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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 12/10/93 -- Vol. 12, No. 24
MEETINGS UPCOMING:
Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are in Holmdel 4N-509
Wednesdays at noon.
_D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C
01/05 A MILLION OPEN DOORS by John Barnes (Nebula Nominee) (MT)
01/26 Bookswap (MT)
02/16 Demo of Electronic Hugo and Nebula Anthology (MT)
Outside events:
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the second
Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call 201-933-2724 for
details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society meets on the third
Saturday of every month in Belleville; call 201-432-5965 for details.
HO Chair: John Jetzt MT 2G-432 908-957-5087 holly!jetzt
LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell HO 1C-523 908-834-1267 holly!jrrt
MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzfs3!leeper
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 908-949-7076 homxc!11366ns
LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen HO 2C-318 908-949-4156 quartet!lfl
MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzfs3!leeper
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 908-957-2070 mtgpfs1!ecl
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
1. There are relatively few professions that show up in films.
Hollywood seems to have the idea that the vast majority of people
are doctors, lawyers, architects, filmmakers, policemen,
advertising executives, and maybe a few others. How often do you
see a film in which the main character works in a dry cleaning
store? How many people who maintain air conditioners? Probably
not very many. How many films do you see about engineers?
Relatively few, but I do have two good examples. On Thursday,
December 16, at 7 PM we will be showing two such films.
Engineering
DAM BUSTERS (1955) dir. by Michael Anderson
TUCKER (1988) dir. by Francis Ford Coppola
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These are both true stories.
_D_a_m _B_u_s_t_e_r_s is very unusual war film. More time is spent fighting
the establishment than the Germans. When World War II started, in
England an aviation engineer, Barnes Wallis, decided to treat
striking a blow against Germany as an engineering problem. He
analyzed vulnerabilities and decided just where they could be hurt
the worst. The Ruhr dams seemed like the right idea, but no bomb
then in existence could dent them and no plane could carry anywhere
nearly enough explosives. Well, what engineer hasn't had setbacks?
Wallis had to start rethinking and reformulating the problem. The
film is about ninety minutes of engineering and politics, then
about thirty-five minutes of the actual raid. Michael Redgrave
stars as Barnes Wallis and Richard Todd is an RAF commander in
charge of the raid. This has long been a hard-to-find film. This
film is based on Paul Brickhill's book of the same title. The book
has time to go into the engineering in more detail, but the film is
still unique and very enjoyable.
The war won, _T_u_c_k_e_r, an American engineer decided that what
Americans wanted was a new kind of car. Something unlike anything
was on the roads. But this put him in direct competition with the
Big Three automakers. Like Wallis, Tucker (played by Jeff Bridges)
has to buck the establishment. Like Wallis, he must do everything
he can think of to sell his ideas. And thereby hangs the tale.
His manipulations to get approval for his ideas and his attempts to
buck the establishment form the basis of this story. Martin Landau
won critical acclaim for his role. Francis Ford Coppola directs.
===================================================================
2. THE BROKEN GOD by David Zindell (Bantam Spectra, due out 1/94)
(a book review by Dale L. Skran Jr.):
As some of you may remember, I was vastly impressed by David
Zindell's _N_e_v_e_r_n_e_s_s, a tale of a far-future humanity on the edge of
godhood. In _T_h_e _B_r_o_k_e_n _G_o_d Zindell returns to this universe to
tell the tale of Mallory Ringess's son, Danlo the Wild.
The bad news is that at 694 pages, Zindell is in desperate need of
an editor. Although there is lots of interesting material here,
there are also multi-page expositions that should have moved
directly to the circular file. At 400 pages, _T_h_e _B_r_o_k_e_n _G_o_d would
have been an excellent novel. At 700, the reader finds him/herself
flipping pages once the main point of the exposition has been
gleaned. Also, just as in _N_e_v_e_r_n_e_s_s there is a really gross scene
about two-thirds of the way through the novel which could have been
covered in about ten percent of the words used (the scene is
important to the plot, but uggg!).
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The good news is that _T_h_e _B_r_o_k_e_n _G_o_d stands alone well as it traces
Danlo's journey from the wilds to Neverness, the city of glistening
multi-colored ice, on his quest to become a starship pilot. He
saves the life of his best friend and his worst enemy, and
eventually falls in love. This well-worn plot is enlivened by a
rich vein of philosophical speculation concerning how science might
fissure into dozens of sub-specialties with fundamentally different
ways of looking at truth. Imagine a world where logical
positivists have become a minority religious cult called
"Scientists" and you get some idea of what Zindell does best.
