Art of the Fantastic features original, timeless works of adventure and fantasy

The A.E. Backus Museum presents the Art of the Fantastic: Imaginative Illustration from the Korshak Collection, on view March 8 through April 28, 2024. The Korshak Collection features works by pioneering artists from over a century of published science fiction, horror, and fantasy. These original adventure and fantasy illustrations appeared on the covers and pages of timeless novels, and in classic pulp magazines from the 1930s through 1960s such as Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Fantastic Adventures, and Wonder Stories. The exhibition features 40 works from this notable private collection by such masters as Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham, Gustave Doré, Howard Pyle, Virgil Finlay, Kelly Freas, J. Allen St. John, Frank Frazetta, and Michael Whelan. With outstanding images of Martian princesses, Arthurian legends, ethereal fairies, alien invaders, imaginative pasts and fanciful, uncertain futures, Art of the Fantastic is far and away a superb survey of the extraordinary. The exhibition will be on view starting next month at the Backus Museum located at 500 North Indian River Drive in Historic Downtown Fort Pierce, Florida.

As a young man, Stephen Korshak, founder of the Collection, grew up and was inspired by great art in his home. His father, Erle Korshak, was the publisher of the pioneering science fiction book company, Shasta Publishers. Shasta ushered in the transition of important science fiction literature from magazines printed on cheap pulp paper to hardcover, library-quality books. Much of that art lived with Korshak at his home and at his father’s company office in Chicago.

In the past, many art scholars differentiated fine art from illustration, but today illustration is regularly regarded as fine art with many talented artists choosing to work in this field. A few of the best known artists who worked in illustrated fine art include Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, and Andy Warhol, all of whose work has been used in advertisements, magazines, and featured in fine art exhibitions.
The full Korshak Collection consists of approximately 100 paintings, drawings, and etchings of published illustration including works from classic and notable contemporary fiction stories such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes and John Carter/The Princess of Mars, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Goethe’s Faust, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, and Cervantes’s Don Quixote, among others.

“It wasn’t so long ago that there were rigid boundaries and gatekeepers that felt it was important to keep the artistic creations borne from popular culture at a distance and separate from art for art’s sake,” says Backus Museum Executive Director, J. Marshall Adams. “Those old boundaries are dissolving or have vanished as people today focus on the art, the skill, and the imagination required to enchant the viewer, to instill wonder and make concrete what was only a dream before. Art of the Fantastic is for viewers who love art, for readers who appreciate a good visual story, and for the geeks and nerds who have inherited the earth today and are drawn to marvel at the classics.”

Art of the Fantastic: Imaginative Illustration from the Korshak Collection’s opening reception will be held on Friday, March 15 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm, with remarks at 6:30 pm. Current members are always free; not-yet members are $20 – or join this evening as a member for 12 months of inspiring arts and culture.