2011 Tolkien Calendar will be Cor Blok

[Alatar]

For once I'll be skipping this. First time since 1986 I think.

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/930 ... r_Blok.php

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm not a fan of Cor Blok's, either, though I know some peope really like his work. It does nothing for me at all.

[Primula Baggins]

It's just not Tolkien to me.

[yovargas]

Never seen this guy's work before. Not even a little Tolkien-esque but I think that's really cool. I'd like to see more.

[Primula Baggins]

I don't think it's bad as art; I just don't think it conveys anything remotely close to the feeling of the book. Some other story, it would be fine.

[Elentári]

Wasn't overjoyed when I heard the news, either, I'm afraid.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

Well I like them. I'd seen the Amon Sûl illustration before but not the mumakil one. True they don't have the documentary feel that the book does but then neither did the movie.
If anyone gets one as an unwanted Christmas present you know which direction to point it in.

ETA I just read the interview and his art became even more interesting. Just imagine if Bakshi had used him!

[Lalaith]

What are you going to do with 20 of these calendars, Tosh?

Yeah, I can't say as I like this at all.

[axordil]

JRRT bought two of Blok's ME-related artworks while he was still alive, evidently. I find that interesting, given Tolkien's reputation for artistic conservatism.

They're...different. They don't aim to be illustrations. I'm not really sure how I feel about them, to be honest. In a way I'm glad to see non-realistic, but still representational art show up. I think, to be honest, that JRRT illustrations have become too predictable.

But it's not love at first sight for me.

[axordil]

I would argue that we all do art at some point--didn't you finger paint when you were a kid?--but we're cowed into thinking you have to spell it with a capital A, and so we stop. That's another discussion, though...and, dare I say it, if we're applying capital A art standards, only a handful of the illustrations ever included in the Tolkien calendars would qualify.

The more I look at Blok's work, the more I like it, but the less certain I am it belongs with the calendar. I may not be the right person to talk to, since I haven't bought a Tolkien calendar in many years.

[Primula Baggins]

I don't think I could do those paintings. They are technically quite skilled. The effect is "childlike" or "folk art" or "primitive," but there's a lot more there than a child or an unskilled person could execute.

We have some similar kinds of things on our walls. It just, to me, isn't well suited to Tolkien, who after all went to so much trouble to paint Middle-earth believably and precisely in words.

But then, he of all people knew what Middle-earth "really" looked like. It may be that more "realistic" efforts didn't please him as much because they missed that mark, whereas something like Blok's work was abstract enough that he could enjoy it for itself; it didn't even try to look like the "real" Middle-earth.

[N.E. Brigand]

I first saw a few of Blok's Tolkien's paintings in the Realms of Tolkien collection about fifteen years ago, and took an immediate liking to them, so I'm delighted about the 2011 calendar.

[Galin]

In the Oliphaunt picture above the composition alone shows great skill I think! Interesting composition, shapes and colours in my opinion.

Now Edmund Dulac is a giant of book illustration, and I'm not putting Blok in his lofty category, but I thought I would link to a couple of Dulac's 'Oliphaunts'...

http://www.artsycraftsy.com/dulac/pearl6_elephant.html

http://www.artsycraftsy.com/dulac/pearl9_warrior.html

Amazing!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Those ARE impressive!

[MaidenOfTheShieldarm]

I quite like it. I've never purchased a Tolkien calendar anyway, but it's sort of refreshing to see something that isn't going for 'realism'. I don't see why fantasy art should be tied down to that standard anyway. It reminds me a bit of a Pukel Men, more of a Ghân-buri-Ghân style than a Minas Tirith.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

Tolkien I believe distrusted visual images because it tied every viewer to a single interpretation. I believe he felt happier with the varied and more amorphous image that the reader could construct for themselves. (I think there's a quote out there somewhere but I don't have the time to search for it and don't have the Letters) As the saying goes, radio has the better pictures.
Given that, it gives us a little more freedom to appreciate non naturalistic treatments of the story.
And I still like 'em.

[Galin]

I think the quote you're thinking of might be from On Fairy Stories, but I don't have it handy at the moment.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Tosh, Galin, these may be the quotes you guys are thinking of from OFS:

In human art Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature. In painting, for instance, the visible presentation of the fantastic image is technically too easy; the hand tends to outrun the mind, even to overthrow it.

He then adds in a note:

There is, for example, in surrealism commonly present a morbidity or un-ease very rarely found in literary fantasy. The mind that produced the depicted images may often be suspected to have been in fact already morbid; yet this is not a necessary explanation in all cases. A curious disturbance of the mind is often set up by the very act of drawing things of this kind, a state similar in quality and consciousness of morbidity to the sensations in a high fever, when the mind develops a distressing fecundity and facility in figure-making, seeing forms sinister or grotesque in all visible objects about it.

I am speaking here, of course, of the primary expression of Fantasy in “pictorial” arts, not of “illustrations”; nor of the cinematograph. However good in themselves, illustrations do little good to fairy-stories. The radical distinction between all art (including drama) that offers a visible presentation and true literature is that it imposes one visible form. Literature works from mind to mind and is thus more progenitive. It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular. If it speaks of bread or wine or stone or tree, it appeals to the whole of these things, to their ideas; yet each hearer will give to them a peculiar personal embodiment
in his imagination. Should the story say “he ate bread,” the dramatic producer or painter can only show ”a piece of bread” according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own. If a story says “he climbed a hill and saw a river in the valley below,” the illustrator may catch, or nearly catch, his own vision of such a scene; but every hearer of the words will have his own picture, and it will be made out of all the hills and rivers and dales he has ever seen, but especially out of The Hill, The River, The Valley which were for him the first embodiment of the word.

[Primula Baggins]

That should have been required reading on Tolkien boards during the runup to the LotR films.

[axordil]

That should be required reading for anyone trying to write fiction. It's as good a description of the strange combination of the universal and the particular conveyed in a story as I've seen.