Luke Morris
PHL 493 – Aesthetics Seminar
Dr. Jim Stephens
Fantasy Art and the Aesthetics of the Heroic
Art affects us in various ways. Different works of art affect a person differently, and a single work of art will affect different people differently. We laugh, cry, sneer, and introspect in response to different works, and it is hard, if not impossible, to point to a single objective criterion that explains why certain pieces of what we call ‘art’ have the effects they do. Plato and Aristotle might say that such ‘aesthetic experience’ consists of the apprehension of beauty. But what is beauty? It takes many shapes, obviously, and, like art, does not admit of any definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Indeed, to come up with a comprehensive conception of beauty in art would be outside the scope of a single paper; the most I can do is point to a few works that instantiate a particular type of aesthetic experience in the viewer, and to show what such works and the perceiving of them might consist in. A subject that deserves merit in this regard is the fantasy illustration of Frank Frazetta. Through its subject matter, emotional expressiveness, and use of form, fantasy art like Frazetta’s arouses in us an engaging and powerful aesthetic experience: a glimpse or feeling of the heroic.
Subject Matter
The sword-and-sorcery genre of fantasy art, of which Frazetta is an exemplar, commonly focuses on great warriors – human or non-human, male or female – doing great deeds in a grand-scale setting. Frazetta’s The Eternal Champion, for instance, features a solitary horse and rider, in armor, battling what appears to be an entire army. It has a kick-ass quality of the grandiose that our puny lives could never hope to match up to in any literal sense, but those of us who are disposed to this type of work can see the beauty of the subject portrayed. We have similar reactions to such works as Chained, a cover for an old Conan novel: the scene is a dungeon, and we see in the foreground the back of a figure, whom we presume to be Conan, with his wrists chained to the stone floor, his muscles tensed in straining against his captivity, his legs straddling the body of a giant snake, whose head in the is ready to strike the protagonist. Such work is obviously not strictly representational. Like most of Frazetta’s art, they exaggerate the subject(s) of their focus to mythical proportions, making not only the heroes but the whole world in which they live seem fantastic and menacing. The point of these two pieces, from a representational point of view, is to give us a frozen action-snapshot of characters and story that are familiar enough to the audience that we might be able to fill in the gaps in some way.
Aristotle says of poetry that “a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility . . . the artist ought to improve on his model” (123). Frazetta certainly does this in spades. Whatever the positive qualities of the human figure in question, whether musculature or grace of movement or (for females) big breasts, the artist is all too happy to portray them in all their idealized glory. If Plato were to imagine the Form of beauty instantiated actively, sensually, and sexually within the human body, Frazetta’s creations might be very like Plato’s imagery. Again, while the art is representational, as opposed to abstract or absurdist, this type of representation is not merely mimesis. Rather, the fantastic style of subject portrayal follows more in line with a content theory of representation, a quality of aboutness. It does not resemble, reflect, denote, or give a convincing illusion of the reality of its subject (Carroll 34-38), but it nevertheless does have a definite content, something it is about. In short, the picture is about the story, or more precisely about what is happening in some possible story at a particular moment in time. To the extent that we do not have further knowledge of its context, then, we, the audience, with nothing more to go on than the single frozen instant on canvas, are left to write the beginning and end of the story for ourselves,. And that is half the fun.
Emotional Expression
In addition to the story-type of content they represent, Frazetta’s artwork also embodies and expresses a great deal of emotional content, which an audience-person in the right frame of mind can feel for himself. Frazetta’s action scenes are exciting and tense; as part of the story theme, we know that we are seeing a moment of frozen action before something incredible happens. We can imagine what happened before and what is going to happen next, and if we actively engage the painting, if we let the work pull us into its world and show us its story from the central subject’s point of view, we can intensely feel the mood of the whole piece. When we engage the painting directly, for what it is, for what it expresses and represents, it draws us in, it makes us take the part of the character and feel what he’s feeling – fear, anger, excitement, euphoria, or a mix of them all – in a way that has an emotional resonance with how we have felt these emotions in our own lives.
