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Influenced by cover artist and cartoonist Frank Frazetta, among many others, Chris Achilléos is synonymous with sci-fi/fantasy illustration (I mostly associate him with the '80s, although his career spans the '60s to the present). He is probably best known for his iconic "Taarna" poster art for the 1981
Heavy Metal animated film: not only does it feature one of his signature "Amazons" or "warrior women," it holds all the promise that the film (and ultimately
Heavy Metal magazine) wasn't quite able to fulfill — it's erotic rather than raunchy; dynamic yet controlled; it evokes a larger, action-and-adventure packed story beyond its plastic qualities, a technique Achilléos must have honed on his many, many book covers.
This sort of balance is at the heart of the best of Achilléos' work, which aesthetically high-wires between high and commercial art (and, more to the point, between cheese and non-cheese: amazingly enough, even his use of airbrush teeters just on the side of tasteful most of the time). His is a highly rendered, Pre-Raphaelite-esque, realistic style, and yet somehow his images don't melt into pastiche or freeze, lifeless, on the page.
If I had to pick a word to describe it, it would be "poised," an attribute that can especially be found in the aforementioned "Amazons." It's this series of paintings, in waterproof inks, gouaches, oils and airbrush, (which can be viewed at his website
http://www.chrisachilleos.co.uk/main/gallerie/amazon/amazon.html, in his four art-book collections (
Sirens was reprinted as recently as October 2009 by Titan Books) [1] and in trading-card sets readily available on eBay) that I consider the zenith of his work.
On the whole, his Amazons are heavy-lidded, knowing, intricately costumed and made up, refined, glamorous, feminine, and powerful: if they are depicted in a milieu, no matter how fantastical, they are confident within it. (Although, a couple of nitpicks: one is that they share only about two sets of oft-bared breasts among themselves, one
Playboy-perfect and the other slightly less so: the fact that Achilléos was a longtime contributor to
Men Only could account for this. Two, they can occasionally suffer from "dead," or even crossed, eyes.)
To Achilléos' credit, however, the focal point of each Amazon portrait is her playful, dignified face: almost invariably they look out challengingly at the viewer, straight-on, which very much helps to prevent an exploitative tone to the work. Achilléos frequently pairs them with beasts, often large cats, with which they share a sleek strength.
His art has appeal for women as much as for men, if not more so. Indeed, this is merely anecdotal, but it seems to me that lately almost all of the retro pin-up-art enthusiasts I've encountered are women in their early-to-mid 20s.[2] I think it's a phase for many of them: although for others, it might well be a source of visual pleasure and/or influence for decades to come. As for me, I'm not quite as charmed by it as I was four or five years ago (when, ahem, I belonged to that demographic): however, I've yet to outgrow Chris Achilléos, one of its beneficiaries.
Notes:
[1] Much of the research for this piece was drawn from
Sirens text, written by Nigel Sucking in unfortunately tortured syntax (sample: "A commission he [Achilléos] would love to have accepted was for a mermaid to appear in a calender [sic], the result of a short-lived and unhappy liaison with an agency."). However, it does have an introduction by Ray Harryhausen, who extols the virtues of illustration as a medium. On the art-book side, it includes not only samples from his "Amazons" series, but of his book covers, etc., and even an experimental comics page. Also of interest was "Miss America," a painting of a female Captain America that brings to mind a more animated Alex Ross; and
art for movies destined to rerun constantly on '90s cable: Supergirl and
Grease 2.
[2] Take this with the usual grains of salt: Amy Winehouse, I live in Seattle, etc. etc.
Images [©2009 Chris Achilléos]
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2010
