This morning I was writing about photo manipulation--Photoshop, these days, but people have been altering photos since photography came into existence of course, and I wanted to point to that history.
I thought Romare Bearden's "collage paintings" would be a good example because while he's not a fan, he is not a "pure" artist either, governed only by aesthetic considerations.
His art tells stories about his times and African American culture, and collage worked well to reflect an experience of fragmentation and reunification (like quilting too). And he tore up magazine photos for material, so he was appropriating mass media.
Hm. Actually, he was a fan---of jazz, which plays a large role in his art. But I am concentrating on media fandom, not direct experience like making music. (Partly because I just don't have room to cover all the things I'd like to. Ditto sports fandoms. Though actually, I don't even want to cover that because I don't have enough love for or interest in it.)
Bearden was interested in continuity. Here's his collage,
"Prevalence of Ritual: Baptism" (1964)
So, I thought I might be going too far afield (I'll probably have to cut the art historical references--no room), but I went looking for more "artistic" photocollages in fandom.
(I guess by "artistic" I mean art work where the aesthetic considerations (form, color, etc.) are just as or even more important than the fan narrative. Not that fan art where "fan" comes first is not art, but "art by fans" has a slightly different sense.)
Anyway, you can find most anything online in 5 minutes, and there it was, aesthetics + fandom in the fantastic and gorgeous comic-book collages of Melissa Moffat < (more at her site).
Here, from her Star Wars (Force Awakens) series, 2016, made from cut-up comic books (paper, not digital):
I found this first on Geek x Girls. with this quote from Moffat:
And here, because I love BB-8:
I thought Romare Bearden's "collage paintings" would be a good example because while he's not a fan, he is not a "pure" artist either, governed only by aesthetic considerations.
His art tells stories about his times and African American culture, and collage worked well to reflect an experience of fragmentation and reunification (like quilting too). And he tore up magazine photos for material, so he was appropriating mass media.
Hm. Actually, he was a fan---of jazz, which plays a large role in his art. But I am concentrating on media fandom, not direct experience like making music. (Partly because I just don't have room to cover all the things I'd like to. Ditto sports fandoms. Though actually, I don't even want to cover that because I don't have enough love for or interest in it.)
Bearden was interested in continuity. Here's his collage,
"Prevalence of Ritual: Baptism" (1964)
So, I thought I might be going too far afield (I'll probably have to cut the art historical references--no room), but I went looking for more "artistic" photocollages in fandom.
(I guess by "artistic" I mean art work where the aesthetic considerations (form, color, etc.) are just as or even more important than the fan narrative. Not that fan art where "fan" comes first is not art, but "art by fans" has a slightly different sense.)
Anyway, you can find most anything online in 5 minutes, and there it was, aesthetics + fandom in the fantastic and gorgeous comic-book collages of Melissa Moffat < (more at her site).
Here, from her Star Wars (Force Awakens) series, 2016, made from cut-up comic books (paper, not digital):
I found this first on Geek x Girls. with this quote from Moffat:
"I was excited for The Force Awakens so I went to work creating a new collage series using Star Wars comic books … and a stack of tribute magazines I took after watching the movie. I like to deconstruct the images of the characters and break them down into parts and create a new abstract image."Moffat started out a making collages out of magazines as a hobby, while she was working in photography, and ended up a fine artist who still cuts up by hand and reassembles comic books and high-fashion magazines (< links to examples of those abstracts from fashion photos and an interview with the artist in LandEscape article).
And here, because I love BB-8:
