cklarock

Saturday evening, Sophie, JesseJ and I were out together having a chat over curry and crepes. We were discussing the media monopolies that are dominating the publishing industry right now, and how this hegemony is affecting what ideas (and by extension, what artists) are getting exposed and put out there-- even to the extent that it affects the sorts of cultural/intellectual frameworks people use to approach art.

The culture of celebrity is not the sort of hydra that is concerned with talent or relative quality.

My take was that the human spirit is extremely curious and ultimately ascendant, and youll always have this class of artists who are going to essentially do whatever it is they do, despite (or even because of) the lack of mass understanding. I think street artists are a great example of thatif you are a hot graff artist you will have fame, but only from other graff artists and the graff-art cognoscenti.

Outsider art as the ultimate insider art.

From this point of view, any street art that gets exposed (even ol Neckfizzle) is a good thingthe individual artists getting elevated arent always the best examples of the genre, but I believe that the idea will filter through: some kid right might be putting worthwhile artwork up in the alley down the street from where you are right now.

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Why did I list D&D fan art as being below Neckface? Mostly to be funny. In reality, they are probably snuggled right up against one another at the ass-end of the suck spectrum.

And whoo, some of it really sucks. Check this out:



^ To be fair this is an example of the bad stuff, but there is also some decent stuff out there, my fan-art included.

p.s. If one of you reading this actually made the drawing I posted above, Im sorry I had to call you out like that; had I known it was you, I wouldnt have chosen your epic-level half-dragon shade-touched succubus paladin/monk/ninja to make fun of. She still a killer, though.

^^ p.p.s. Dont make me post my 25th level fighter/sorcerer/spellsword.