The history of Sci-fi art and illustration has had a rich and storied past. Generation of illustrators and painters have rendered their fantastic ideas on paper and canvas. The decades of the 1920’s - 1940’s saw the imaginative but crudely drawn pulp magazine gouaches of Frank R Paul. Virgil Finlay employed a scratchboard and stippled technique for such newsstand favorites as Weird Tales. J. Allen St. John crafted his fantasy oil scenes for the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories. The1950’s gave rise to more realistic and accurate illustrations of Chesley Bonestell for such magazines as Life.
Then in he late 1970’s a true breakthrough in history of Sci-fi art was ushered in. It was Omni Magazine. It’s mission, to take a giant leap for mankind in visualizing new worlds. Hitherto, only painters and illustrators were hired to depicted Sci-fi worlds. Omni magazine was the first to consistently use photographers. They still commissioned top illustrators of the day such as E.I. Gieger but they were the ones to push photography. For this end, they recruited conceptual color photographer Mitchell Funk to pilot the nascence of Sci-fi photography. They used Mitchell for some interior illustrations. However, it was the important promotional ad campaign that was to brand the image of Omni as the coolest Sci-fi, Fantasy, Futurist magazine ever. “Three Oval Glows” 1975” by Mitchell Funk is one the more numbing Omni promotional ads. Like spotlights hovering in an alien sky, three oval glows stares you down. Exactly whats going on the in the picture is undetermined. Perhaps, the lights could be suggestive of aliens, perhaps something else. It’s meaning is ambiguous but it’s effect on you isn’t. It invades your eyeballs. As you look at the image, it looks back and creates a hypnotic, trance like state. Typically, we are accustomed to seeing see circular shapes in the heavens.
Now we are confronted with ovals. Each oval glow is backlit from unknown light source. They create an intense green glow that radiates out evenly and bleeds into the vacuum of space. In perfect symmetrical formation, they hover above an eerie and isolated landscape composed of acid yellows and radioactive greens. The quintessence of alienness is captured. The Omni brand is defined. Yet, the exploration of space has a dual meaning in this work. It is not without significance that the work was done in 1975. Funk was doing in photography what many minimalist and color field painters of the time were doing on canvas. “Three Oval Glows” is a striking abstract composition. It is complex, yet simple. The pictorial space is divided in half. Sky area has the same chromatic harmony as the ground and cohesively fits together. It is a very flat image and depth is indicated in very subtle variations of hue. The perfectly geometrically symmetric elliptical shapes strike a perfect balance with each other. They are of equal size, equidistant from one another and horizontally aligned in a mathematically precise formation that creates a remarkably formal composition.
Mitchell Funk
American, b.1950
American, b.1950
Three Oval Glows
1975
Photographs, Chromogenic Print
2 of 15
29 x 43 in. (73.7 x 109.2 cm.)
Signed dated lower right
1975
Photographs, Chromogenic Print
2 of 15
29 x 43 in. (73.7 x 109.2 cm.)
Signed dated lower right
Other works by this artist:
