaper, among others. He is known for work based on a vision he experienced, which has been interpreted as the Resurrection of the Dead...
  
  
• Antonio Roybal
  Antonio Roybal
  Antonio Roybal is an American fine-art painter and sculptor from Santa Fe, New Mexico.-History:Antonio is the son of David and Aggie Roybal, born in Santa Fe but raised in Southern California. He lived in San Diego during the earliest years of his childhood. He has three sisters. One of his...
  
  
• Luis Royo
  Luis Royo
  Luis Royo is a Spanish artist, known for his sensual and dark paintings, its apocalyptic imagery, his fantasy worlds and mechanical life forms...
  
  
• Mark Ryden
  Mark Ryden
  -Early life:Ryden is the son of Barbara and Keith Ryden, born in Medford, Oregon but raised in Southern California. He has two sisters and two brothers, one a fellow artist named Keyth Ryden....
  
  
• De Es Schwertberger
  De Es Schwertberger
  De Es Schwertberger , commonly known simply as De Es , is an Austrian artist, painter and modeller...
  
  
• Anne Sudworth
  Anne Sudworth
  Anne Sudworth is a British artist internationally known for her paintings of magical trees and haunting moonlit landscapes. Drawing and painting since early childhood, she started her career as a professional artist in 1993 when she presented her first exhibition "Visions and Views"...
  
  
• Bridget Bate Tichenor
  Bridget Bate Tichenor
  Bridget Bate Tichenor , also known as Bridget Tichenor or B.B.T., was a Mexican surrealist painter of fantastic art in the school of magic realism and a fashion editor...
  
  
• Boris Valejo
• Robert Venosa
  Robert Venosa
  Robert Venosa was an American artist residing in Boulder, Colorado, USA. He studied with what are termed the New Masters. His artworks reside in collections around the world. -Life and works:...
  
  
• Michael Whelan
  Michael Whelan
  Michael Whelan is an American artist of imaginative realism. For more than 30 years he worked as an illustrator specializing in science fiction and fantasy cover art...
  
  
• Jacek Yerka
  Jacek Yerka
  Jacek Yerka is a Polish painter from Toruń.-Life and work:Jacek Yerka was born in Toruń, Poland, in 1952 - where he later studied fine art and graphic design...
  
  
• Jurgen Ziewe
  Jurgen Ziewe
  Jurgen Ziewe was born in Germany and trained as an artist at The Hamburg Academy of Art . He studied under a pupil of Kandinsky and has worked for many years in the advertising industry in design roles...
  
  
• Bob Eggleton
  Bob Eggleton
  Bob Eggleton is a science fiction, fantasy, and horror artist. Eggleton has been honored with the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist eight times, first winning in 1994. He also won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book in 2001 for his art book "Greetings From Earth"...
  
  
• Donato Giancola
  Donato Giancola
  Donato Giancola is an American artist specializing in science fiction and fantasy illustration.-Biography:Donato Giancola was born in 1967 and raised in Colchester, Vermont, near Burlington, Vermont...
  
  

See also

• Dream art
  Dream art
  Dream art is any form of art directly based on material from dreams, or which employs dream-like imagery.-History:References to dreams in art are as old as literature itself: the story of Gilgamesh, the Bible, and the Iliad all describe dreams of major characters and the meanings thereof...
  
  
• Fantastic Art Centre
  Fantastic Art Centre
  The Fantastic Art Centre is a non profit research project founded by Christian De Boeck in 1977. The Honorary Patron Emeritus is Professor Ernst Fuchs...
  
  
• Fantasy art
  Fantasy art
  Fantasy art is a genre of art that depicts magical or other supernatural themes, ideas, creatures or settings. While there is some overlap with science fiction, horror and other speculative fiction art, there are unique elements not generally found in other forms of speculative fiction art...
  
  
• Magic realism
  Magic realism
  Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...
  
  
• Society for the Art of Imagination
  Society for the Art of Imagination
  The Society for Art of Imagination is an international artists' society whose stated mission is to promote art of vision and craftsmanship. It has branches all over the world, and the American branch is a registered charity...
  
  
• Surrealism
  Surrealism
  Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
  
  
• Vienna School of Fantastic Realism
  Vienna School of Fantastic Realism
  The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism is a group of artists founded in Vienna in 1946. It includes Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter, Anton Lehmden and Fritz Janschka, all students of Professor Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts...
  
  

Sources

• Coleman, A.D. (1977). The Grotesque in Photography. New York: Summit, Ridge Press.
• Watney, Simon (1977). Fantastic Painters. London: Thames & Hudson.
• Colombo, Attilio (1979). Fantastic Photographs. London: Gordon Fraser.
• Johnson, Diana L. (1979). Fantastic illustration and design in Britain, 1850-1930. Rhode Island School of Design.
• Krichbaum, Jorg & Zondergeld. R.A. (Eds.) (1985). Dictionary of Fantastic Art. Barron's Educational Series.
• Menton, Seymour (1983). Magic Realism Rediscovered 1918-1981. Philadelphia, The Art Alliance Press.
• Day, Holliday T. & Sturges, Hollister (1989). Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920-1987. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art.
• Clair, Jean (1995). Lost Paradise: Symbolist Europe. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
• Palumbo, Donald (Ed.) (1986). Eros in the Mind's Eye: Sexuality and the Fantastic in Art and Film (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy). Greenwood Press.
• Stathatos, John (2001). A Vindication of Tlon: Photography and the Fantastic. Greece: Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
• Schurian, Prof. Dr. Walter (2005). Fantastic Art. Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8228-2954-7 (English edition)
• BeinArt collective (2007). Metamorphosis. beinArt. ISBN 978-0-9803231-0-8