I suppose I should have posted this here to start with but here it is again. I was pissed off before but now I think I'm only slightly irked.
Well, I recently listened to a SXSW podcast in which the science fiction author Bruce Sterling went on a roaring rant about the futility of people who write fan fiction or create fan art daring to call themselves artists. That's not exactly his point but it's as close to it as I can get right now without listening to the whole insipid thing again and I'm just too pissed off about it (yeah, I know, it's been days and I should just get over it).
The problem is: he basically took out his giant tar brush and slapped every person who posts on DeviantArt with the 'talentless, wannabe/never-be an artist' brand of asphalt. He apparently took a 30 second look around, didn't see anything that suited his elitist tastes and decided that DA was the home and hearth of people who barely had the skill to do fan art and didn't have what it took to be real artists.
I beg to differ. I've got a number of people on my watch list, all of whom I consider to be very fine artists. There are even more I haven't yet discovered and there are more still that I didn't particularly appreciate, yet I still consider them to be artists. Anyone who can create something with their hands and their imagination and a minimum of distress to others is an artist in my opinion.
Creating fan art? He thinks it's a waste of time. I kind of consider it the modern day equivalent of copying the masters in an art gallery. It's not quite the same but if it gets you to the goal you've set for yourself who am I or anyone else to give you grief about it?
I'd like to suggest that mister Sterling, once he comes off of the lofty peaks of 'Mount I'm So Good', yank his head out of his rectum, wipe the feces from his eyes and take another look around DeviantArt. The artists who've posted here deserve more respect than he gave them.
All artists do.
Link to the rant:
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