At his best, Zindell is engaging in a running dialog with the
reader on the future of what it means to be human, and to be a god.
Similar to _T_h_e _G_e_n_t_l_e _S_e_d_u_c_t_i_o_n by Marc Steigler or _T_r_u_e _N_a_m_e_s by
Vernor Vinge in his vision of the expansion of human consciousness
via computer enhancement to something akin to godhood (a process
Zindell calls, appropriately, "vastening"), Zindell takes us on a
wild ride through a future philosophical jungle, at a time when
advanced technology makes the realization of even dangerous dreams
possible.
_T_h_e _B_r_o_k_e_n _G_o_d takes place far enough in the future that Christians
and Jews are barely remembered cults, and religious conflict is
mainly between various branches of the Cybernetic Universal Church,
founded by the followers of Nikolos Daru Ede, the first god. Danlo
is engaged in his own radical quest to face the truth at any cost,
which, one guesses, will require that he eventually confront his
ascended father, Mallory Ringess, and resolve his conflict with
Hanuman the Cetic, his friend/enemy. Although this clearly takes
place in yet another sequel, _T_h_e _B_r_o_k_e_n _G_o_d ends on a reasonable
note.
This is the sort of book that makes you wish you could take a brief
break to get a Ph.D. in philosophy before continuing. I'm not
enough of a philosopher to know if Zindell is blowing smoke, but
the ideas are intriguing. With spreadsheets giving way to virtual
reality, and processor power doubling every two years, even the
"person in the street" is starting to get an idea of what
"vastening" might mean on an individual level. My personal
recommendation for the best introduction to this idea is either
_T_r_u_e _N_a_m_e_s or _T_h_e _G_e_n_t_l_e _S_e_d_u_c_t_i_o_n, and I especially suggest the
latter for people who think they hate computers and technology in
general.
Note carefully the use of "god" rather than "God" by both myself
and Zindell. At the end of _P_r_o_f_i_l_e_s _o_f _t_h_e _F_u_t_u_r_e Arthur C. Clarke
says:
They [future humans] will have time enough, in those
endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather
all knowledge. They will not be like gods, because
no gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed
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the powers they will command.
The point is that our "gods" are limited by our own all-to-human
vision of what godhood might entail. We can already destroy
planets. The control of life seems on the horizon. Physical
immortality is not beyond reach. The global telecommunications
revolution will soon create something akin to "far-sight" and
"telepathy." However, these are ancient hopes and fears, and in
time we will no doubt dream new dreams.
Zindell, Vinge, and Steigler are merely asking, "What happens when
we do possess the powers usually associated with gods?" Zindell's
contribution to this dialog focuses a good deal on the possible
mental state associated with godhood, and how humans might react to
the proven reality of vastening.
Zindell places this time period many centuries in the future but
Vinge and Steigler suspect the moment is coming on us like a
locomotive, propelled by a computer industry running at warp speed,
so fast that even those involved in it have no real appreciation of
what they are creating. Stay tuned--most of those reading this
will likely live to see for themselves who is right!
Fortunately (perhaps), God with a Capital G lies safely beyond the
reach of gods and men, who will always have faults and limitations,
even if, as Clarke suggests, those limits lie beyond the current
edge of our imagination.
Recommended to: fans of Zindell, Vinge, Steigler, philosophers,
would-be-philosophers, and people with some time to kill.
===================================================================
3. A Visit to THE ART OF MICHAEL WHELAN: SCENES/VISIONS (Bantam
Spectra, ISBN 0-553-07447-4, 1993, $60.00) (a book "visit" by Mark
R. Leeper):
Rather than simply to review this impressive book, I have decided
to log my experiences as I encounter the book, much as I just
finished a log of my experiences as I encountered India. The book
is, after all, almost a museum in compact form. The difference
between such a log and a review is that I reserve the right to
digress and tell what other thoughts come to mind as I experience
Whelan's book. Bear with me or skim. The same advice goes if you
don't have a copy of the book to consult.
To begin I should preface my remarks with my own attitudes. In
truth, I am sort of neutral toward Michael Whelan's art. I like
most of what I have seen of it but cannot say that I have ever been
totally bowled over by it. That is little reflection on him. Art
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is just not one of my major science fiction interests. At world
conventions I generally visit the art show, but walk through it
quickly and later can remember little of what I have seen. However
since this book has become available to review, I intend to review
it and get my impressions on paper.
