Not according to James Bowman. They and numerous others create what Bowman dismissively refers to as “fantasy art.” And fantasy art isn’t Art.
It always surprises me when I run across them, but I have to acknowledge that some folks just don’t like J.R.R. Tolkien. Shocking, I know. The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit. The Silmarillion’s mythopoeic tales. What’s not to like? Great works of art and creativity, right? Well, they might be creative, but they do not qualify as Art.
Mr. Bowman is among that group of curmudgeonly scolds that just can’t seem to abide anything that smacks of fantasy. According Bowman,
fantasy is not art, at least not in the sense that the term has been understood within the Western mimetic tradition going back to Homer. … Indeed, Western culture is so intimately bound up with the tradition of imitation in art … that the now more than century-long vogue for fantasy art, beginning with George MacDonald, J.M. Barrie, and Kenneth Grahame and continuing through Lewis and Tolkien to the more unrestrained science-fiction and fantasy cinema of our own time, should be seen as a repudiation, conscious or unconscious, of that Western tradition [“of making things that are like reality precisely so as to make claims to know reality and thus to distinguish it from fantasy”].
Bowman distinguishes Homer’s tales of gods and heroes because Homer actually believed these beings existed. The modern world, however, knows that elves, faeries, monsters, magic spinning wizards and sword wielding heroes don’t exist. To James Bowman these are childish fantasies that should be put aside in favor of reality. At the very least, we should not include fantasy in discussions about Art.
This makes me wonder what Mr. Bowman makes of Shakespeare’s Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I guess that’s not Art either. Unless, of course, the Great Bard actually believed in magicians, faeries and donkey-headed men.
Art isn’t art unless it represents reality? That doesn’t make any sense at all. If he wanted to say that anything that didn’t represent reality had no value, it would have been idiotic but at least it wouldn’t have been entirely nonsensical. He doesn’t seem to know the definition of the word “art”. I like the way wikipedia puts it “Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions.” How is what J.R.R. Tolkien did not that?
Art isn’t art unless it repesents reality? That doesn’t make any sense at all. If he wanted to say that anything that didn’t represent reality had no value, it would have been idiotic but at least it wouldn’t have been entirely nonsensical. He doesn’t seem to know the definition of the word “art”. I like the way wikipedia puts it “Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions.” How is what J.R.R. Tolkien did not that?
[…] einfach nicht mögen. Schockierend, oder?”. Dies ist die Antwort von Daniel Crandall auf The American Culture auf einen Artikel des amerikanische Medienkritikers James Bowman zum Thema Fantasy und Kunst. Dieser […]
Thank you for your post Paul, that pretty much sums everything up.
The more art seeks to be realistic the more fantastic it becomes. Writers of fantasy are more in tune with the nature of what they are doing than writers of realistic literature, in that they recognize the ultimate inability of a writer to understand much less mirror reality and the hollowness of any literary claim to “know reality.” When Tolstoy says all happy families are alike, he is creating, not describing any reality. When Dickens says it is both the best and the worst of times, he was saying something inherently fantastic, and not describing any possible “reality.” Avatar sucks, not because it departs from any mimetic tradition, and not because it is unrealistic, but because it is unimaginative.
Paul, I think you make an excellent point here, and your last sentence goes to the heart of the matter. One can easily reject Avatar and other works without rejecting all fantasy fiction.
D.W.
It is people like you who make it worth while for me to post:)
Tristram,
Being a fan or avid reader of fantasy has nothing to do with as you so crudely put it “Playing Dungeons and Dragons or memorizing our Vulcan.” Which its Klingon anyways that your thinking about:) We are simply defending fantasy as a viable medium.
Daniel, in defense of James Bowman, didn’t someone (maybe Oscar Wilde?) say “life imitates art” as a conscious inversion of an older notion that art imitates life? Admittedly things get a bit confused by the late 19th and 20th centuries but if one surveys painting, sculpture and literature before that time he will find it does imitate reality, won’t he? Even Bosch believed in the reality behind his paintings, the most famous of which depicted scenes from real places like Paradise and Hell.
Shouldn’t you guys be playing Dungeons & Dragons, or memorizing Vulcan vocabulary words?
To quote Tory
“He did say that the modern derivations of Tolkein and Lewis are dreadful crap because they do not connect with our emotions or beliefs in the same way as great past works of fantasy have done.”
This is not fact but opinion. While I myself thought Avatar was “Dances with Wolves” with blue aliens this is not the opinion of all.
