Art appreciation is a skill that I am very proud of and whilst I am a disappointment on the creative side I have strong ideas about what makes good art and what makes bad art. Good art in my opinion requires something to say and the ability to say it. Bad art at worst doesn’t say anything and at best says the wrong thing. I once saw a representation of Eowyn fighting the Witch King. An iconic episode in the book and well done in the Peter Jackson films but horrifically butchered in this picture. I tried to find it for this blog but there were too many pictures with poor composition, lifeless expression and in some cases too few clothes that I gave up to focus on the excellence of my favourite Tolkien artists.
Tolkiens works have been an inspiration to artists for over seventy years and continue to be fertile grounds for all the arts to this day. This art can be very expensive and well received. My walls at home are covered in Tolkien maps and prints that I dare not tell my wife how much I paid for. That being said Tolkien fans, and I can say this because I am one, are a nightmare. Try drawing a Balrog with wings and you will get threats!
This writing prompt calls for me to discuss my favourite artist and I choose Jay Johnstone. Johnstone is a fine artist who creates art to complement peoples individual understandings of Middle Earth. Speaking to Johnstone in 2016 he explained to me that he was creating the art that might have been created after the war of the ring. His awesome portrait of Aragorn he explained was like the kinds of portraits of kings produced in the Middle Ages and send to other kings as gifts and propaganda pieces. We only need to think of the famous portraits of Henry VIII as an example.
I have two prints on my wall. The first is an image of Faramir preparing to storm Osgiliath on the orders of his increasingly unstable father. The piece is a perfectly reconstruction of a Medieval illumination with Faramir front and centre a figure of resignation to duty. Deeply moving for to me a man who is fascinating by duty and honour. This is a theme that speaks deeply to me as I have already said when talking about the ‘Eternal War’ painting from Warhammer 40K. To the left there is an, in medieval style, an idealised and unrefined image of Osgiliath populated by orcs bearing the banner of Sauron and his tower looming in the background. To the right we see Gandalf and Merry watching from an equally idealised and westernised Minas Tirith. Again this westernising and idealising is a medieval style and observing this is one of the reasons why this work is so astonishing and effective. My second print is of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry. It is a replica of an illuminated manuscript the text being some kind of Elvish that I can not read. Again it was a powerful piece which I bought at Oxonmoot for a sum I won’t be sharing with my wife. What I particularly like about this piece is the sense of fun around Tom and mystery, gracefulness and supernatural nobility around Goldberry. Just as in the text Tom can not keep his eyes off her, just as we can’t. She steals the show. Before them in the water are lilies which is a direct reference to The Fellowship of the Ring as that is what Tom collects as a gift for his ‘water maiden’ wife. And here we see the second criteria that I would suggest for good art. It is obvious to all but the blind that Johnstone is a talented artist and it is obvious from looking at his art that he fits the second criteria in that he has something to say and that is that he has obviously read the books and understands not just the words but the subtext as well. From Faramir we get the sadness and resignation of being loyal and dutiful to a unstable leader, from Tom we get the impishness and passion for his wife and from the water lilies we can see that he has an understanding of love and how that is played out in the Tolkien world. All this we can contrast with the obvious objectification of Ewoyn. The power of Jay Johnstone is that he gets it, he loves it and he tells us Tolkien fans about the world that we already love.