Fantasy art work used to show our darker selves

                                                                                         

Much of art historically has been used to show the darker side of humanity to help us explore what makes people less then socially desirable. “The Raft of the Medusa” by Theodore Gericault is a truly dark work. The event the painting depicts shows the worst side of humans for on the first night of their departure people had begun to fight on the little raft, causing the death of nearly twenty people. It did not take long after this for those aboard the shipwrecked raft to resort to cannibalism, for many at the time it seemed that such an event showed how truly dark humanity was when left to their own devices. The rest of the 19th and early twentieth centuries where shaped by this idea, from Picasso’s “War” to “Heart of Darkness” artist it seems have been tormented by what makes the darkness of the soul.
Works of fantasy art will often explore this theme as will, only some fantasy art explores these darker emotions in a way that allows us to experience them. Such explorations can in many ways act as the now metaphorical music the Blues acts helping people to vent out emotions, or experience such emotions in a safer environment. Such depictions of the darkness are able to take on strange and often mystical seeming meanings when using fantasy themes. Because with fantasy we are able to show more then simply the understandable, we can show that which is beyond understanding, our dreams and our nightmares. Just as many cannot or will not understand the darkness outside of them, fantasy art work is able to depict something beyond the viewer’s comprehension.
Aaron Acevedo’s Demon is an interesting work exploring the dark themed world for its rougher and shadowed edge on a girls face. The title allows us to know of the darkness now within this person, while never understanding it.
Dan Frazier shows an ability to be both comical and dark, in his picture Fester the Jester. The annoying Jesters head mounted ceremonially on a patterned wall slowly rotting away while still holding a slightly deranged grin on his face. The name of the picture Fester helps allude to a TV series intended both to be somewhat dark yet mostly funny. Such works show the strangeness of the human mind and its inability to be consistent. For many inconsistencies is an indication that there is something wrong, hypocrisy being a form of evil. Yet the human mind is truly expansive, with parts in constant conflict, perfect consistency in truth would be a sign that a human has a problem, this form of exploration, that of the inconsistency of human emotions is one of the deepest values art can hold for humanity, and it is something that works of fantasy art can do better then any other.

About the author:
Ty Hulse helps to run the site http://www.dragonsmeet.net a site dedicated to the exploration and furthering of fantasy games, Fantasy Art, Fantasy RPG’s and writing.

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