Where my problem with Mr. Bowman lie are that for one item to be art it must eb belivable or I must believe in in it. And just quite frankly that is an opinion not fact. As well since Mr. Bowman mainly deals with movies I will use this as an example to compare “The Lord of the Rings” movies with the books is quite unfair. Simple because the full books are not translated to the cinema. But anyways I enjoy fantasy as it is an escape. I dont have to worry about a light bill or if its raining or whatever have you for just a few minutes of my time while I am involved in said fantasy. The same could be said for fiction, drama, comedy or whatever other thing or being you are dealing with. So lets continue the arguement, your turn.
Tory, that is the explanation Mr. Bowman gave in his 3/14 Diary entry. In the original article, however, that was not what he wrote at all. I’d suggest you take a look at my response to his Diary post.
All that Mr Bowman said was that modern fantasy movies like Avatar are rubbish because they have no real connection with real life. He did not say that Tolkein or Lewis’s writings somehow fall short of being art. He did say that the modern derivations of Tolkein and Lewis are dreadful crap because they do not connect with our emotions or beliefs in the same way as great past works of fantasy have done.
Don’t get your anoraks in a tangle people:)
Bowman’s point seems to be – if it is not “real” to the author – or at least someone the author writes for – it is not worth consideration. It cannot “mean” anything as art MUST be mimetic to be Art.
Shakespeare and Tolkien may have believed in their fairies and elves. They are dead. We can’t ask. But the Avatar and Star Wars guys say outright they just made it up, so there! No modern fantasist can say anything meaningful about the human condition because what they do is “not real.”
– scratches head – er… say what?
art by definition is: the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
Are we supposed to believe this joker has anything remotely intelligent to say after reading this?
I suppose Hieronymus Bosch was also ‘not’ an artist…he had fantasy creatures in his paintings.
It takes more talent and imagination to create a fantasy world than to replicate the real one. And reality is so vulgar & ugly in most cases. And it certainly takes NO talent to make people believe that the likes of Jackson Pollock & other impostors of his calibre are ‘artists’ either – you just need the creative BS spun by enterprising agents selling rubbish as art!
James Bowman repsonds: http://www.jamesbowman.net/diaryDetail.asp?hpID=366
In short, he thinks DC cherry-picked and attributed an argument to JB that he didn’t make.
What Mr Bowman seems to be suffering from is a massive failure of imagination, and a serious case of ego inflation.
How very sad.
I was about to mention Chrétien de Troyes or Rabelais but I guess Bowman would reply they actually believed in magic and giants – hard to accept regarding Renaissance Humanist Rabelais but go figure. Bowman is, however, missing the point: “realism” in fiction is not rooted in some millenia-old tradition but is instead a – relatively – recent phenomenon which first appeared in the 17th-18th century, flourished in the 19th and was progressively abandoned in the 20th. Western literature for centuries dealt with “ideal” figures and cared little for realism, verisimilitude and “real life” altogether. This is why chivalric novels for instance tell us nothing or very little about what actual chivalry or medieval life was like. Fantasy is thus not a “perversion” of fiction but a resurgence – and a welcome one as far as I’m concerned.
Fantasy is not art? What utter rubbish! Obviously Mr. Bowman is not familiar with using a dictionary:
ART: 4 a : the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced
Mr. Bowman lives in a fantasy world.
Thank you Mr. Crandall. All to often in todays “Politically charged” climate people jump on the conservative or liberal tags.
I’m not James Bowman. Let me know what you think:
[email protected]
Thanks to all for stopping by TAC and sharing their perspectives. Allow me chime in on this excellent discussion, mostly to respond to JayJay. That The New Atlantis’ can be described as conservative has nothing to do with it. I happen to be about as conservative as they come – socially, economically, and politically. I also happen to be someone who finds a great deal of value in the works of Tolkien, Lewis, MacDonald, Barrie, not to mention Edgar Allen Poe, Robert E. Howard, Neil Gaiman, Orson Scott Card and numerous others.
Don’t be so quick to judge the source by a label that has political baggage. Take on the argument presented and avoid the ad hominem attack.
[…] C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien Are Not ‘Real’ Artists? […]
One can also look at the website where this opinion piece was published: it is a conservative policy mouthpiece.
Of course in the same token not to get off the subject, but video games by many are considered an art form now. While some may agree or disagree with that(I personally believe the games of today are.) The stories and concepts that are put forth by todays games can and in some cases exceed in telling wonderful and memorable stories, not to mention having wonderful eye candy.
Gulliver’s Travels?
The Magic Flute?
The Ring Cycle? (Wagner, that is)
The Arabian Nights stories?
The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde?
Jackson Pollock?
A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
I suppose Death of A Salesman is where it’s at, then.
**sigh**
Spoken like a true critic – can’t do it, so he has to criticise.
