Frank Frazetta vs Norman Rockwell

[luka]

@Corpsey watch this

 

[kid charlemagne]

 

[IdleRich]

Never heard of Frazetta.

Same

 

[IdleRich]

I've just realised what I thought was a famous Rockwell was by a guy called Grant Wood and I didn't actually know what Rockwell's stuff looked like.

Not same

 

[IdleRich]

There's nothing wrong with that, though. That's just like the way the Florentine workshops operated in the sixteenth century, or the Warhol factory.

Or Rodin or Murakami (not the writer) or Damien Hurst etc

 

[IdleRich]

My answer to the question in this thread's title is Alex Ross

Wondered when that name would be mentioned. In Gasoline Rainbow there is a bit where one guy insists that Ross was 7 foot 3 and now I totally believe that. Who cares about his paintings, man was a giant.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Wondered when that name would be mentioned. In Gasoline Rainbow there is a bit where one guy insists that Ross was 7 foot 3 and now I totally believe that. Who cares about his paintings, man was a giant.

Having hair like this is kind of cheating when it comes to height, though.

 

[sus]

I spent my day at an Art of James Cameron exhibit today

It actually really helped me make sense of who he is / his career arc

He's just that kid who drew nonstop through all his classes growing up, obsessed with scifi novels & covers (Arthur C Clarke in particular), Frank Frazetta's Conan drawings. Got into surrealism end of high school, drew Botticelli's Venus in blue jeans. Spent his 20s drawing bfilm horror posters, lewd borderline pornographic things to pay rent.

 

[sus]

Loved drawing: Spaceships, Creatures, Alien Habitats, Weapons (esp Guns), and Sexy Women.

 

[version]

Loved drawing: Spaceships, Creatures, Alien Habitats, Weapons (esp Guns), and Sexy Women.

Inspo for @line b.

 

[sus]

All his movies came to him in a dream when he was like 20 years old. He had this series of visions in junior college/when he dropped out of JC. One dream-image, one movie. Spent the rest of his life making them.

So Terminator starts with the single dreamimage of a chrome skeleton emerging from flames:

And Avatar starts with a bioluminescent forest + flying lizards. (Which bring to mind the triunal Jurassic of Ballard)

 

[version]

Wonder whether he feels the dream's a bottomless well or worries about the vision running dry.

 

[version]

If you've a powerful enough experience it seems to be fuel for a lifetime. It's not really what he's saying, but reminds me of Pasolini's Theorem when the visitor (God) leaves the family and they all go nuts in his absence. The son becomes an artist and keeps making these blue works just trying to capture the shade of his eyes.

 

[sus]

You can see where Avatar comes from even in drawings from his 20s, before he's made any films. In so many ways this series is the culmination of his life's work.

Anyway I bring all this up because Cameron thinks Frazetta's the King, and attributes much of his visual style to Frazetta. Frank's always got these great men who are riding or commanding or lording over megafauna. These great ancient warriorheroes under red skies.

The one below—IDK, I don't have a ton of experience with Frazetta, and I can't find a good visual match from quick Googling—but it feels like there's so much of the pulp skiffy aesthetic in it. This almost ecstatic, almost lewd and agonied depiction of flesh, and the massive android eyes behind it, metal orbits, little red lasers for eyes. It has something of the quasi-Renaissance, exaggerated/'pathetic' (full of pathos) Frazetta figure in it.

 

[sus]

Wonder whether he feels the dream's a bottomless well or worries about the vision running dry.

Guy's a mega acid head and thinks his every idea is genius, I think he isn't worried. Probably more that people around him are worried about the next crazy idea.

 

[sus]

If you've a powerful enough experience it seems to be enough fuel for a lifetime. It's not really what he's saying, but reminds me of Pasolini's Theorem when the visitor (God) leaves the family and they all go nuts in his absence. The son becomes an artist and keeps making these blue works just trying to capture the shade of his eyes.

Yeah, Ginsberg narrates his own life this way—a single early breakthrough vision of Blake speaking to him in a Harlem apartment, post-orgasm.

Leary too, a rebirth moment, a chrysalis in Spain under extreme stress/identity provocation.

Neither of them on psychedelics, by their account.

And then each spend the rest of their life in the wake of that moment. Ginsberg IIRC pledged an oath (immediately post-vision) to uphold its memory & never forget, to live in service of it.

 

[version]

Yeah, Ginsberg narrates his own life this way—a single early breakthrough vision of Blake speaking to him in a Harlem apartment, post-orgasm.

Leary too, a rebirth moment, a chrysalis in Spain under extreme stress/identity provocation.

Neither of them on psychedelics, by their account.

And then each spend the rest of their life in the wake of that moment. Ginsberg IIRC pledged an oath (immediately post-vision) to uphold its memory & never forget, to live in service of it.

Lynch seeing the bloodied naked woman in the street when he was a child.

 

[version]

Anyway I bring all this up because Cameron thinks Frazetta's the King, and attributes much of his visual style to Frazetta. Frank's always got these great men who are riding or commanding or lording over megafauna. These great ancient warriorheroes under red skies.

Cameron's tried to pull away from him re: women. I dunno how much he's managed it as he kind of does it by modeling them on the masculine warrior, but there's clearly a distinction between Frazetta's women and Cameron's.

 

[sus]

Lynch seeing the bloodied naked woman in the street when he was a child.

Oh! I had no idea that scene was autobiographical. Yes.

 

[sus]

I think because I've always been a Script Man, I've failed to appreciate how many directors are visual-first, begin with an image and only later do we make sense of it in words, a sense which can only ever approximate the logic of image. (Rather than starting with words/script and adapting images from them.) Lynch is an obvious one.