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1Fantasy Art is, simply put, art that has fantastical motives and themes. The motives are often of [[OralTradition folkloric]] or [[{{Mythology}} mythological]] nature, or inspired by FantasyLiterature.
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3Actually, as with FantasyLiterature, it is much more simple to define what it is ''not''. The style of different artists who would all be considered fantasy artists can differ wildly, ranging from photo realistic to [[FantasyAnimeAndManga Anime]]. There is no specific medium to it, it can be a painting as well as a photograph or an installation. There have always and everywhere been artists portraying the fantastic, so it is not tied to a specific time or cultural circle. It is not surrealism, dream art or religious art, however fantastic they may be.
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5Its rise is closely tied with that of FantasyLiterature, too: The artistic genre became popular around the same time as the literary one, when copies of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' illustrated by Barbara Remington, Pauline Baynes or the Hildebrandt brothers were wildly popular, which was around TheSeventies.
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7To the grief of many fans of FantasyLiterature, though, examples of very [[ClicheStorm clichéd]], [[UnfortunateImplications sexist]] and flat-out [[CoversAlwaysLie not fitting]] fantasy art kept being slapped onto book covers in many countries, but it has become better in recent years, when artists were employed to illustrate covers specifically for that one novel.
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9Its roots lie perhaps in the religious illustrations of pre-Christian times, but even moreso in the strange and even unnerving paintings by Creator/HieronymusBosch, the wild and imaginative art of Creator/WilliamBlake and the wanderlust inducing pictures by Caspar David Friedrich, to name just a few. Another, more modern, influence is the surrealism by Creator/SalvadorDali and others. Usually, the term ''Fantasy Art'' gets only applied to modern art from the second half of the 20th century onwards.
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11!!Artists of this genre include:
12[[index]]
13* Creator/ZdzislawBeksinski
14* Julie Dillon
15* Creator/FrankFrazetta
16* Creator/BrianFroud
17* Creator/HRGiger
18* Creator/JohnHowe
19* Paul Kidby
20* Creator/ChrisMetzen
21* Creator/HayaoMiyazaki
22* Luis Royo
23* Creator/BorisVallejo
24* Josephine Wall
25* Arthur Rackham
26[[/index]]

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