~ fantastic art surreal sites ~
established surrealists / artists of fantastic realism
Links below are to online references and to books (my recommendations available on Amazon - except for Dalí & Giger, on whom very many books exist, or Toyen on whom I have no books).
Remidios Varo
Varo book 1
Varo book 2
ADDITIONAL BOOKS
The Symbolists were the precursors to the surrealists:
[must have] Symbolists & Symbolism by Robert L. Delevoy
Concise enyclopaedia of Symbolism Jean Cassou
surrelists/ism:
A Dictionary of Surrealism José Pierre
Surrealists & Surrealism Gaëtan Picon
Phaidon encyclopedia of surrealism René Passeron
SURREALISM Uwe M. Schneede
objects d'artWilliam Griffiths : METAL COUTURE
galleries 2
museum morpheus :CONTEMPORARY MASTERS
society of the imagination : ARTOFIMAGINATION-ORG
visual escapes :
digital renaissance (digital artists) : DIGITAL-REN
innervision : TRIPOD/INNERVISION
With the fall of Iraq to US-led forces in early 2003, the world got to see the artistic sensibilities of Saddam & his sons as evidenced by the art they chose to decorate their gaudy palaces.... The painting above (or rather, most probably, a copy of that image) was one of the murals found within one of Saddam's palaces which made front page news here (in Australia, e.g. MX). It is a painting by fantasy artist Rowena Morrill (the image source is: http://www.grex.com/rowena/pics/row06.jpg), ... and although it was probably copied without gaining copyright approval from her, the image featured in news stories here, was seen as a demonstration of Saddam's & sons' poor artistic sensibilities ... (at least as it was reported here, e.g. MX- ...so even if we can't find WMD we can at least celebrate the end of their sponsorship of poor taste in art?).
(sorry Rowena. ... you have a gorgeous technique! ... your lava painting ("on the surface") for instance, is technically very beautiful ...
to see Rowena's work:
Rowena Morrill : http://www.rowenaart.com )Much Fantasy art is exhibited online as fantastic! Although the two terms are not interchangeable the practitioners and promoters of kitsch (like Spectrum) market it thus... Which means that bona fide surrealist/fantastic/symbolist artists are lumped together with their kitsch counterparts.
SPECTRUM : a compendium of kitsch ( its inaugural "fantastic art" prize went to Frank Frazzetta ... oh dear!) ... and the Fenners promote their publication Spectrum as: "The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art"...( at least on their site at http://www.underwoodbooks.com/spectrum.html 9/8/2003)!! ...which is why their link found its way here....
Thus, here follow some links to some of the fantasy kitsch that is peddled as "fantastic"... the type of kitsch the second rate search engine, google, brings up on its first page of a search for "fantastic art" (Jan 2004). Just goes to prove that a "googlebot" can never replace the human element:
SPECTRUM : http://www.underwoodbooks.com/spectrum.html
Frank Frazetta : http://www.frankfrazetta.com
Bob Eggleton : http://www.bobeggleton.com[this site of dragons(!!) is no.1 in a google search for "fantastic art" 21/3/2004!]
Dominic Harman (sci-fi kitsch) : http://www.dominic-harman.com
(... this is not an exhaustive list of fantasy/kitsch artists... there are many others ... like Benscotter, "Brom", etc... just to name a few.)
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