Ok I definitely agree that fanart is a valid art, but I don’t agree that it should hang alongside art in museums with other contemporary artists. The difference between fanart and museum art is that museum artists have been to school or apprenticed as artists, or they’re using their art to speak to something political and universal. Your drawing of Castiel doesn’t fit into any of that. You don’t own Castiel, and he doesn’t have a context that allows just anyone to understand him.

youkaiyume:

:

Well, this is horseshit but sure.

1. Museum artists have been to school or apprenticed as artists.
So have I and countless other fanartists. Next.

2. You don’t own Castiel.
Andy Warhol didn’t own Campbell’s Soup, Coca Cola, or Brillo. His paintings of Elvis dressed as a cowboy were taken directly from a promo shot of a film called Flaming Star. His paintings or Marilyn Monroe were taken directly from a promo shot from a film called Niagara. 

In 1889, John Singer Sargent painted a portrait of then-contemporary actress Ellen Terry performing as Lady Macbeth. The list goes on—and includes many other artists. There are far too many examples for me to list here of classical artists taking it upon themselves to paint fanart for literature and drama they admired that was contemporary to their time that didn’t belong to them. Copyright is an entirely modern form of gatekeeping on what is ultimately still just mythology, and it doesn’t change the fact that people will always seek to explore and own for themselves their culture’s mythological identity, whether it be carved in stone or written in a book or played out on television.

3. They’re using their art to speak to something political and universal.
I drew a portrait of Castiel because I’m an asexual, transgender woman who grew up in a post-Cold War television culture, and the characters I choose to draw and how I choose to draw them reflect not only my childhood experiences but my current political and social views as a humanist and a feminist.

4. Castiel doesn’t have a context that allows just anyone to understand him.
Nobody fucking knows who the girl with the pearl earring is.

Bottom line, it has nothing to do with what we draw and everything to do with who we are—young women who have historically been erased from art history and disregarded by gatekeepers and elitists as immature and amateur outsider artists despite being the driving force behind pop culture and modern mythology.

Ten points from Gryffindor.

Does anyone also want to tell OP that practically all of classical/renaissance art featured in museums is also fanart of the Bible/and or other Religious stories from around the world like Greek/Roman mythology???