Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration

by Jesse Kowalski (Editor), Stephanie Haboush Plunkett (Editor)

For hundreds of years, artists have been inspired by the imaginative potential of fantasy. Unlike science fiction, which is based on fact, fantasy presents an impossible reality—a universe where dragons breathe fire, angels battle demons, and magicians weave spells. Published to coincide with a major exhibition organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, this handsome volume reveals how artists have brought to life mythology, fables, and fairy tales, as well as modern epics like The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.


 


The main text of Enchanted, by exhibition curator Jesse Kowalski, traces the emergence of the themes of fantasy in the world’s civilizations, and the development of fantasy illustration from the Old Masters to the Victorian fairy painters, to Golden Age illustrators like Howard Pyle and Arthur Rackham, to classic cover artists like Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo, to emerging talents like Anna Dittmann and Victo Ngai. Additional essays by distinguished contributors address particular aspects of fantasy illustration, such as the relationship between science and fantasy in the nineteenth century, and the illustrators of Robert E. Howard.


 


Enchanted features more than 180 color illustrations, including numerous stunning full-page reproductions. This handsome volume is a must-have reference for artists and illustrators, and a delight for all lovers of fantasy.

Genres: Art, Fantasy

256 pages, Hardcover

First published July 7, 2020

Reviews

[robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a beautiful book, produced for a fantasy exhibition at the Norman Rockwell museum (which obviously explains why Rockwell's work found its way into a fantasy exhibition at all).

It seems an unlikely fit, but the editor makes a good case for it, starting well back in the BCs before sweeping forward to current artists, positing that fantasy illustration began with man's first attempts to depict something aside from strict reality. That includes rude sculptures of Greek gods, religious paintings, and yes, Rockwell, who presented reality through a rose-colored, humorous lens. Fantasy if you squint!

I enjoyed the collection, and the essays, and wish I'd seen the actual exhibition.

[Tim Evanson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't so much a history as it is an exhibition catalog. The ground it covers is more thematic than historic, or even comprehensive. As a picture book, it's superb. The images are clear, and the printing is perfect. I wish there was more about each illustrator, however. Some of them get a lot of coverage, but most get less than a line or to. Most of the information provided is contextual (how they fit in to the theme, sometimes the history of fantasy illustration), and there is almost no biographical information.

I had very high expectations for a "history of fantasy illustration". I was disappointed.

As a book about fantasy illustration, with excellent reproductions of a large sampling work, it's pretty good.

[Douglas Summers-Stay · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2012, I went an hour or two out of my way to see an art show featuring all the great fantasy illustrators: William Blake, Gustave Dore, Edmund Blair Leighton, Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Arthur Rackham, Chesley Bonestell, Michael Whelan, Greg Hildebrandt, James Gurney, Donato Giancola, Tom Canty, Giger, Frank Frazetta, and several others you would recognize. This wasn't the book associated with that exhibition but with another similar exhibition in 2021 at the Rockwell museum I wasn't able to attend. The reproductions are of high quality, and the accompanying text has some useful insights into the nature of the genre.
I like visual art of many kinds, but my favorite has always been fantasy and science fiction illustration. I like the way fantasy art enlarges the boundaries of the world. In terms of traditional art, it's what I tend to prefer as well-- grand impossible architecture, or Waterhouse's Lady of Shallot at the V&A, or the centaurs at the Parthenon museum. Dramatic expression, bold colors, intricate patterns, armor and lace... that's what I like to see.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enchanted is collection of essays and photoplates reflecting an exhibition that started at the Norman Rockwell Museum and that I got to see at the Flint Institute of Arts. The artwork in the book is breath-taking and takes you on a journey from classical greek interpretations of fantastic creatures up and through the modern age using some examples from no less than World of WarCraft. The visual journey is fantastic and stunning. I wish I could say the same for the essays.

So, let's get this out of the way: There's only a couple of essays that rub me the wrong way and it all comes down to the slavish devotion to frauds Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell. The goal in using these figures is to lay a foundation for fantasy in the human collective unconscious and to give it a scientific-sounding basis. The problem is that Freud, Jung, and Campbell were psuedo-scientists of the highest order. There are appeals to Jung's archetypes and collective unconscious but no mind that this is just shit that Jung said but there is no way to back it up and the more you pick it apart the more weird and batshit it sounds. Worst is when it is compare to descriptions of the resulting fantasy work. The essay near the beginning contains of the most wildly inaccurate summaries of The Call of Cthulhu I've ever read. The line compresses the plot of the novella to something like "The story of the protagonist's imprisonment on R'yleh" which is not at all what happens in that story. Unless the writer weirdly thinks that Cthulhu is the protagonist of The Call of Cthulhu? And even in such a case Cthulhu isn't really 'imprisoned' there. The piece quotes the opening lines of that novella and while it is a piece of writing that sticks out in your mind, I am left with the impression that the essayist read way *WAY* more Jungian bullshit than the fantasy literature they were ostensibly there to profile.