I do go into this exercise with very one minor bone to pick with
Whelan, in general. That is I really do not like what he has done
with H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzies. I first read LITTLE FUZZY in
an old Avon paperback with a Fuzzy on the cover. That cover artist
portrayed Fuzzies as intelligent looking primates with a sort of
downy fur. That is just about right. Whelan's Fuzzies are little
teddy bears with huge glassy cat's eyes. He was clearly more
interested in making them cloyingly adorable than intelligent.
Whelan, the one time I met him, admitted that he himself was not
really fond of his own conception of the Fuzzies. It is among the
worst of his art, but it seems to have hit some sort of a
responsive cord and it has brought him some success all by itself.
In any case, Whelan has put together a major selection of his art
in a coffee table book. As of this instant I have barely looked
inside of the book, and I will give you my impressions as I do.
Whelan starts with a short enjoyable preface mostly saying he skips
prefaces in art books and you can also. Instead he has put in the
text of three interviews and lets Anne McCaffrey, Terry Booth, and
David Cherry bring out the questions the reader might want to ask.
Next there is a short introduction by Jackson Koffman giving some
biographical information and a commentary on some of the paintings.
A note here: there is a problem in the proof-reading. Two or three
of the page references point to the wrong pages. However the
paintings are worth digging out as they are well worth studying.
One in particular, for his Avatar series, resulted from Koffman's
suggestion that Whelan try consciousness deprivation. It show
pillars seven stories or so high holding the ruins of the room.
The same painting is also on the dust jacket, incidentally.
Anne McCaffrey's interview delves into the early days of Whelan's
interest in art, including an amusing story about what Whelan did
to his parents' coffee table. (Now why didn't I ever think of
doing that? I still might.) He also goes into contributions his
wife has made and contributions--or lack thereof--of teachers.
McCaffrey also gets him to say a little about how he distills an
image from a novel.
The collections of his paintings are divided in two sections--he
uses the term "galleries" which fits nicely into my concept for
this review. I often talk about art books which take "full
disadvantage of the medium." Typically that means that
illustrations are spread over two pages so that the crease ruins
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just about every picture. Whelan usually does not take
disadvantage of the medium. ("Wing" is spread over two pages and
while not as bad as it might be, would have been better if printed
smaller to avoid the crease.) His paintings generally appear only
on the right page in beautiful reproduction with very rich colors.
The left page has title, a two- or three-paragraph commentary, and
one or two small monochrome reproductions of alternate concepts for
the same cover or sketches he used to prepare the painting. The
title, incidentally, may be the same or entirely different from the
title of the painting or the work he is illustrating. I will use
the title Whelan has used in the book on the page facing the
painting.
The illustration for "Delirium's Mistress" shows a flying lion that
seems a bit unstable. The lion would have too much weight behind
the wings to keep its hind-end from falling down. Whelan's flying
dragons seem a bit more aerodynamically correct. Ray Harryhausen,
in a similar task, actually made a Pegasus look not too bad in
flight in his film _T_h_e _C_l_a_s_h _o_f _t_h_e _T_i_t_a_n_s. Even the lion in the
alternative concept on the facing page looks a little more air-
worthy, but this fellow in the painting looks like he does not have
enough lift in back. So his legs will fall, his wings will hit the
air at the wrong angle, and he will stall. Sure, you could say the
lion is magic and does not obey physics, but then why should it
have wings at all? Oh, this lion clearly is strange in one more
regard: it has the mane of a male lion, yet from this angle it
seems to be missing an important piece of plumbing that for most
lions is part of what makes having the big mane worthwhile. Poor
fellow will be able to attract flying lionesses with that mane but
then will find himself with nothing to do but flap his wings at
her.
Whelan's six pages of Fuzzy art are ghastly, but at least he gets
them out of the way early on.
His piece "The Amazing Dragon" did not do as much for me as the
possibly unrelated pencil sketch of a dragon on the facing page.
The muscular neck makes the pencil sketch more physical somehow.
It clearly wasn't the dragons that were on Whelan's mind when he
did "Dragonsdawn." The painting itself, and especially the drawing
that led up to it, show more effort on the female figure. Not that
it is a bad sight to look upon, but one wonders why young women are
always so attractive in Whelan's world. Hollywood takes a lot of
heat for using this myth equating virtue and beauty, but popular
graphic art like Whelan's does it no less.
The final dragon painting is "Dragon Fire" which reminds me a lot
of what I consider one of the greatest (and most under-rated)
fantasy films ever made, _D_r_a_g_o_n_s_l_a_y_e_r. The setting, the colors,
and perhaps even the head of the dragon remind me of the visuals
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from the film that came out early in the 1980s well before this
painting was done. Looking at the painting, however, there is
something very wrong with how the limbs come out of the body. What
I see is anatomically unconvincing, sort of like illustrations I
have seen of Edgar Rice Burroughs' four-armed Martians. I do like
the snake-like coloring of the dragonhide.
The covers for _T_h_e _S_n_o_w _Q_u_e_e_n and _T_h_e _S_u_m_m_e_r _Q_u_e_e_n are the sort of
illustration that gives inspiration and fits to costumers at
science fiction conventions.
For "Paradise" we have one of the rare examples where Whelan picked
wrong, in my humble opinion. The alien in the painting is almost
without personality. The one in his alternative concept, only a
slight variation, clearly seems to have a sort of wisdom and more
interest value for me.
"The Doll" brings to mind the hilarious story of Kate Pott, a
friend of mine, whose brother hanged her doll when she was young.
If you run into her at a Worldcon or a Massachusetts convention,
ask her about it. Again the alternate concept works better for me.
But, of course I am just back from the land of the Thugee.
Both illustrations of "Nightmare in Red" are good, but while the
main one is creative, the alternate is really disturbing, which
makes it a better choice. I think the same is true for the
"Boogeyman" choices. I don't think there is any connection to
"Tile Work" on the facing page, really. Clearly it is the former
he prefers, but it is the latter that really is disturbing.
Whelan's concept for "The New Springtime" is not too different from
what he should have done for Fuzzies, except it would not have paid
as well. Certainly the eyes are a lot better than the goggly Fuzzy
eyes.
"Aliens" is fun. It reminds me of some famous painting I have seen
but I can't quite remember.
I cannot say I like Whelan's lion-man as Chanur. That may well be
what Cherryh described in the novels, I haven't read, but when I
see this sort of thing I think of a silly film called _O_c_t_o_m_a_n in
which the monster was a ridiculous combination of man and octopus.
That creature was designed by George Barr as a joke after several
better concepts of what an octopus-man would look like. When I
talked to Barr he still cringed at the choice the filmmaker made.
In any case, any evolutionary scenario that would create such a
thing as this lion-man would be laughably absurd. Given that
Whelan had to create such a beastie, he probably did a reasonable
job, but it is a bit too sugary-cute a concept for me. Of course I
know there are a lot of cat fanciers out there who read Cherryh,
but as much as I am a dog fancier, I would _n_o_t like to see Whelan's
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concept for a race of Dachshund-men.
I am not sentimental about Heinlein sufficiently to appreciate
"Last Look Back." The painting, particularly its colors, shows a
strong Maxfield Parrish look.
How can they be "Amazons" if they all have both their breasts?
Whelan talks a little about what is necessary in doing a wrap-
around cover for _T_h_e _S_t_o_n_e _o_f _F_a_r_e_w_e_l_l. It must be different from
most paintings in that there must be two areas of focus at
different parts of the painting.
The bee-like ship for "Santiago" is a creative image and among the
better works of the book.
None of the above reservations about Fuzzies apply to Hokas. Hokas
are supposed to be cutsey. While these may not be the most
challenging images Whelan has painted, he has done a good job here.
"Red As Blood" nicely escapes being Disney-esque in style while
still being a very Disney-like subject. The black-and-white on the
facing page is a beautiful rendering of a horror scene. I take it
from the caption that "The Birth of Lilith" was not used. Still it
is better than a lot of his more familiar works. Of course the
black and white helps the mood. Colors would have to be carefully
chosen not to ruin the feel.
"Descent" is again in a color scheme reminiscent of Parrish,
perhaps not as much, but it is still there.
For "Daetrin," the final painting is much better than the sketch of
the alien. Whelan raises the question of whether the books with
the alien or the human on the cover would sell better since some
copies were printed with each, but he never answers the question.
I suspect the copy with the human sold better, but not to me.
