We didn't name any visual artists on Wednesday, when everyone was naming prominent fantasy creators, but of course a lot of visual art through the centuries has been fantastical. In the world of publishing, in particular, visual artists have been instrumental in shaping the genre of fantasy as we know it, and we'll talk this semester about the cover art and interior art of these books. In fact, one of our texts, Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men, is inspired in part by a famous 19th-century painting by Richard Dadd.
This comes to mind because fantasy artist Edward Daniel Cartier, who signed his work Edd Cartier, died on Christmas Day at age 94. A lifelong professional artist, he was best known for his pen-and-ink illustrations in 1930s and 1940s pulp-fiction magazines, notably The Shadow, Astounding Science Fiction and the great but short-lived fantasy magazine Unknown. Here's a New York Times obit.
Online galleries of Cartier's work include this one, which emphasizes science fiction and fantasy, and this one, which emphasizes the crime genre. (Click on the thumbnails for larger versions.) Ask yourself, as the semester goes on, whether any of Cartier's illustrations, or his style of illustration, has a kinship with any of the works on our syllabus.
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