"Fire and Ice; and Frazetta: Painting with Fire" Topic

I rewatched this last night for the second time. imdb.com/title/tt0085542 It was both better and worse than I remembered from my first viewing at least three years ago. The rotoscoping was more fun to watch, especially Teegra. The ending sucked even worse than I remembered: it wasn't worthy of the setting and opening plot. Bakshi obviously didn't know how to complete his films evenly: he'd start out slow and detailed with a good pace to pull you in, then suddenly the thing's in high gear and ending abruptly ("Oh crap! we're going over budget and running out of time, crap crap crap!")

The real reason why I bought the double disc DVD over three years ago, was to watch the second disc, "Frazetta: Painting With Fire", imdb.com/title/tt0363621 a documentary all about Frank Frazetta's life and career. I'm glad I bought this set for the documentary (even though the purported "second disc" with the "extras" and "outtakes" is not extant in this double DVD version). He was quite the interesting mixture: terrific athlete and influential artist rolled together. I did not realize how near death he was in his 50's, or how long he was deathy ill with an undiagnosed thyroid condition – EIGHT years!? As he was interviewed in his 70's for this documentary, he was still angry enough to "want to kill somebody". What a fighter. He died just last year and we paid our accolades then, but I just wanted to encourage you to watch the documentary sometime, if you were at all a Frazetta fan or even if you just knew who the guy was. What a zest for life! He makes me feel pale.

The singular factoid that floored me was how he typically went about his painting. He'd have a one month window to the due date. And he'd play with his kids, play ball with his friends, do something around the house (they bought and renovated a large property), ANYTHING but buckle down to the job of turning out the painting. His wife Ellie would say, "Frank that picture is due tomorrow." And he'd finally go to the studio and hit it. Most of his commissioned works were finished in a single sitting of anywhere from five to eight hours. Then he'd flop exhausted, affected by the outburst for days. I can identify with this! It's exactly how I've always done my projects: a furious outpouring of energy until it's done, as quickly as possible….

Most of his…works were finished in a single sitting of anywhere from five to eight hours.

And it shows.

Sorry but Frazetta was an illustrator, not an artist

A less gushing obituary here

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That's the reason why his stuff is so good, he didn't overwork it. He was both illustrator and artist. Like Michelangelo and Rembrandt. If you are going to get precise over where the line between artist and illustrator is "drawn", then at least half the other opinions will disagree with yours. An "illustrator" is merely an artist for hire. In the documentary the assertion is made that Frazetta is quite possibly the most influential artist in the last fifty years. I'd go along with that….

In the documentary the assertion is made that Frazetta is quite possibly the most influential artist in the last fifty years

Utter rot. If that statement's true, then Jack Vettriano is artistically a modern collosus.

Both produce(d) 'Athena art'. Not that I wouldn't mind a couple of Vettriano originals on the walls of chez Sage.

Utter rot. If that statement's true, then Jack Vettriano is artistically a modern collosus.

Never heard of him. Which kind of disproves your assertion.

Au contaire, I'd rather say it proves it. I suspect very few people have heard of Frazetta either.

Oh, come on…

Frazetta was one of the most influential artists of modern times . He broght the conan vision, his deathdealer is iconic ( thank Molly hatchet) . Vallejo is an illustrator while more techanically sharp his stuff lacks motion and a sense of impending . I am not familiar with Vettriano but will now goolgle him

Oh, come on…

I don't know how to break this to you, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Tate Gallery and the Louvre tend not to hang daubs of Conan the Destroyer on their walls. I further doubt that the Saatchi collection numbered Frazetta among its investments.

Because it's appeared on the cover of White Dwarf doesn't mean it's art.

Sorry, Sage, but ming31 is correct. Frazetta virtually created a signature style of fantasy/science fiction art, and even defined the imagery of Burroughs's and Howard's most well known characters. Whether or not he was an "illustrator" or an "artist" is a nonsensical argument. He produced art, ergo, he was an artist, and a highly influential one within the scope of the genre he concentrated on, and outside of it as well. "Frazetta" is a name known throughout the fantasy and science fiction world, and his style (even if not his name) is known and recognizable even to outsiders. (Consider the extent that Frazetta's style is often mimicked in parody depictions, or even serious illustrations— the original Star Wars posters, though done by the Hildebrandts, are clearly influenced by Frazetta's "heroic pyramid" approach.)

Whether one thinks of his work as "great art" or not is irrelevant— it remains influential, either way.

It doesn't have to be great art Parzival, it just needs to transcend its genre (pretentious? moi?).

I'm a huge fan of Lichtenstein's work.

III Corps, at Ft Hood owned the Death Dealer and used it as part of their Phantom Corp/Phantom Warrior theme. They even recently got a VERY cool statue done:

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So, I LIKE Frazetta.