For "Golden Witchbreed" Whelan says he needed was a symbol to tie
the composition together. Elsewhere he talks about symbolism in
his paintings. I wonder if the symbolism is picked up by the book
buyer on a conscious or even subconscious level. Or is it too
subtle to make the impression he is hoping for. The figures look
extremely unnatural and posed in this painting. I cannot imagine
how they would ever get into this weird position, but then I
haven't read the book.
Next we come to the "gallery" called "Visions." This section is
where Whelan is a true artist doing his own thing. The section has
non-commissioned art, art that Whelan has painted to please
himself. It starts with a quote by Jung: "The dream is the small
hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul,
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which opens into the primeval cosmic night .... In dreams we pass
into the deeper and more universal truth." Now this is purely an
aside, but I wonder how many of us have questioned whether that is
really true. Has anyone ever proven that the content of dreams has
more than superficial significance? Are they significant any more
than the position of the stars at the time of birth or the lines in
the palm of the hand? You can build something that seems like a
science out of reading deep meaning into any of these things, but
how do you know that dreams really do have deep meanings? Sure,
you can even appear to get some positive results out of studying
each, but that does not necessarily make them valid.
Terry Booth owns the Brandywine Fantasy Gallery and interviews
Whelan to lead off the section on Whelan's own art.
Whelan describes the difference between this art and the
commissioned art as being the material we have seen already in
scenes, what we are coming to now is visions. I guess that leaves
no room for simple images from his imagination. Or perhaps he
considers whatever he sees in his imagination as a vision. Maybe
it has to have the force of a vision to last long enough to get it
on canvas. Still calling them "visions" borders on pretension.
And he does seem to use the "Vision" art for commissions also,
apparently. Whelan says that his primary motivation in his art is
to express his personal visions. This work is closer to his heart
than the illustrations which he does to give him the financial
security to do his own stuff. Also the illustrations allow him an
opportunity to develop the techniques to apply to his visions.
However, the fact that he is a commercial illustrator is looked
down upon in the "serious" art community. Of course the serious
art community cannot support many artists very well, so it is my
guess that the really serious artists use everything they can to
establish a pecking order. And many of the most successful do art
that to me expresses a lot less than even Whelan's Fuzzies. There
is a lot of truth in serious art but also a lot of sham also, at
least in my opinion.
Whelan divides symbolism in his paintings into three categories:
narrative, conscious, and subconscious. Narrative symbolizes
themes in the book he is illustrating. Conscious symbolism is what
he puts in intentionally responding to his feelings about what he
is expressing. Unconscious is what he later reads into a painting
after--perhaps long after--it is completed. He gives an example of
the last by saying that there was a cover by another artist
fascinated him as a child and which he had forgotten about. Later
he used a similar idea in a painting of his own. Somehow I do not
think that has much to do with symbolism, per se, but with just the
use of one concept.
Booth says to Whelan, "One of the reasons your art is so successful
is that you can reach people who are unsophisticated about the art
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world but open to emotions and ideas." I had a chuckle at that. I
am sure it was not intended as a put-down, but grocery store
tabloids also appeal to people who are unsophisticated but open to
emotions and ideas ... ideas like "Elvis is living on Mars." I
think he left out that the people are not just open but also
discerning.
Booth and Whelan choose different interpretations of "The Red Step"
(page 139). Whelan painted this during a fit of artist's block.
The painting shows a huge building and people moving toward the
light. Whether that is optimistic (as Whelan thinks) or
pessimistic (Booth's view) is a matter of interpretation.
Whelan sees art is a way to capture and preserve an experience.
"Of all creatures on this earth, only people are aware of their own
mortality, of the mortality and imminent decay of everything," he
says. I am not sure how much evidence he has for that statement.
I would qualify it with an "It seems likely that ...."
Booth asks if Whelan has special preferences for how his art should
be displayed. Besides things like the right height off the ground
and proper lighting, he said he wanted no food at a showing of his
art. I guess it is a bit of a distraction.
Whelan says that his paintings should reflect the world but more
importantly he wants his paintings to explore himself deeper and
deeper with time. He calls himself a sort of Indiana Jones in his
own personal universe. Okay.
Thus begins the actual entry to Gallery Two: Visions.
"Passage: The Avatar" I described already. Looking at this image
of a truly spectacular ruin I started to ask myself what Whelan had
in mind that the complete building would have looked like. My
conclusion is that the painting probably does not make any sense.
The platform is probably wrong. At least it look too small to have
the much larger looking roof completely cover it.
