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Not according to James Bowman. They and numerous others create what Bowman dismissively refers to as “fantasy art.” And fantasy art isn’t Art.
It always surprises me when I run across them, but I have to acknowledge that some folks just don’t like J.R.R. Tolkien. Shocking, I know. The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit. The Silmarillion’s mythopoeic tales. What’s not to like? Great works of art and creativity, right? Well, they might be creative, but they do not qualify as Art.
Mr. Bowman is among that group of curmudgeonly scolds that just can’t seem to abide anything that smacks of fantasy. According Bowman,
fantasy is not art, at least not in the sense that the term has been understood within the Western mimetic tradition going back to Homer. … Indeed, Western culture is so intimately bound up with the tradition of imitation in art … that the now more than century-long vogue for fantasy art, beginning with George MacDonald, J.M. Barrie, and Kenneth Grahame and continuing through Lewis and Tolkien to the more unrestrained science-fiction and fantasy cinema of our own time, should be seen as a repudiation, conscious or unconscious, of that Western tradition ["of making things that are like reality precisely so as to make claims to know reality and thus to distinguish it from fantasy"].
Bowman distinguishes Homer’s tales of gods and heroes because Homer actually believed these beings existed. The modern world, however, knows that elves, faeries, monsters, magic spinning wizards and sword wielding heroes don’t exist. To James Bowman these are childish fantasies that should be put aside in favor of reality. At the very least, we should not include fantasy in discussions about Art.
This makes me wonder what Mr. Bowman makes of Shakespeare’s Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I guess that’s not Art either. Unless, of course, the Great Bard actually believed in magicians, faeries and donkey-headed men.
An excellent rejoinder, Daniel. Jim Bowman is a very perceptive critic, but I fully agree that his limited view of what constitutes art is both historically false (as you so pithily point out) and aesthetically unjustified. In addition to throwing out opera–and all non-illustrative music, for that matter–much else would have to be jettisoned under his standard. To dismiss all romances as not being art is clearly utterly bizarre and ill-advised.
When a theory doesn’t accommodate reality and common sense, discard the theory. Bowman’s motives are surely good, but his means are faulty, in my view.
James is a very sharp man, and I certainly would not want to go head to head with him in a debate on film and a host of other topics. I was stunned when I got to the section I cite in what is otherwise a very good article.
The great works of fantasy and science fiction are so because they embrace very real human emotions and motivations: love, hate, jealousy, greed, charity, anger, joy, etc. Just because one wraps these things up in space ships, aliens, magicians, monsters, faeries, and swashbuckling heroes doesn’t make them any less real.
And the fact that these emotions and motivations are presented in fantastical stories doesn’t, by fact of their genre, make them lesser works of art. It might make the high-culture snobs grumble into their brandy snifter, but A Canticle for Leibowitz is just as much Art as is Austen’s Emma. It is not a lesser work simply because it’s been classified as science fiction.
Avatar is lesser art, but not because it’s a science fantasy. It’s lesser art because it’s a cliched, unimaginative, rehashed story that obscures its flaws with special effects and pretty pictures.
[...] C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien Are Not ‘Real’ Artists? | The American Culture [...]
All art is fantasy.
I recall John Gardner’s dictum, in _On Moral Fiction_, that religious literature could not, by definition, be moral literature.
And, just to confuse things, the opinion of a local SF/Fantasy maven, heard years ago, who declared that “You can only write fantasy if you’ve stopped believing in the supernatural.”
We live in a strange world of ideas.
[...] March 11th, 2010 by DiveTwin | Source: The American Culture [...]
If Mr. Lewis were still with us, I’d love to hear his response to this.
Did James Bowman *ask* Homer if he believed in the Gods? What if he didn’t? there is certainly evidence in the poems to suggest that those telling it took their role in the world a little lightly.
Unfortunantly for Mr. Bowman I no longer believe in his existance. Therefore to VERY loosely quote from the above article “James Bowman is a childish reality that should be put aside in favor of fantasy.”. Have a nice day all.
Bowman doesn’t fully understand the different concepts of what “reality” is. His ideas are historically and – yes – aesthetically plain wrong.
How absurd. The fellow hasn’t any idea what he is talking about. Tolkien came up with Middle-earth, writing about it as if it were our own world, a historical legend on par with Homer. The stage for the Lord of the Rings is our own earth, this place three rocks from the sun. The same with the Iliad and the Odyssey. Tolkien believed his work to be true, not that the events actually happened but that they portrayed what was true in a way this modern world can’t. Both Tolkien and Homer believed their works to be “true”. If Homer is a “real” artist so is Tolkien. Thus, by Bowman’s own reasoning Tolkien’s work is art. In that sense, Tolkien’s stuff isn’t really fantasy at all. If he would bother to pick up the Professor’s letters and essays… I would like to know by what source Mr. Bowman has it that Homer actually believed what he was writing about was true.
Tolkien and Lewis make use of the most ancient means of sub-creation (that is “Art”) through imaginative literature. Their works look for meaning in the “real world”, and the truth of the “real world” is imbibed in their works. If Mr. Bowman does not consider that “art”, I believe he thinks “art” is something rather different and I pity the man…
One suspects that JRR Tolkien would regard James Bowman and his views with much the same regard as James has for Tolkien.
Ah, so Homer gets a pass because he really believe the gods existed. So what about all those Renaissance artists who painted portraits of Venus and Zeus and such? Did THEY believe the gods “really” existed? Will we now ignore Titan, and Rubens, and Michelangelo?
This is just another example of a critic dismissing something he personally doesn’t like using criteria that only works if you don’t examine it too closely. Thus it’s not worth any serious person’s attention.
I quite agree… Tolkien himself even says the same for the Bowman breed.
Not to read too much into motive here, but this kind of reasoning seems to me to be in place purely to reinforce the validity of what a person regards as “art” by contrasting it with a grouping of work that can be dismissed as “not art.” In other words, Bowman appears to want to elevate his preferred forms of art by making the classification more exclusive. High art, low art, contemporary art… these things can all be debated, but dismissing a huge section of work based purely on its setting, without regard for theme, symbolism, allegory or even craftsmanship is too simplistic by any reasonable definition for art.
Spoken like a true critic – can’t do it, so he has to criticise.
Art is subjective. I’ve seen a pile of junk described as ‘art’. Not in my eyes. Everyone has different opinions, and EVERYONE should ignore critics and form their OWN opinion
of what constitutes ‘art’.
Gulliver’s Travels?
The Magic Flute?
The Ring Cycle? (Wagner, that is)
The Arabian Nights stories?
The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde?
Jackson Pollock?
A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
I suppose Death of A Salesman is where it’s at, then.
**sigh**
Of course in the same token not to get off the subject, but video games by many are considered an art form now. While some may agree or disagree with that(I personally believe the games of today are.) The stories and concepts that are put forth by todays games can and in some cases exceed in telling wonderful and memorable stories, not to mention having wonderful eye candy.
One can also look at the website where this opinion piece was published: it is a conservative policy mouthpiece.
[...] C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien Are Not ‘Real’ Artists? [...]