Art is subjective. I’ve seen a pile of junk described as ‘art’. Not in my eyes. Everyone has different opinions, and EVERYONE should ignore critics and form their OWN opinion
of what constitutes ‘art’.
Not to read too much into motive here, but this kind of reasoning seems to me to be in place purely to reinforce the validity of what a person regards as “art” by contrasting it with a grouping of work that can be dismissed as “not art.” In other words, Bowman appears to want to elevate his preferred forms of art by making the classification more exclusive. High art, low art, contemporary art… these things can all be debated, but dismissing a huge section of work based purely on its setting, without regard for theme, symbolism, allegory or even craftsmanship is too simplistic by any reasonable definition for art.
I quite agree… Tolkien himself even says the same for the Bowman breed.
Ah, so Homer gets a pass because he really believe the gods existed. So what about all those Renaissance artists who painted portraits of Venus and Zeus and such? Did THEY believe the gods “really” existed? Will we now ignore Titan, and Rubens, and Michelangelo?
This is just another example of a critic dismissing something he personally doesn’t like using criteria that only works if you don’t examine it too closely. Thus it’s not worth any serious person’s attention.
One suspects that JRR Tolkien would regard James Bowman and his views with much the same regard as James has for Tolkien.
How absurd. The fellow hasn’t any idea what he is talking about. Tolkien came up with Middle-earth, writing about it as if it were our own world, a historical legend on par with Homer. The stage for the Lord of the Rings is our own earth, this place three rocks from the sun. The same with the Iliad and the Odyssey. Tolkien believed his work to be true, not that the events actually happened but that they portrayed what was true in a way this modern world can’t. Both Tolkien and Homer believed their works to be “true”. If Homer is a “real” artist so is Tolkien. Thus, by Bowman’s own reasoning Tolkien’s work is art. In that sense, Tolkien’s stuff isn’t really fantasy at all. If he would bother to pick up the Professor’s letters and essays… I would like to know by what source Mr. Bowman has it that Homer actually believed what he was writing about was true.
Tolkien and Lewis make use of the most ancient means of sub-creation (that is “Art”) through imaginative literature. Their works look for meaning in the “real world”, and the truth of the “real world” is imbibed in their works. If Mr. Bowman does not consider that “art”, I believe he thinks “art” is something rather different and I pity the man…
Bowman doesn’t fully understand the different concepts of what “reality” is. His ideas are historically and – yes – aesthetically plain wrong.
Unfortunantly for Mr. Bowman I no longer believe in his existance. Therefore to VERY loosely quote from the above article “James Bowman is a childish reality that should be put aside in favor of fantasy.”. Have a nice day all.
Did James Bowman *ask* Homer if he believed in the Gods? What if he didn’t? there is certainly evidence in the poems to suggest that those telling it took their role in the world a little lightly.
If Mr. Lewis were still with us, I’d love to hear his response to this.
[…] March 11th, 2010 by DiveTwin | Source: The American Culture […]
I recall John Gardner’s dictum, in _On Moral Fiction_, that religious literature could not, by definition, be moral literature.
And, just to confuse things, the opinion of a local SF/Fantasy maven, heard years ago, who declared that “You can only write fantasy if you’ve stopped believing in the supernatural.”
We live in a strange world of ideas.
All art is fantasy.
[…] C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien Are Not ‘Real’ Artists? | The American Culture […]
James is a very sharp man, and I certainly would not want to go head to head with him in a debate on film and a host of other topics. I was stunned when I got to the section I cite in what is otherwise a very good article.
The great works of fantasy and science fiction are so because they embrace very real human emotions and motivations: love, hate, jealousy, greed, charity, anger, joy, etc. Just because one wraps these things up in space ships, aliens, magicians, monsters, faeries, and swashbuckling heroes doesn’t make them any less real.
And the fact that these emotions and motivations are presented in fantastical stories doesn’t, by fact of their genre, make them lesser works of art. It might make the high-culture snobs grumble into their brandy snifter, but A Canticle for Leibowitz is just as much Art as is Austen’s Emma. It is not a lesser work simply because it’s been classified as science fiction.
Avatar is lesser art, but not because it’s a science fantasy. It’s lesser art because it’s a cliched, unimaginative, rehashed story that obscures its flaws with special effects and pretty pictures.
An excellent rejoinder, Daniel. Jim Bowman is a very perceptive critic, but I fully agree that his limited view of what constitutes art is both historically false (as you so pithily point out) and aesthetically unjustified. In addition to throwing out opera–and all non-illustrative music, for that matter–much else would have to be jettisoned under his standard. To dismiss all romances as not being art is clearly utterly bizarre and ill-advised.
When a theory doesn’t accommodate reality and common sense, discard the theory. Bowman’s motives are surely good, but his means are faulty, in my view.