This painting also introduces the flame-in-a-bubble image that runs
(floats?) through the "Passage" series.
Ironically, in this section of the book where Whelan is showing the
paintings that most represent his own ideas, he has less to say
about the works than he has to say about the commissioned art. He
probably feels the images should speak for themselves.
"Climber" shows a huge ramped structure, but my question is, "Is
there a climber in 'Climber'?" I see nobody unless it is supposed
to be the little brown spot in the middle of the picture.
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In "Armenia," a floating city has fallen in a desert setting while
cute Fuzzy animals play in the foreground. Technology fails and
nature lives on. Probably true, but it is more likely to be
insects--especially beetles--who survive technology. But they are
not as cute to us as something mammalian-looking.
The image of "The Causeway" does very little for me.
Whelan may know anatomy, but his physics seems lacking in
"L'Echelle." This flier would fall like a stone unless there is
some sort of magic keeping him aloft. "High and Dry" on the facing
page warrants a second look. The lizards have surprisingly
humanoid torsos. I didn't catch that the first time through.
In "Leavetaking" the position seems singularly uncomfortable. Why
would anyone not posed by an artist get into such a strange
position?
"Destroying Angel" is effective, though I doubt most of the
symbolism comes across. This painting on the death of Jimi Hendrix
strikes me as more impressive than anything Hendrix did. But I
admit I am not much of a Hendrix fan.
The painting "Sentinels" shows small humans on huge hawk-headed
statues of gods. Whelan is creating his own fictional mythology.
I think the painting represents a nice concept and in some ways
embodies what I look for when I travel to non-Western cultures. In
his commentary Whelan says he thought the picture was painted too
small. At exhibitions it gets lost among his other works. Now he
uses at minimum a four-foot-square canvas. Perhaps this book has
an equalizing effect. The size of the painting is lost in the
reproduction of this book. In any case, this is one of the better
works.
"Lights" is a Christmas card with idealized pictures of his two
children holding bowls with candles reminiscent of the flame
bubbles of his passage series.
"Passage: Verge" seems to over-dramatize Whelan's decision to do
his own work for a while without commissions. It represents
Whelan's insecurity over the decision to work on non-commissioned
art for a few months rather than do the more remunerative
illustration work. It shows a woman standing on a ledge over a
huge precipice. Personally I think the woman was is a more
dangerous position than he was. If the woman goes over edge she
will not come back, but Whelan can probably always go back to
taking commissions.
"The Subterraneans" is a piece showing a man dwarfed a huge
unknowable underground building. It evolved with time. Whelan got
the idea of how to show the huge structure while at his daughter's
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concert.
To make this huge edifice work Whelan said he had to break the laws
of perspective. However, it seems to me that nobody says he has to
obey laws of perspective. This is a digression, but it seem to me
that contrary to popular opinion your eye does not see following
the laws of perspective. (That is if I understand those laws and I
cannot totally assure the reader that I do.) The laws are just a
better description of the way things look than what came before
them. The laws of perspective, as I understand them, say you see
straight lines as straight lines, but that is only approximately
true over short distances. Actually you see straight lines as
subtle curves. Suppose you had a field of vision of more than 180
degrees, like a hawk does, and you were looking at two perfectly
straight parallel lines, say rails of an idealized railroad track.
Suppose you were standing on one rail so that the tracks went left
and right from where you are standing. The rails would at one time
seem to meet off to your left and off to your right at the two
vanishing points. Your eye could not be seeing those rails as
perfectly straight lines since the two curves you see seem to be
meeting at two points. Your vision would actually subtly curving
the straight lines. But if it would curve the lines if you had
190-degree vision, it is probably doing it with the field of vision
of about 120 degrees that you do have.
But I digress. Well I warned you I might. "The Subterraneans"
shows huge abandoned structures. The earlier "Sentinels" showed
mammoth hawk-god statues. These remind me of some of the immense
structures we saw in the Nile Valley. I can understand his
interest in huge abandoned archeological sites. They have much the
same appeal as visiting real historical sites.
"Two Worlds" shows a Pan-like figure fluting on a bone while in the
background we see a field of graves in Ethiopia. The theme is that
we in the West are powerless to help and bring change to the Third
World. I think the meaning does not come across. That may be just
as well since there are a lot of people in the Third World who
would find his attitude that we should be going in and solving
their problems patronizing and insulting.
