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surreal art by Demetrios Vakras

Dark Surreal Fantastic Art

fantasy art : kitsch

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 maybe a copy ?) 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. If it is a copy it was probably copied without gaining copyright approval from her.

The image featured in news stories here, was presented 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 [site no longer exists])

Much fantasy art is exhibited online as fantastic art! 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!]

(... this is not an exhaustive list of fantasy/kitsch artists... there are many others ... like Benscotter, "Brom", etc... just to name a few.)

Post Script

The story on Rowena Morrill’s works appearing in the palaces of Saddam Hussein was even reported on the BBC, with Morrill proclaimed as “Saddam’s favourite artist” and Morrill herself apparently “stunned”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3025163.stm