Now playing on tumblr... fanart isn't *real* art!

[astridv]

You know the recurring wank that flares up once-yearly about how fanfic isn't *real* writing? Right now there's the fanart equivalent going on tumblr: "I also don’t think you can really be an artists and be immersed in Fandom at the same time, because (for me) in order to make art you have to view the world critically."

The OP's post manages to be in equal parts pretentious and naive and the person right behind him seems to have a contest going on how often they can stuff their foot in their mouth: "Fanartists can do incredible work too, but as a consumer of art it’s as significant as the difference between eating a meal and eating someone else’s vomit." -- (What, you find that insulting? Alex saiz: "Last, if you’re reading some kind of personal insult into it, then that might be your own guilt speaking.")

Lots of nicely argued rebuttals, of course. (I finally figured out how to follow a discussion on that site... that took only a year.)

ETA: OP has posted a clarification with apologies. I still don't agree with some of his points but he's phrasing everything a lot better now.

Comments

[copracat]

I finally figured out how to follow a discussion on that site

How do you do it? I find the clicking around notes with comments a bit tedious and never follow anything for too long. Not like LJ/DW where I can track/take part in a conversation as long as people have it.

[astridv]

Tedious it is. I have to be super interested in a topic to put up with all the clicking. At least in this one most of the comments were multiple paragraphs, so at least worth clicking. I hate it when an note says "blahdiblah bla bla..." and you click to find the comment in its entirety say "blahdiblah bla bla bla!"

As a discussion forum it's awful.

[legionseagle]

I've said before now that I think it's actually bad for people that it is so difficult to challenge statements and to have a discussion as opposed to a pulpit.

[astridv]

Yeah, I really baffled that the general trend is: away from LJ and DW, which are uniquely suited for long, involved discussions with multiple viewpoints, and to places like tumblr and twitter where it's almost impossible to do that.

[ratcreature]

As if high-brow Western art wasn't stuffed to the gills with centuries of Bible fanart...

[astridv]

Yup. Among lots of other fanart that's deemed high-brow and/or old enough and thus *art*.

You could basically take the arguments from the "fanfic isn't *real* writing" debate and apply them here 1:1.

[ratcreature]

I have to admit though that to transfer it to art seems more ridiculous to me, because even more than in fiction in art, especially in traditional, representational art, the creativity is most obvious in arrangement and execution, not in thinking up new subjects. Whereas in fiction the original characters and plot are what's on the surface and the sameness of archetypes and typical plots is beneath, so one novel seems quite different from the next at first.

I mean, landscapes or still lifes or portraits always show the same kinds of things in endless variations of bottles combined with pears and a plate or whatever, or the gazillionth seascape, or portrait of your patron. The moments when innovation in the subjects of art happens seem rather rare, like the first ones who painted ordinary people and everyday scenes, or the expansion of what is considered art in general with all the early modern movements, but still.