My first instinct when asked “Is fan art a form of real art?” was simply no. There’s some insanely good fan art out there, and much of it is inspired by classical painting and portraiture, but it was hard to fight my instinctual desire to separate colored-pencil drawings from a Rembrandt. Initially, I decided that it was because fan art portrayed fictional characters. Real art is portraits of real people, real scenes, real objects, right? But then, some of the most celebrated classical art depicts stories from the Bible. Salome holding the head of St. John, The Creation of Adam, The Last Supper; aren’t these fan art of the Bible? You could argue that it’s different because it’s religion, and a personal level of devotion is involved, but then I could argue that I’ve met Star Wars fans who are more devoted to Princess Leia than some people will ever be to a religion. The line cannot be drawn on whether or not the subject is worthy, or else Rembrandt may find himself kicked out of the “fine art” club. 

Then is it technique, perhaps, which sets fine art apart from fan art? Initially, again, my instinct is yes, because clearly a pencil drawing cannot be equivalent to an oil painting. But even if that’s true, and one could argue that it isn’t, many fan artists use classical painting techniques. There are portraits of Daenerys Targaryen that could blend in at the Louvre, and paintings of Arwen and Aragorn that would look perfectly in place next to a Millais. Fan art doesn’t just copy techniques, either. There are online artists whose real names may never be known, yet their work has pushed the envelope for other artists. A fan artist for Sword Art Online invented a new way of creating brushes in online software and shared it for free so that other artists could use them. Aside from technique, fan art has helped real causes in society. Fan artists have repopularised commissioning art for loved ones, a practice which had rapidly faded out of modern art culture. Fan artists have used their Patreons to raise money for charities, wildfire relief, and hospitals. Perhaps most importantly, fan art has given artists a path of income in a time when AI is wreaking havoc on the world of fine art with increasingly uncanny imitations. Fandoms have rallied around their artists, and while many traditional artists are celebrated in their communities, few of them have communities so vast and so dedicated as a fandom. 

Lastly, I considered whether the label is what sets them apart. Fan art is sometimes relegated to just one word, fanart, because it doesn’t deserve to be called art, since it clearly isn’t real art… yet, after considering how to distinguish the two from each other, I think my instincts were wrong. For every argument I could set forth, a counterargument could be made, a counterexample could be seen. And isn’t the purpose of art to challenge our thinking?