Transcript
If painting miniatures is art, so is coloring adult coloring books. Not “adult” as in “not safe for work”, you know the coloring books I’m talking about. This coloring book comparison, I think that’s what a lotta folks in the “art world” might say. And to be honest, they’re probably not a 100% wrong. But you and I both know that’s not quite right either. And it raises this question that seems to hover at the peripheral of our hobby all the time – is mini painting “art”?
Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we chat about all kinds of things related to the tabletop gaming hobby in as roundabout and disorganized a way as possible.
On a recent Trapped Under Plastic podcast Scott the Miniature Maniac and Ninjon briefly discussed this question about whether or not mini painting can be considered fine art.
[Do you think that mini painting is more technically focused than traditional art? Yes. That’s a big difference. 100%. Right? We’re more preoccupied with that question than the vast majority of fine or artists are?]
This is a common topic that pops up every so often in our hobby space. But, you want the TLDR, right? Sure, allow me to oblige you: the answer to the question is simply, who cares? That’s facetious but it’s probably also true. Like, why do we care if someone else doesn’t think what we do is art? I suppose the answer to that is because we’re human and we care about how others perceive us. But of course, mini painting IS art.
So is coloring in coloring books. Let’s not kid ourselves. Creating anything, really, is art. A programmer writing and developing a piece of software, I would argue in a lotta cases, is an artist. But I think we do have this spectrum of art versus craft. Even though, I would argue that craft is also … art. The programmer – and mini painters – are typically working at a much higher level of technical craft than, say, traditional fine artists, like an impressionistic painter or avante garde sculptor, who are working with more conceptual levels of creativity. Don’t get me wrong, fine art artists are definitely gonna throw things at me for saying they work with less “craft” than some other artist. But overall, I kinda feel like fine art lives over here close to this end and mini painting lives somewhere here in the middle.
So, will miniature painting ever be considered “Fine Art”? My guess is that it probably won’t, for esoteric and intangible reasons. Even setting aside the “coloring book” thing and an artist both sculpted and painted a single unique miniature themselves – which certainly happens – there’s still this question of “emotion”, I guess. Let me explain.
Good art, I think we’d all agree, elicits an enduring and emotional response from a viewer. Or a beholder. Space marines, generally, don’t do that. I mean, other than the enduring and emotional FOMO response.
I think most of us in the hobby consider mini painting an art of some kind, but just like in any art contest, there are categories within this umbrella term. I don’t necessarily think one category is better than another, just that the categories offer different things to a viewer. Or, or maybe an “experiencer”. ‘Cause there are pieces of art that don’t rely on visuals alone. There can be texture pieces and auditory creations to experience. There’s that phrase, right? Good art “feeds the soul.” Or torments it, sometimes.
So I’ve been thinking about this question for a long time, just, you know, off and on, in the back of my addled brain and it continues to pop up now and then and I don’t think it’s ever gonna go away. A new idea recently occurred to me about what might make art “fine art”. I think there needs to be some level of or component of abstraction in a piece to allow it to function as “fine art”. It’s like the more real or specific a piece gets, the less room for viewer interpretation and so less “fine art” and more “artistic craft”.
Of course, my thoughts represent a very unlearned opinion and I am truly just making all this up.
Like I’m thinking 3d vs 2d right off the bat removes a level of abstraction, i.e. a miniature versus a canvas painting. I do think a painted miniature could be considered art by art snobs but I don’t think that miniature would be painted with a traditional mini painting approach, meaning, the approach most of us use on our own miniatures, which is this sort of technical approach towards realism.
There’s this other quality that kind of makes art … art, and that can be the level of effort inherently possessed by a piece. Like Michaelangelo’s David sculpture is a three dimensional sculpture and bizarrely realistic in its details, so definitely not as abstract as other pieces of art, other than it’s singular texture and lack of color, but it’s also carved out of a freakin’ piece of rock! Like it’s bizarre how detailed it is for being made out of a chunk of marble. So at least one thing it makes you feel when you see it is a sense of amazement just at the thought of how it was created. I don’t know about you, but I catch myself thinking about the artist himself, like what was the day like when he was applying his rudimentary chisel to this chunk of rock, what was the air like, what was the workshop like, what noises did he hear in the background, sorta just getting lost in an imagination of history.
Let’s take a look at the Slayer Sword winner from the 2022 Golden Demon contest. This piece is by Chris Clayton and it’s balls-out amazing. I mean, most of the high-end entries in that contest are balls-out amazing, but this one just happened to take the cake. You can stare at this piece for hours I bet and find new details to marvel at, and it truly is mesmerizing.