Jake

Thanks for bringing up Vettriano, comrade Sage. I wouldn't mind one or two on my wall either.

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Warning the following link NSFW:

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Frank Frazeta designed Kim Kardashian. Isn't that enough?

His declining years also reinforce the image of the "worthless heirs". His "children" were squabbling over his legacy and shaming themselves before his body had attained room temperature.

Local boy.

But to be honest, he is as mucn an artist as Larry Elmore or the Hillebrand (?) brothers.
As CS says, an illustrator. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing wrong with that.

"Artist" is in the eye of the beholder.

He painted as well as anyone.

EDIT: Rhymes with "mits".

It doesn't have to be great art Parzival, it just needs to transcend its genre

And I would argue that Frazetta's art created its own genre.

The local museum of art had a Norman Rockwell retrospective last year. Another iconic "illustrator."

I don't know John. A lot of people are calling him an artist. To quote from a less gushing evaluation link of his life:

Frank Frazetta, who has died of complications following a stroke, aged 82, was a creator of fantasy illustrations, his muscular, bloodied heroes and shapely heroines inspiring and influencing later generations of artists. His covers lured readers into the worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Venus and Mars and below the Earth's surface to Pellucidar with Burroughs's most famous creation, Tarzan. His book covers were key to the revival of interest in the works of Robert E Howard, whose mythic warrior Conan was depicted by Frazetta in the 1960s.

and later in the same article:

…at the age of eight he was enrolled at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts and studied under the Italian artist Michael Falanga. He excelled at sport and was offered a contract with the New York Giants. His passion for art won out over baseball, but Falanga's death in 1944 and the closure of the school a year later, despite students clubbing together to pay the rent, made finding a job essential.

And I would argue that anyone that has as many artists admit that he was a major influence on them as have done so for Frazetta is a major artist in their own right.

Of course he was an "artist".

Yup, one of the best illustrating ARTISTS that ever picked up a brush.

Yep, the term "artist" is so broadly defined as to be practically meaningless. It does not imply mastery or even aptitude, creativity, innovation, or talent. It merely indicates that one expresses oneself in some equally broadly defined art form.

So sure: it can be applied to Frazetta. Or anyone else.

Allen

Oh, lookie… another "artist"…

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I don't know how to break this to you, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Tate Gallery and the Louvre tend not to hang daubs of Conan the Destroyer on their walls. I further doubt that the Saatchi collection numbered Frazetta among its investments.

Because it's appeared on the cover of White Dwarf doesn't mean it's art.

Does selling for a couple hundred thou count as art? Because MANY of Frazetta's originals go for at least that much. And Dino De Laurentiis tried to buy "Cat Girl" from Frazetta and he refused to sell for any price, which ed off the Dino, causing him to refuse to allow Frazetta to have any part in the making of "Conan the Barbarian". It's all in the documentary.

Connard, you are arguing a point that only proves how influential Frazetta is. (interestingly, both the Dino and Frank died last year….)

As to that, it wouldn't surprise me at all if some day MMoA did a "retrospective" of "20th Century Illustrators" that featured Frazetta's work, among others.

After all, he's dead now and can therefore be appreciated by the snobs.

It is the same difference between Fiction and Literature. What it will take is a generation of thesis topic starved grad students to write papers on him to transform him into an "artist".

In my view he was more of an artist than Jackson Pollack. I hardly credit the Tate or Met as arbiters in good art, they are great at singing from the same choirbook.

In my view he was more of an artist than Jackson Pollack.

I couldn't agree more.

My basic view is, if it could be done by a drunken monkey, it's not art.

Sounds like he would have made a good compsci guy.

Frazetta had a great influence in the comics world. The way he draw changed the way most artists in south america and in spain were working. Slowly and via shome Italian comic artists like Corto Maltese and he was like a "flag" against the prevailing – well here in europe- of the Belgian comic imposing style.
In the comics world there is a huge gap in concept from what was and is the "comics" in the US and in Europe. And what is a "serious", "dayly" and "intellectual" comic book or strips.
If they are artists? Well in the so called world of arts there are uge cataloguing differences between illustrators, comic artists, engraving artists, photographers – well you name it., but the established "defenition" of an artist are of those who work within the "art world" – galleries, museums, international art meatings (like the Chicago Art Fair, or Basel, Madrid's ARCO, Berlin or Freeze in London – this year expanding to the US – just to mention a few.

Hi

I don't have any prints of paint spatters as art supposedly illustrating sports.

I don't have any prints of a crucifix floating in a pool of urine.

I don't have an impressionist fractured faces as prints.

I am just so lacking in taste and unappreciative to realize that if it is in the Met, it must be wonderful.

but I have Frazetta all over my house. I am humbled that my tastes don't measure up.

Rocky

And YOU are to blame for EXPOSING me to Frazetta. I am forever scarred, and blessed….