Comments on: Creating the Age of Reptiles

By: Robert Sloan

Robert Sloan — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:24:59 +0000

Thank you for this essay! I’ve pondered that bias from both directions – as a paleontology buff and as an artist studying representational fine art.

Every year I look at national and international fine art competitions where there are categories by subject. “Animals” is often a category. What comes up in “Animals” is always popular domestic animals or wildlife, most often a few popular species of either. It was a pleasant surprise to see a watercolorist do a series of bull alligators in various bold colors and intricate, accurate detail.

There seems to be a prejudice against prehistoric animals by subject. I never “got it” why certain subjects weren’t considered fine art and others were. “Shock art” abounds either making a political point or just expressing violence and despair, sometimes it seems like a big game of “gross out” as to what’s depicted or used in creating it. Yet there’s little or nothing in the way of science related art, let alone paleontology.

I’ve also run into “illustrative” as a pejorative no matter how many famous fine artists like Norman Rockwell were actually illustrators. The man’s magazine covers wind up in fine art museums all over the place. So while there’s snobbery about “mere illustration” the best of illustrators do get honored at least posthumously.

My fondest childhood memories involve the Chicago Art Institute and the Field Museum of Natural History, both in Chicago, both visited annually on summer vacations. I went back as an adult and visited both several times a year when I lived there. The connection made sense, but what doesn’t make sense is that the Art Institute didn’t exhibit some of Knight’s sketches or smaller paintings when the famous murals are there in the same city.

I bought Knight’s “Animal Drawing: Anatomy and Action for Artists several times. I replace that volume when it wears out, it’s a great lesson and a great reference especially for species I don’t draw regularly.

Speaking as an artist, I think these great painters need to be revered along with all the other great painters. Limiting fine art only to certain subjects and not others makes no sense to me – and if shock art means that art should or can also be controversial, then all the controversies over Evolution should put these great painters right back into the limelight.

By: Leigh

Leigh — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 23:06:08 +0000

I love that mural. A poster of it hung in my first grade classroom, running along the wall above the blackboard. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. It was probably the start of my interest in dinosaurs. Funny, I was just thinking about it. I came across this image done by a Japanese artist, and it reminded me of it.

By: Peteykins

Peteykins — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:10:36 +0000

Zallinger’s mural haunted me as a child. I would star at it endlessly in that Time/Life book in which it appeared. It was a HUGE part of my childhood dinomania. I would never even think of criticizing it as art, no matter how inaccurate it turned out to be. I still love it.

By: Marc Vincent

Marc Vincent — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:23:51 +0000

Is there anyone out there who really derides Zallinger? His dinosaurs might not be anatomically correct anymore, but as you say his work remains very beautiful, and worthy of being described as ‘fine art’. Furthermore his work did change over time; the T. rex in a book I looked at for LITC (pluggity plug plug http://chasmosaurs.blogspot.com/2011/12/vintage-dinosaur-art-dinosaurs-and.html) is a notable improvement (anatomically) on the Age of Reptiles version. Judging from the comments received over there, there is still a lot of love for Zallinger.

By: Dan Peterson

Dan Peterson — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:35:03 +0000

It never ceases to amuse me how some dinosaur enthusiasts continue to deride Zallinger’s renditions of dinosaurs as outdated and old fashioned, yet there is no scientific evidence to prove this. There is nothing to suggest that some dinosaurs weren’t drab, particularly ambush predators as T-Rex might have been. From skin impressions of its close relative Albertosaurus confirm the scales, and a well fed T-Rex could indeed appear to be that ‘bloated’. I have little doubt that Zallinger used a big American Alligator to model his T-Rex from, both in color and build. And why not? They are both large, scaly, carnivorous Archosaurs, on top of their respective food chains. Nor is there anything wrong with the pose. I suspect large theropods contantly raised there heads above the ‘horizontal gait stance’ to survey the landscape for prey, and there is confirmation of this in smaller theropods where marks of a dragging tail have been preserved in fossil trackways. It is as ridiculous as saying is is innacurate to depict a bear on its hind legs.

Perhaps a hundred years from now when paleontologists have far more knowledge than today, the late 20th/early 21st Century hype of mandatory rainbow-hued, emaciated-looking dinosaurs with no flesh on their skulls or lips will be what the scientists of the future will ridicule, while Zallinger’s mural will endure as both an artistic, and still scientifically-accurate masterpiece.