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Furry Art Archaeology project
8 years ago
I've recently started a little project on the side of my main blog. Basically I'll be sifting through old furry fandom art from my archives (mostly stuff from the fur.artwork.* newsgroups) and writing some musings and critical commentary about it:
http://furryartarchaeology.blogspot.it/
This is something I've been wanting to do for a while, in part for personal amusement but also to put to the test the art theory stuff I've been learning in the last few years. Apart from the [Adjective][Species] blog (currently on hiatus) and the extremely rare insightful posts on furry image boards I think there is a sore lack of proper analysis of furry art, especially the naive furry art from the early years of the internet-based fandom which has cast the foundations for many of the tropes and quirks found in furry art today. I don't mean technical commentary but more all-around critical analysis: carefully observing the details and deconstructing images while trying to understand the concepts and emotions they were trying to convey, the context in which they were created, the aesthetic they drew upon, stuff like that. That's what I'll be trying to do with the new blog.
Don't expect any freudian nonsense though, like trying to infer an artist's sexuality from their art. I loathe that kind of art commentary and I hope this will become clear along the way.
I hope it will be of some interest for people other than me - I've been surprised myself seeing how even some of the crudest images can yield much more than they seemed to offer at face value. But at worst it will be a fun nostalgia ride for me and a way to figure out what I actually have in the archives.
http://furryartarchaeology.blogspot.it/
This is something I've been wanting to do for a while, in part for personal amusement but also to put to the test the art theory stuff I've been learning in the last few years. Apart from the [Adjective][Species] blog (currently on hiatus) and the extremely rare insightful posts on furry image boards I think there is a sore lack of proper analysis of furry art, especially the naive furry art from the early years of the internet-based fandom which has cast the foundations for many of the tropes and quirks found in furry art today. I don't mean technical commentary but more all-around critical analysis: carefully observing the details and deconstructing images while trying to understand the concepts and emotions they were trying to convey, the context in which they were created, the aesthetic they drew upon, stuff like that. That's what I'll be trying to do with the new blog.
Don't expect any freudian nonsense though, like trying to infer an artist's sexuality from their art. I loathe that kind of art commentary and I hope this will become clear along the way.
I hope it will be of some interest for people other than me - I've been surprised myself seeing how even some of the crudest images can yield much more than they seemed to offer at face value. But at worst it will be a fun nostalgia ride for me and a way to figure out what I actually have in the archives.
It'll be interesting to see what you come up with.
The oldest piece I've ever found, is dated 1995 that I stumbled upon on the internet once.
The fandom was tiny in the 80s, and almost all of us knew everyone else, way back when.
-Badger-
-Badger-
Back then, it was so small that we all knew one another.
Much bigger now, of course, but it was a bit tiny back then.
-Badger-
I agree that satire is hardly present in furry porn, but humor on the other hand isn't incompatible with fetishism and furry art is a place where the two blur into each other a lot in my opinion. In many cases I think it's more intentional than fans realize too. After over 20 years in the fandom I seldom find furry porn arousing any more, which is part of what prompted me to look better at what is going on beneath the surface. Nowadays I find the weird porn mostly funny and insightful about some aspects of human imagination which are ignored by most other kinds of art.
Well, in any case, I do look forward to the non-adult segments, and I'll still probably read the adult ones too I suppose. The discussion side is well written regardless of how much it makes me wince. :)
http://yerf.metafur.org/yerfartists
V.
If you do this right, non-furries will love this too as an education example.
I noticed your project has a high focus on sexualized art at the moment.
Maybe you can make a part that would be useful as an intro for the furry fandom for those who would like to know more but not get into sexuality?
The artwork dosen't always show though, so I don't know if it'd be worth your while to check for stuff that way or not. Just thought I'd mention it.
http://us.vclart.net/vcl/ is still up and has art going back to the mid-90s.
At the time I was looking for artwork from people who had since removed their art from the site. Trying to find some pictures by an artist no longer on VCL I remembered from 1999-2000-ish. Found a few using wayback.
Also, the American Journal of Anthropomorphics is and was a really premiere thing back in the day. If you can find copies anymore, check them out.
I plan to tackle fanzines too as I have collected a few myself and now Mark Merlino is in the process of scanning and uploading plenty of old zines and other paper material on his own site: https://confurence.com/
I just need to find the time to sift through them since this summer I'm very busy and barely manage to go through my previously selected files. I hope things will slow down enough towards the end of the year. But rest assured I want to cover as much as possible while people still care and relics of the early days like the Yerf archive are still online.