"The Apotheosis of War" was supposedly inspired by the fighting in
Sarajevo. I have been in Sarajevo and there is nothing in the
picture that really is evocative of the city with its influence of
the architecture of three religions. Admittedly the foreground is
symbolic, like the horsemen of the Apocalypse, but the background
fails to capture Sarajevo. This is an emotional statement rather
than an intellectual one.
"Wide" seems a bit redundant with "Open." Both seem to show
entries into a new world to show up in Whelan's paintings. Whelan
wants to explore this world more fully. Actually the world he
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wants to explore seems to be the most angelically dull place
imaginable. I hope he has some good ideas because after two
paintings I have absolutely no wish to see any more.
The closing interview is about materials and methods and the
interviewer is David Cherry. Cherry was the president of the
Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists from 1988 to
1990, and being an artist himself can ask Whelan about the
technical aspects of his art.
Much of this discussion means very little to me and probably will
not mean much to other non-artists reading the book. It is a
discussion of materials used and of painting technique. For
example it covers why Whelan prefers acrylics over oils. Much I
skimmed.
If you look however, there are still interesting bits to cull from
the interview. Whelan had some problems with the model for
"Hecate's Cauldron" that are amusing.
Whelan is a little apprehensive about the video revolution and what
it will mean to artists. An art director told him that in five
years it will be video technology that art directors will be using
instead of artists. Whelan doubts that the director will be able
to find photos of dragons to process. Personally, I doubt the
technology will proceed all that fast. People tend to
underestimate both the size of the task of developing something in
technology and the power of persistence. That means people
overestimate technological advance on the short term and
underestimate it on the long term. Whelan may be wrong about how
hard it would be to photograph dragons, since artists like him have
provided many photographable images of dragons. They are
copyrighted, of course, but not every idea packed into one of those
dragon images is. If you take the surface texture from "Filed
Teeth" (page 48) and apply it to the dragon in "Dragon Fire" (page
56), then give it the body structure of "The Prize" (page 52), do
you really still have a Whelan Dragon? At what point does it drop
out of copyright protection? If an artist combined these elements
on canvas, I doubt Whelan would have much of a legal case. But
doing it entirely with image processing of Whelan's own images
might not give Whelan any more of a legal handle.
Cherry points out that people thought that photography would
replace art. Whelan said it only freed artists from drudgery art.
Well as my corollary to Santana, I say, "Those who remember the
past are condemned to be misled by it." Video-imaging is not just
photography, and it inevitably will be a big chunk of Whelan's
market--whether Whelan takes that chunk himself or leaves it to
others is up to him. I suspect an artist as good as he is will
never have to worry about employment, but the are a lot of others
who will be pushed aside by new technologies. Whelan said of
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"Filed Teeth" (page 48) that if he ever has to paint that many
scales again he will commit ritual suicide. Well, details like
that are just what video imaging will do well.
Whelan says there is no way to get an attractive permanent hardcopy
for video imagery. First for a lot of applications the hardcopy
you can get now is plenty good enough. Secondly the quality of
what will be available in the future will follow the demand. I may
be making the Santana error, but I suspect that hand-painted
imaginative images, like Whelan makes now, will be prized but
considered a luxury just like hand-made furniture is prized today.
Of course, that seems to be ignoring how much a component of art
imagination is, but what sets Whelan apart from thousands of other
fantasy fans is not his imagination but his ability to render his
ideas--essentially, his technique. And technology is going to make
technique a lot easier to come by or at least replace it with
something as effective. Lots of people with the imagination but
not the technique will be getting into the act and letting the
technology provide the technique. I didn't get much from the
discussion of materials, but I did get that an artist's materials
are hard to work with and take a lot of time--Whelan works sixty to
seventy hours a week--and very little of that is time spent
thinking up the idea. It is mostly spent on what the computer will
do very quickly. Until now materials have really gotten in the way
of expressing imagination in a visual way in a decent form. The
computer will change that.
Whelan finishes his book with an appendix with details showing
small reproductions, years, materials, who commissioned the work,
etc.
And with that the book comes to an end. My opinion of _T_h_e _A_r_t _o_f
_M_i_c_h_a_e_l _W_h_e_l_a_n is that it is a bit pricey at $60, but well worth
the effort to go through to experience Whelan's thought processes
and work. It also makes a good coffee-table book.
Mark Leeper
MT 3D-441 908-957-5619
leeper@mtgzfs3.att.com
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
-- Susan Sontag