Frazetta’s subjects, however glorified, are never stoics. Under a lesser artist the central characters might act the part of cool-headed warriors, merely carrying out their function as they do all the time, as entirely dispassionate automata filling a role. Frazetta is different. Though his heroes do seem to fully embody the virtues of resoluteness and courage, they nevertheless resonate with emotional content. Even though the Eternal Champion’s face is covered in armor, we can still feel his eyes shining with battle-frenzy, we can feel the rage in the slash of his blood-covered blade, we can put ourselves in his iron boots and feel anger, excitement, adrenaline, and a touch of fear (which we can certainly see in the face of his horse, who appears quite distraught at the thought of battling an entire army). According to Noel Carroll, in expressivist art, “what gets expressed are certain emotional qualities . . . notably, emotional tones, moods, emotively colored attitudes, and the like” (81). It seems that, for me anyway, Frazetta’s work certainly expresses these qualities in its representation of story-moments. Granted, in most of his paintings, the emotions expressed tend to be similar – excitement, anger, fear, a kind of wild joy – but this hardly detracts from the quality of the expression. If a piece or a set of pieces works well in conveying an emotion or putting us in an emotional state, it has been successful. And when one actively engages a work like Chained, putting himself in Conan’s sandals, he knows the fear and anxiety of the character. The piece itself has a distinct mood: red mist and dulled colors create a gloomy and ominous area in which the action is to happen, and the tension in the hero’s arms and shoulders betray his own trepidation (one almost imagines that we can see him shaking), with human bones on the floor and living gargoyles in the background enhancing the effect. If this does not count as emotional expression, nothing does.
Use of Form
While Frazetta’s work clearly has representational content, and it certainly conveys strong emotions, neither of these would be possible without his mastery of the necessary forms. Frazetta’s use of colors, for instance – sometimes subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle – help convey the subject matter and emotional content of the piece. He loves the reds and browns that make up earth, fire, armor and flesh, and he combines them in a vast array of tones depending on the mood and story he wishes to convey. He arrays his soldiers in shimmering or rusted armor, bright-colored tunics or leather coats, typically leaving bare as much taught, scarred skin as he possibly can. How the character is dressed, and in what colors, tells us a great deal about who he might be and what type of story he might be a part of. We can tell, from Conan’s bare and bleeding flesh, that he is some type of barbarian warrior. The colors surrounding the characters are equally important, as they establish the overall mood of the action taking place – the yellows and reds in the valley behind the Eternal Champion portray the fires of battle, and hint at the probable hopelessness of the hero’s situation.
These works also show that the artist has a deep understanding of the body. Even in non-human, non-real subjects, the biological realness of the physical form shows through. Frazetta truly understands the body in motion, how it functions and how it looks, biologically and aesthetically. His portrayal of musculature, of the angles of joints and limbs working in unison, of body parts moving themselves to clash with others, give all of his work a smoothness, a flow, that complements the violent edginess of his subject matter. The stolid human, the uncoiling serpent, the raised weapon-arm, the crouching demons, the snapshot of fictional bodily forms in action demonstrate’s Frazetta’s intimate knowledge of his subject. Were he not so involved in what he does, he could make good money as a portrait artist.
The formal structure in Frazetta’s work is classical: it places the subject in the center of the picture, and all the surroundings, foregrounds, and backgrounds draw our eyes to that center. At the center, much of the time, is the subject’s head or face, through which the work conveys the emotion of the piece. The story if often told on the periphery, through the subject’s surroundings and the way his body looks in reaction to whatever happens to be in those surroundings. If “content is whatever makes up the artwork, and form is the way that whatever makes up the artwork is organized” (Carroll 137), and the content of Frazetta’s work is the story it pictures and the emotions conveyed by and through that picture, then having a good grasp of form will presuppose that Frazetta organizes his images in such a way as to tell the story and express its emotions as well as they can be told and expressed. And it seems obvious from the way that one who engages the work experiences it that the artist’s use of form must be effective in accomplishing his aim. Drawing us to the center, then pulling us back to the periphery for context, forces us to take the whole illustration into account, to interpret it in full, as it is in itself, from our own standpoint of personal engagement. And in many cases this draw to engagement will be part of the function of form in art.
