Stretching back to the oral traditions of thousands of years ago, tales of heroes and disaster, creation and conquest, mythic themes inform our entire culture: fiction, movies, comic books etc.
Only Connect: The Naming of Things: Part Two
Art and Artists The first post of this two-parter looked at the naming of things in music, fiction and poetry. This one tackles the painted arts, and the philosophy of naming. Representational art is very popular. It appeals to our sense of the familiar and even when it tackles the big life issues, it offers one redeeming quality: a sense …
Only Connect: The Naming of Things: Part One
I’ve been painting most nights: acrylics, layer upon layer, broadly expressionist, abstract, intimate. But one thing troubles me: what do I call the paintings? You’d think it would be simple, but the ‘naming of things’ is not to be undertaken lightly. With its immediacy a painting seems to be different to a book, or a piece of music, and not …
Only Connect: J. Allen St. John
J. Allen St. John was a fine golden age illustrator of fantastic worlds, early adventure fantasy and science fiction. He is most famous for his Tarzan and John Carter of Mars art for Edgar Rice Burrough’s (ERB’s) famous work in novel and pulp magazine form but his influences include Roy G. Krenkel and the imperious Frank Frazetta and he lived through one of the most poerful periods of change in human cultural history.