Yes, you have to like this kind of art, the muscle men, mythical creatures and scantily clad beauties - it is undisputed that many people like them. Just recently, a painting by Frank Frazetta fetched almost 5.5 million dollars at auction. Taschen Verlag has now dedicated a book to the unusual artist, "The Fantastic Worlds of Frank Frazetta".
Dian Hanson is not only a long-standing author for Taschen Verlag, she is also the woman for the somewhat quirky and raunchy topics. She has devoted six volumes to men's magazines, breasts and penises and the illustrator and creator of gay icons Tom of Finland. Now she has turned her attention to the art of Frank Frazetta and, as always, the result is a book that will impress fans with its wealth of images and background knowledge and captivate everyone else page after page.
Frank Frazetta is considered the undisputed master of fantasy art, but he was also a very unusual person. He was a professional baseball player in the American league, a petty criminal and a notorious seducer with the looks of a movie star. By his own account, he only devoted himself to art when there was nothing better to do. Nevertheless, he began drawing comics professionally at the age of 16 and working for EC Comics. He portrayed Tarzan and Conan, drawing on his own wealth of experience from Brooklyn. In his neighborhood, he knew guys who were just like that, musclemen and machos.
The Temptress. Watercolor on paper, 1951, copyrighted in 1979.
Frazetta made the real-life models even more threatening and testosterone-driven. His female figures were just as physical and sexualized. He combined pixie faces with fleshy thighs, full buttocks and breasts - Frazetta showed everything that the censors could just about get away with. His bodies were allowed to show lifelike belly protrusions, dents and cellulite - which is strangely disturbing against the background of today's viewing habits.
Frazetta was vulgar, a crook and brawler from Brooklyn, but he also learned his craft from Michele Falanga, a neo-classical Italian painter. He copied his lines from Disney cartoons and eventually created his own world with Conan and other comics, which was sexualized, powerful and absolutely unusual for its time. In "The Fantastic Worlds of Frank Frazetta", you can now trace the artist and his very special visual worlds. And you don't have to be a fan of muscle men, bare-breasted women and fruit-infested creatures to find these worlds fascinating.
The Fantastic Worlds of Frank Frazetta
Dian Hanson, Taschen Verlag
Hardcover, cloth binding with dust jacket,
29 x 39.5 cm, 4.87 kg, 468 pages, € 150 | CHF 150
ISBN 978-3-8365-7921-6 (German, English, French)
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