My issue largely comes with the need to back up humans propensity toward the fantastic with psuedo-scientific basis. The specter of Campbell is invoked to talk about the proliferation of dragon-like creatures across multiple cultures as being a combination of serpent and eagle. But there are things we lump in with dragons that aren't very eagle-like and it's an odd claim to make universal. It is also known that Campbell had a habit of cherry picking to cement conclusion he had come to long before he ever started researching. The text even touches on Campbell's gross sexism in that women can't be heroes but it dashes away before it really has to contend with it. It's part of the issue with Campbell's monomyth: Campbell just ignored anything that didn't fit the conclusion he wanted and then pretended that his pronouncements had a universality across cultures in mythmaking and storytelling. But, more importantly: You don't need to justify humanity's tendency toward fantasy. To be human is to dream. To imagine worlds that are not and cannot be. It's just what we do. Trying to give it a scientific basis is harmed when you yoke your arguments to three notoriously unscientific schmucks.

Some of the other essays focus more on verifiable information. You get a lot of tracing of fantasy illustration throughout history and how it has changed form over time. You see a lot of fairies in the late 19th century. The rise of the Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, and similar kinds of fantasy marks it own sort of epoch. It is wonderful seeing fantasy art evolve over time and some of the absolutely breath-taking compositions side-by-side with write-ups of their artists. It also covers issues like how Illustrations shakes up against Fine Art as a calling. To a layperson like me the difference might be minimum but it is quite important to some. It is interesting to see the label of Illustration Artist adopted by many. For instance, the text tells us that Norman Rockwell was stringent in his adoption of it. We also find the difference that Illustration is most often focused on telling a story or helping a story be told. The text gives a pretty logical explanation for writers like Lovecraft and Howard being beloved for Illustrators as their descriptions were often sparse leaving plenty of room for the artist to play with the scene.

We also get an essay on how Conan the Barbarian changed fantasy literature and would later change fantasy illustration as well with the paintings of the character by Frank Frazetta.

There's a lot to love in the book but even if you never read the text, it will be worth it. The art is brilliant and lovingly rendered here. It's a beautiful artbook on a splendid and thrilling subject.

[Abbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

An incredibly insecure work of commentary, so fixated on asserting fantasy's respectability as "modern mythology" that it inadvertently makes a laughingstock of the art it's presenting—it was at the point where the cover art for Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings is directly juxtaposed with Bruegel's Triumph of Death that I felt my prior disdain for the book's approach boil over into pitched disgust. Nor is this kind of trumped-up genealogy of the genre the only thing that hamstrings the book—it casts so wide a net as to be virtually useless as a history of its field, scooping in everything from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Looney Tunes and devoting a few superficial paragraphs to each shiny new object as opposed to delving seriously into a limited range of artists and sub-movements. The two notable exceptions are perfect examples of the commentary's inability to deal with its subject. One, a brief essay on the work of Robert Howard, spends as many words trying to justify the author's dubious prose and characterization as it does detailing the artwork inspired by his writing; the other, a considerably less brief essay on Norman Rockwell, spends a great deal of time covering the work of a very worthy artist who cannot by any stretch of the imagination be said to fall under the purview of this book.

The extra star here is for the art itself, which, shabbily curated as it is, can't help but contain some extremely fine examples of the craft. Would that it were assembled in any kind of sensical manner, or taken on its own terms rather than tiptoed around by writers who are very obviously anxious that it secretly isn't, y'know, good.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

It would not surprise me if this book or future editions of it become the textbook on fantasy illustration. Accessible and informative, with beautiful plates, this is a must-have for fantasy art collectors. Bravo to the Rockwell Museum on this achievement.

[Kyri Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally enjoyable, and there are some beautiful images. There were a few artists oddly not represented -- Susan Seddon Boulet, Rowena Morrill, Thomas Canty and several others seem like major omissions.

[Danielle Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enchanting indeed! My mom went to an art exhibit that included many pieces that are in this book. She recommended this to me after. I’m glad I found a copy to peruse, the illustrations are top notch!

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent overview of the history and evolution of fantasy illustration. The book is worth purchasing for the reproductions alone. Several, I have not seen before, or not reproduced in decades.