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Vice Blog

GOODBYE FRANK FRAZETTA

Many people came after Frazetta and tried to be him and even more people tried to imitate his imitators, but no one was able to do fantasy art with the level of depth, intensity, and dignity that Frazetta gave it. His sense of light and dark were amazing. The abstract brushwork in his backgrounds are as engaging and beautiful as the big-butted beast bitches riding giant-hooved warhorses in the foreground.

I'm especially entranced by his Fighting Man of Mars painting. The rocks on the foreground are washy with turpentine and so loose. Those clouds or mountains in the background are amazing. The female character is radiating light while the male is shrouded in darkness. The fabric in the space barbarian's cape is so wispy it looks like it could be smoke or water. The abrupt transition from the light tones of the lower sky to the black above it is intense as shit. My favorite part of this painting is the shadowed planet behind the characters, made with a minimal amount of strokes.

He could make a painting that would drive people to see elaborate stories. People went so nuts for the Death Dealer painting that Molly Hatchet used as a cover to their shitty album that there were novels based on it, statues and action figures, and a comic book series written by Glenn Danzig. Someone even started selling a helmet that looks like the one in the painting. His paintings were used to sell books and records that had less artistic merit than the covers.

When others approached fantasy art they tended to focus on trying to make their dragons shiny and retarded. It's a bunch of nerds jerking off to orcs. Frazzeta was a phenomenon who gave meaning to trash.

NICHOLAS GAZIN