I feel I should warn you first, tho, I am an art student and I might accidentally slip in a term you're not familiar with (I doubt it, though) so if there's anything ya don't understand, just ask.
Despite what one might think, art is a major part of the CS government's propaganda machine. The first strand of this is the Emperor demand that officially sanctioned art be in the "National Realist" style. Similar to what Hitler and Stalin demanded in their regimes. This stuff looks like traditional realistic painting, generally pretty drab colors, and depicts mostly important CS leaders and functionaries in military regalia, police and soldiers looking heroic, and people erecting impressive CS buildings and DHT transports and stuff. National Realist sculpture takes the form of larger than life, realistic metal sculptures of the same subjects.
The second major part of CS propaganda art is the Coalition Center for Industrial Design. This little pocket of the propaganda department is responsible for coming up with the "Death's Head" motif on all coalition military gear. They take the blueprints for, say, the CS grunt armor and are responsible for redesigning it with the Death's Head motif included at minimum cost. The coalition takes this aspect of propaganda very seriously (you would to if most of your population was illiterate)--the DHT transport cost 35% more to make with the grinning skull stuck on the front, but Prosek thinks it's worth it.
All other forms of visual arts are illegal, even abstract painting.
One of the most interesting groups to emerge from the morass of illegal Coalition artists are the members of Art/Brutal and those inspired by them. These are a very loosely connected group of practical jokers/terrorists/performance artists totally committed to overthrowing, or at least harassing the government. They do everything with an excess of style. Their actions range from putting up posters of D-Bee internment camps in posh restaurants to the so-called "Saboteur's Dartboard"--a performance piece wherein Art/Brutal founder Max Pilnechek set off a ring of explosives ten feet around the perimeter of a CS military installation, then, seconds later, another ring of explosives at the perimeter, then another ring of explosives ten feet inside the perimeter and on and on in a shrinking circle until all the survivors were packed into the center of the installation, in a ten foot diameter circle when the final explosives went off. No-one knows how he managed to do it. Other notable performances include going into a base where hundreds of skelebots were standing, unactivated, shoulder to shoulder and gluing all the shoulders together with an Atlantean super-epoxy devised from a carpet of adhesion spell, Painting huge red smiles and the words "Here to hurt you!" on Abolishers and removing Karl Prosek's god-daughter's kidney and hiding it under the Judge's stand in the Chi-Town hall of Justice. Art/Brutal members can make great PC's, but they must have the Art skill and have a violent distaste for direct fighting.
The notable exception to this would be a group of Crazies who are also dancers, they fight with maximum flair, pinwheeling in the air like Bruce Lee and always attempting to subdue the enemy with the most bizarre means available. In game terms, they are like your typical Crazy, only they only use ancient weapons or modern upgrades (like vibro-blades), have both the Art and Dance skill and always have TWICE as many attacks as they normally would. Embarassing the enemy is almost as important as killing him. They pay a lot of attention to how they dress, too, and like to arrange for people to film them in combat. These guys are based on real life practitioners of Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art/Dance. I don't know if Capoeira is in Ninjas and Superspies, but if so, feel free to use it in this context.
By far the most popular illegal artform is documentary filmmaking. Since the coming of the Rifts, people are just dying to know what's out there and the few individuals willing to risk life and limb to record Xiticix mating habits or the making of an Anti-Monster are reeling in the cash on the black market. Many changelings and a few dragons have taken up this profession, because their shape-changing abilities allow them to infiltrate alien habitats undetected. Film technology is advanced enough to be integrated into a cybereye, glove or belt buckle easily for the right price. A film of an Alien hive in southern Burma is currently the rage among film fans worldwide.
In the field of sculpture, there are many fascinating experiments going on. One thread is a group of sculptors who integrate magical effects into the pieces so that when they are approached, it sets off bizarre hallucinogenic effects in the viewer. Another emerging artform is "biological sculpture" where DNA splicers attempt to create organisms of bizarre beauty or that just do really neat things. About 75% of these biological sculptures don't live longer than a day, and are displayed in preservative fluid. Some, however, live on, with strange and spectacular abilities...
Photography is also having an unexpected boom in the black market, and many collectors pay huge sums for that picture of the Borg being eaten alive by the giant worm or the Sunset over the North African Ley Line Nexus, usually the pictures end up hanging in some rich bastards living room. Could be a good source of income for adventurers with the appropriate skills.
The Splugorth have a complex and inscrutable artform based on ritual disembowelment and mutilation. The art of properly removing and arranging entrails is not appreciated by Lord Splynncryth himself, but several of his fellow Sploogies are cultured enough to grasp this ancient and subtle craft.
In Omagua, the South american City of Cats, there is a vogue for a strange form of painting based on symmetrical abstraction. The skill it takes to exactly mirror the intricate swirls of red, brown and yellow is hard to come by and respected artists in Omagua are extremely wealthy.
Around the world, native crafts have reached increasing prominence because magical objects often need to be handmade by a skilled artist. African sculptors whose work would, in the past, be considered extraneous and decorative are now sought out in droves, as many traditions of magical manufacture require unusual forms capable of accessing mystic energy. In the Orient, it is held that the more inventive the design of the object, the more powerful it will be.
OK there it is, tell me what ya think.
By Zachary Smith.