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Luz, the Art of Ciruelo | |||||||||||||||
Ciruelo Cabral | |||||||||||||||
Bast Editorial, Barcelona, Spain (Diamond Comics in USA) 128 pages | |||||||||||||||
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A review by Lucy Snyder
This is the third compilation of the art of Ciruelo Cabral, a young
Argentinean-born artist who lives near Barcelona, Spain. As one
might expect, Luz contains mainly book cover illustrations for clients
such as Tor, Ballantine and TSR. But it also features CD covers,
tattoo art, previously-unpublished sketches, and a striking section
on his petropictos, a sculpture/painting hybrid in which the artist
airbrushes directly onto partially-shaped stones.
Most of Ciruelo's work is fantasy art, mainly images
of derring-do and sorcery set against backgrounds of craggy
cliffs and lush landscapes. His dragons are especially fetching;
I was quite taken with one painting of a black wyrm glowering atop a
rock. His SF images are far fewer in number but equally well-done.
In short, I enjoyed this collection, and if you have any
appreciation for the aesthetics of high fantasy, you will,
too. But as I leafed through the book, a little ditty penned by
a female SF novelist (to the tune of If You're Happy and
You Know It, Clap Your Hands) kept running through my head:
Don't get me wrong; this collection is far less sexist than,
say, typical Frank Frazetta. And, obviously, fantasy art is
expected to portray people who are beautiful and heroically proportioned. All good and well.
But it would be nice if it didn't seem to always pander to the
fantasies of teenage boys. We twentysomething women like fantasy,
too, and buy it in spite of the bimbo covers. But chances are, more
of us would buy more of it if we saw our fantasies being portrayed.
For instance, one of Ciruelo's paintings portrays a blond,
virtually naked nymph hiding from a hunting party. She's also
ankle-deep in snow. Brr!
Wondering if men really think about this sort of thing, I
consulted an older friend, a professed Sensitive Guy who actually
owns a copy of Sleepless in Seattle. He looked at the picture
and nodded gravely, admitting that yes, while cross-country skiing
he'd had similar fantasies of finding naked women in the snowy woods.
Conversely, I have never once daydreamed about freezing my tits
off in a snowbank while waiting for a wandering barbarian to find me.
Issues of temperature and clothing aside, most of us women have
at one time or another dreamed of being seduced. But we also
dream of seducing, and of kicking butt. There is a serious lack
of feminine butt-kicking in Luz. Some of Ciruelo's ladies are armed,
yes, but they're never actually doing any fighting. They're just decorative.
And I think publishers should share the criticism for this. Ciruelo is a
commercial artist, and market forces temper his creative vision. He
paints what publishers think we want to buy. If we think this vision is
limited, it's up to us, writers and readers alike, to expand the
definition of the genre.
Lucy Snyder is the poetry editor of HMS Beagle, the managing editor of BioTech, and the editor/publisher of Dark Planet. She's also a member of the '95 Clarionistas, and you will be able to find her lurking at Convergence 3 this August. |
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