This review originally appeared at Green Man Review.
Ooooh, eye candy. Really cool eye candy. Though I’m more skewed towards the old masters, such as that chap Rackham for his Grimm Brothers illustrations and also Sendak, particularly for his theatre and ballet work, there’s lots to appreciate here. Indeed there’s a smorgasbord here of art which, as Robert M. Tilendis noted in his review of Spectrum 13, can be a problem:
“I learned early in my career as an art reviewer to avoid group exhibitions, especially those with very large themes. I find many of the same problems in discussing the newest Spectrum: disparate visions, a wide range of approaches, and, since these are all illustrations, a variety of assignments. Not an easy thing to discuss.”
I, like Robert, prefer single artist exhibitions.
That said, Spectrum 14 is a dandy look at the year in contemporary fantastic art, with a more than merely decent overview of every conceivable type of artwork, including digital games (no, I am not being redundant — some of us remember and played games that were physical in nature!), sculpture, and book cover wrap-arounds to name but three areas covered here. Did I mention really cool eye candy? Oh, I did? Well, it’s worth noting that aspect of Spectrum 14 — The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art several times, as I was really surprised haw much I liked here given my inclination towards the masters of fantasy illustrations who were active close to a century ago. Admittedly there are some contemporary artists, such as Tom Canty (see his this cover for the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror — Eighth Annual Collection) or Charles Vess (exemplified by this front cover illustration for Charles de Lint’s A Circle of Cats) who I adore, but most leave me cold with their mechanistic approach to illustration.
Stainless Steel Droppings had the best opening line of any review I saw online of this series — ‘Each year as All Hallow’s Eve gives way to the glorious hues of November leaves, editors Cathy and Arnie Fenner and the folks at Underwood Books release a cornucopia of color of their own: Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art.’ Indeed they are right. Now I’m writing this review up a bit late (August of the next year — don’t ask what happened, as even a Moebius strip would seem straight forward by comparison!) but it still feel like a work to savour on a cool fall evening.
Start off with the excellent overview of the year in contemporary fantasy artwork by Arnie Fenner. After that, just start working your way through the ‘exhibition’ here — if this overview had existed as a physical exhibition, all the major art critics would be raving about it! And there’s a few major surprise pleasures here, such as the back of the tattooed lady! Hmmm. . . . So, you ask, what tickled my artistic fancy? Lots! The MacBeth Opera poster . . . the Dark Labyrinth illustration with the wonderful corset on the lady . . . the Robert Johnson depiction . . . the tasteful eroticism of the Love Lies Dying art work . . . the Lobster Johnson sculpture . . . the chilling Joker sculpture . . . . Oh, my — what a cool exhibition this is!!
Bottom line? Highly recommended for anyone interested in fantasy illustration!
(Underwood Books, 2007)
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