I’m posting this separately from the Artist Comments post because my comments are unrelated to the original question about fantasy art vs. fine art. I’ve read the posts and I agree with all of them, but in varying ways. My overview thoughts are as follows:
The first paintings, sculptures and dances were visual and visceral prayers. In all cultures throughout history the arts were handmaidens to the various religions. The urges, subjects, forms and styles of all the arts arose out of the rituals handed down from the primitive religions and superstitions of the ancient past. The religions and their devotees were the repositories, patrons and creators of the arts.
Since around the time of Rembrandt, Western Art became a handmaiden to commerce. Commerce gradually replaced religion’s role as sponsor of the arts. It’s this sponsor which has held sway to the present day, culminating in a machinating collusion between art museums and art galleries; both of whom are totally dependent on government support and wealthy patrons who ultimately use the arts as profitable tax deductions.
Modern art movements and individual artists are fabricated and marketed in much the same way as other products and services; i.e., advertising, public relations, gossip columnists, bought and hyped criticism, manipulative press releases, hired/duped historians and scholars, etc., ad nauseam.
It’s my opinion that when artists become subservient to any authority other than their own individual imaginations, they begin to copy for the sake of copying, such as in the kitsch and schlock of recent years, and their art dies from lack of independent originality. Regardless of their originality or lack of same, the most prominent artists in the current so-call Post Modernist art world are those who have been packaged and promoted by the wealthiest and/or cleverest entrepreneurial cons in that business.
The reason digital art has not been embraced by museums as an art form in its own right is because art dealers haven’t yet devised ways to market it as products which retain an exchangeable exclusivity in the way tactile paintings and drawings can.
It’s my opinion that digital art is the beachhead to the future and the only bastion of freedom left to the independent artist who is moved by the ancient spirits of visual and visceral imaginations.
