Fantasy art existed long before his birth in 1928 and has certainly continued to flourish since his passing in 2010, but it’s safe to say that few illustrators have had such an influence and emotional impact on the field as Frank Frazetta.
Today, on what would have been his 88th birthday, I’d like to look back on Frazetta’s background and how such a unique person influenced fantasy art forever.
“We’re like the mockingbird that can sing in many voices.”
—Diane Dillon
I have to admit that I’m a skeptic when it comes to the subject of fate. I roll my eyes at the idea of predestination and astral alignment; kismet, divine will, providence, whatever you want to call it, I simply don’t buy it. That is, with one exception:
The Dillons.
When it comes to Leo and Diane my skepticism falls by the wayside and I can’t help but believe their meeting, their marriage, and their career was somehow preordained and inevitable.
I was thinking about portraits the other day, partly because of the “Making Faces” show currently going on at the Society of Illustrators, partly because I had just received a copy of Brian Movies that features Iain McCaig’s portrait of Harlan Ellison on the cover, partly because I noted the sale at auction recently of what, to me, was a not-terribly-good painting of Robert Silverberg by the late Ed Emshwiller.
What makes a successful portrait, particularly when the subject is a writer? The answer that immediately comes to mind is: personality. If the artist is able to capture something of who the writer is, not merely what they look like, and elicit responses from viewers and which prompts conversation… then there’s a good chance of creating art, not just a painted version of Glamour Shots.
Now, I’ve never really heard of any controversy surrounding a genre writer’s portrait; certainly nothing like the brew-ha surrounding John Singer Sargent’s painting of Madame Gautreau aka “Madam X.” The flip-side is that I’ve heard very few people say anything positive about some of the clever SFF writer portraits that have been done… so I think I’ll point out a few.
When I was growing up (sometime between the discovery of fire and the launch of Twitter) the Sunday newspaper featured a glorious mixture of color comics. Pages and pages of ’em: adventure, humor, detective, SF, and kiddie fare were all well-represented and some of the most popular strips received a full page to themselves. Dick Tracy chased a rogues gallery of cut-throats (both on Earth and on the moon!), Li’l Abner guzzled Kickapoo Joy Juice and dined on Shmoos, Steve Canyon fought Commies and Cold War spies, Dagwood ran over the mailman on the way out the door, and Prince Valiant roamed the medieval world.
Nowadays the newspaper comics have lost much of their past glory and luster (especially after the 1995 retirement of Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes), the sections have shrunk alarmingly (if not disappeared entirely), and only the barest handful of adventure strips are still being produced. Prince Valiant is one of those rarified few.
Jane and Howard Frank are world-renowned for their extensive collection of fantasy and science fiction art, so it was understandable that the collecting community was buzzing when it was announced that the couple were putting some of their drawings and paintings up for sale. On October 15 Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas, TX, offered 124 original works for bid and, despite all the worries about the economy, buyers were ready and waiting with their checkbooks in hand.