The Aesthetic Experience of the Heroic
No one aspect of artwork can be necessary and sufficient to make it ‘art,’ but any one of these qualities, or the combination of some or all of them, can contribute to making it ‘beautiful,’ through giving its audience, whoever they may be, a near-transcendent experience of its aesthetic qualities. We attend to such an artwork on its own terms, but this does not mean that our attention must be ‘disinterested’ (Carroll 171). Indeed, it is often the specific interests one brings to an artwork that allows him to fully appreciate the aesthetic experience that it offers him. This is certainly the case in much of Frazetta’s work. Some people simply cannot appreciate it, it doesn’t ‘strike them,’ it holds no meaning or significance for them, and it gives them no strong aesthetic experience, because their own subjectivity is not geared towards this type of art. Some fans of Warhol and Picasso, for instance, may simply find no value (for them) in any portrayal of heroic greatness, of larger-than-life heroes and worlds; they may see it as a naïve, albeit popular, throwback to a bygone age. Yet this does not show that the work has no value in itself. Frazetta’s artwork is grandiose and, some might say, ‘overblown,’ but that does not make it bad, nor does it undermine the quality of the aesthetic experience for those who can appreciate it. The personal appreciation of the heroic is only one type of aesthetic experience among many, and it is as genuine as any other, however one may compare the qualities of the works themselves.
Those artworks of
Frazetta’s that portray beings in action convey the idea that whatever is going
on, we are only seeing a small frozen moment of it, and the actual event itself
is big, important, and life- or world-changing.
The picture we are seeing is nearly always part of a larger story, and
within its own world it is a story of no small consequence. We do not know who the Eternal Champion is
fighting, or why, but we know implicitly that he would not take on an entire
army, nor would they focus on him, unless something immense was at stake. Frazetta does not merely give us pictures of
isolated events, but of whole worlds in which those events take place, of which
those events form a sort of center. The enormity of the situation portrayed adds to the emotional flavor expressed, as well, in placing
more import on, for instance, the ominous tone of gloom in the cave.
In addition to the
imagery of new worlds and the implied significance of the events drawn, the
heroic qualities Frazetta embodies in the poise of the heroic subject, or in
the action which the subject undertakes, show that, whether for good or for
evil, there is something grandiose about the subject, something that excites
us, that moves us to point at him or her and say “I want that.” The term ‘heroic,’ as I am using it here,
does not imply moral goodness. It involves
a certain greatness of character, a way of being or acting that is
‘larger-than-life.’ The vision of a
subject living in such a way that he could be such a hero as Frazetta presents
is inspiring. Granted, most of us do not
have any desire to go to battle, and many of us do not feel the job of a
warrior to be as noble a calling as the romanticized vision implies. Still, in interpreting Frazetta’s
illustrations we can see his heroes as exemplars of courage, fortitude, and
greatness of spirit, that can properly serve as a
something to admire or even emulate. And
this is the aesthetic experience that Frazetta’s subject matter, emotional
expressiveness, and use of form provides us: a very special sense of the
heroic, the great, the imagined ideal.
First work: The Eternal Champion (1970). Earlier version appeared on the cover of a Michael Moorcock book of the same name. Horse and rider frozen in action: one man in armor, on one horse, battling a whole army. The rider takes center stage, the chief subject of the piece; he brazes a silver shield ingrained with a design of some black birdlike animal on his left arm, while his raised right hand holds a battleaxe in striking position, blood running down the blade. The horse and rider face enemy soldiers on both sides, before a background of threateningly barren mountains, and what looks like a welling fire immediately behind them. The most colorful part of the piece is the blood running down the axe, and the reflection of fire on the underside of the warrior’s helmet – dealing very subtly in reds.
Second work: Chained. Done for the cover of Conan the Usurper, by Robert E. Howard. It features Conan in the foreground, with
chains on his wrists that are pinned to the stone floor. He straddles a huge, fanged snake, which
rears its head at him in the background and appears to be preparing to
strike. The ground behind and around the
snake is littered with human bones, and several gargoyles or goblins watch from
the dungeon steps behind. The whole
scene seems blurred by a reddish mist, which gives the whole picture a very
bloody view, though the action has not started yet.