Is it fine art? To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t think a fine art gallery would choose to show it necessarily, but I also don’t know if that’s right. Maybe it SHOULD be shown in a gallery. Maybe there should be an art gallery dedicated just to the art of miniature painting. I’m pretty sure there are museums out there that specifically display miniature works, there was definitely one here in Los Angeles at some point, and there are definitely model train museums, but I don’t know of one that’s specifically just for what our hobby considers miniature painting.
In contrast to the David sculpture, the technical achievements and details of Chris’s piece really pin down my focus and attention to this very specific scene being shown to me. Whereas the David statue, because it is monochromatic and hewn from a single piece of stone, there’s just more abstraction there, less technical detail pinning my attention and so some part of my brain is left available to encounter abstract thoughts.
And that might just be the thing too. Our current labelling of “what is art and what is not” might really just be a social construct, some kind of unwritten agreement we’ve all kinda signed onto without thinking about it. Maybe. I bet some people that are way smarter than me would argue that this unseen, inscrutable feeling that directs our consideration of what is art and what is not is something more fundamental to our human existence rather than a contemporary social construct.
Let’s look at this piece by Tom Hugues – apologies if I’ve mispronounced his name. This is a great example to compare to some of the points we just discussed. This miniature was sculpted and painted by Tom. So, he’s created something that absolutely did not exist in any form before he went to work and there’s only one of these in existence. It’s incredibly detailed, it definitely holds my interest, the facial expression is enigmatic and does elicit some emotional response, some interpretation and imagination from the viewer – it seems to do all these things we’re saying fine art does. I still get this feeling though that it isn’t falling into the same category as fine art, or would be collected by snobby “art collectors”. Which is NOT saying it’s in a lesser category, it’s just a different category.
Side note, most of this fine art collector, art gallery bull[bleep] is just manufactured by wealthy people as ways to keep – or make – more wealth. I’ll drop a link to very interesting video below that has literally nothing to do with tabletop gaming, but is all about the art world and methods of tax write-offs within that world and you might find intriguing.
Back to Tom Hugue’s piece. And Chris Clayton’s. I do find that while I’m captivated by these pieces, a lot of my mental focus is on the details and how they were painted, how they were sculpted, how these visual effects were achieved. My mind is not wandering off into self-reflection or emotional thoughts conjured by the image of these pieces. If I’m honest, I’m marveling more at the technical artistic achievements by these artists than pondering life or other ethereal concepts, which is kind of what I feel “fine art” gears itself toward.
Here are some pieces of quote unquote fine art that make me feel something, and the “feeling” is coming from somewhere else, almost sort of not attached to the art pieces themselves but still generated by them. There’s something about the miniatures that inspire me to look closer at them, to marvel at how they were made, to inspect their physicality, to directly admire the technical side of the craft, while in contrast these paintings and illustrations are inspiring feelings in me that have no tangible or direct connection to the painting or illustration itself. They cause me to feel emotions that seemingly come out of nowhere, or out of the color of that sky or out of the brush strokes themselves, they cause me to think of other things, other stories, recall scenes from my past, things that are not directly connected to the paintings or illustrations themselves.
And granted, sometimes I’m looking at some of these paintings and I’m envisioning a wider sense of the world that the painting is showing me. Or imagining what’s happening or going on outside of the space constrained within the boundary of the canvas. And I just don’t – I personally don’t get that feeling when I look at miniatures. I don’t, I don’t feel like the miniature is somehow implying to me a wider world or a wider reality that I could explore mentally. And it’s really hard to … I don’t know why that is. I – I really can’t explain it. I feel like the miniatures just make me look at the miniature. And I don’t really imagine much beyond the miniature, because it’s so real, it’s not abstract enough to allow me to wander outside the boundaries of the miniature.
This is all like super esoteric and and touchy-feely and really more about … vague emotional responses than it is anything concrete to actually discuss.
I think we’re running into the answer we’ve been looking for, which is an absolutely intangible and ephemeral answer. Those words almost mean the same thing, I know. Almost. Is mini painting fine art? Maybe. I think it depends on the beholder and whatever the beholder feels is the answer, is the answer.
But we could literally talk about this ’til the sun explodes. I don’t think there is a satisfactory answer, but I do think that the opinions of “fine art” connoisseurs will keep mini painting out of the fine art category for a while. Maybe not forever, who knows.
I don’t know, the more I talk about these things, the wilder and more far out my thinking goes. Sometimes you just gotta stop and call it good for now.
So. Go make some art! See ya!