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*** low brow lowbrow art History, Mark Ryden, Brian Viveros,Jeremy Geddes, Camille Rose Garcia, Invited Comic artist, Rufus Dayglo, James Jean,Joao Ruas. ***
HELL-O! ART ICON IS VERY HAPPY, BUT NOT HAPPY AS DRINKING MOMMY’S MILK HAPPY, TO PRSENT THE FIRST COPY PASTE LOWBROW ART MAGAZINE . COPY PASTE? YES! IT’S ALL IN GOOGLE YOU KNOW, WIKI THIS, WIKI THAT, BLOGS, PORN, WTV MAN! IT’S THE NEW MEDIA GENERATION. AND ANY WAYS, IS FREE! WE ALL LOVE FREE DONT’WE? SO HAVE FUN, WE LOVE YOU! ENJOY, YOURS, ABIGAIL B.
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WTF...
IS LOWBROW ART?
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The lowbrow magazine Juxtapoz by Robert Williams, first published in 1994, has been a mainstay of writing on lowbrow art and has helped direct and grow the movement.
ell worm, here it is. Lowbrow art describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. It is a populist art movement with its cultural roots in underground comix, punk music, and hot-rod cultures of the street. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Lowbrow art often has a sense of humor - sometimes the humor is gleeful, sometimes impish, and sometimes it is a sarcastic comment. ome of the first artists to create what came to be known as lowbrow art were underground cartoonists like Robert Williams and Gary Panter. Early shows were in alternative galleries in New York and Los Angeles such as Psychedelic Solutions Gallery in Greenwich Village, New York City which was run by Jacaeber Kastor, La Luz de Jesus run by Billy Shire and 01 gallery in Hollywood, run by John Pochna. The movement steadily grew from its beginning, with hundreds of artists adopting this style. As the number of artists grew, so did the number of galleries showing Lowbrow; The Julie Rico Gallery and the Bess Cutler Gallery both showed important artists and helped expand the kind of art that was classified as Lowbrow.
ORIGINS OF THE TERM “LOWBROW”
IN AN ARTICLE IN THE FEBRUARY 2006 ISSUE OF HIS MAGAZINE JUXTAPOZ, ROBERT
WILLIAMS TOOK CREDIT FOR ORIGINATING THE TERM “LOWBROW ART.” HE STATED THAT IN 1979 GILBERT SHELTON OF THE PUBLISHER RIP-OFF PRESS DECIDED TO PRODUCE A BOOK FEATURING WILLAMS’ PAINTINGS. WILLIAMS SAID HE DECIDED TO GIVE THE BOOK THE SELF-DEPRECATING TITLE, “THE LOWBROW ART OF ROBT. WILLIAMS,”SINCE NO AUTHORIZED ART INSTITUTION WOULD RECOGNIZE HIS TYPE OF ART. “LOWBROW” WAS THUS USED BY WILLIAMS IN OPPOSITION TO “HIGHBROW.” HE SAID THE NAME THEN STUCK, EVEN THOUGH HE FEELS IT IS INAPPROPRIATE. WILLIAMS REFERS TO THE MOVEMENT AS “CARTOON-TAINTED ABSTRACT SURREALISM.” LATELY, WILLIAMS HAS BEGUN REFERRING TO HIS OWN WORK AS “CONCEPTUAL REALISM.
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ark Ryden is an American painter, part of the Lowbrow or Pop Surrealist art movement.He was dubbed “the god-father of pop surrealism” by Interview Magazine.Ryden’s aesthetic is developed from subtle amalgams of many sources: from Ingres, David and other French classicists to Little Golden Books.Ryden also draws his inspiration from anything that will evoke mystery; old
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toys, anatomical models, stuffed animals, skeletons and religious ephemera found in flea markets. Ryden’s solo debut show entitled “The Meat Show” was in Pasadena, California in 1998. Meat is a reoccurring theme in Ryden’s work. Ryden observes the disconnect in our contemporary culture between meat we use for food and the living, breathing creature it comes from.
“I suppose it is this contradiction that brings me to return to meat in my art.”
BRIAN VIVEROS
nternationally celebrated artist Brian M. Viveros has an unmistakably arresting hand. His highly detailed paintings of defiant doe-eyed beauties summon a raw poetic of intractability. Beautiful and yet barbarous, they draw from the power of the feminine and its reconciliation of vulnerability, beauty, and power. His subjects are fighters and survivors, rendered immaculately, and just bloodied enough to remind us that they are formidable opponents not to be taken lightly. The artist’s hyperreal portraits deliver cult worthy heroines emerging triumphant from battle, complete with cigarettes anchored from parted lips, and tattoos and wounds to rival any soldier’s; they are steel tough victors rendered with something of the sublime. Viveros’ work elevates the iconography of the femme-fatale as a powerful emblem of strength and retaliation: insubordinate beauties undaunted by the unruliness of a messy fight. 4
JEREMY GEDDES
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S a photo-realistic painter from Melbourne, Australia. He is widely known for the Cosmonaut series of paintings,and has illustrated for comic book covers, in collaboration with friend Ashley Wood. Geddess won the Spectrum Gold Award for his cover art for the comic, Doomed. His children’s picture book, The Mystery of Eilean Mor, was shortlisted for The Aurealis Awards, won The Crichton
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CAMILLE ROSE GARCIA
os Angeles-based lowbrow artist. She produces paintings, prints and sculpture in a gothic, “creepy” cartoon style. She cites as influences Walt Disney and Philip K. Dick. She has published three books, The Saddest Place on Earth, (Last Gasp, 2006), The Magic Bottle: A BLAB! Storybook, (Fantagraphics, 2006) and Tragic Kingdom (Last Gasp, 2007) .She illustrated a version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in 2010. “The original illustrations by John Tenniel have always been some of my favorites,[3]” said Garcia in a recent interview when asked about the book. “I have three copies of the book here because I collect children’s stories. That’s one of my favorite stories because it’s actually a real dark story. She falls down the hole and no one is really nice to her at all. Pretty much every character she encounters, they’re not really on her side. So re-reading it I realized I could do a little bit darker of an interpretation than the original illustrations.”
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ames Jean is a Taiwanese American visual artist, known for both his commercial work and fine art gallery work. He is known in the American comics industry as a cover artist for various books published by DC Comics, as well as for his work for Prada, ESPN and Atlantic Records. His work, which has been collected in numerous volumes, has been compared by The New York Times to that of Maxfield Parrish. In 2001, Jean became a cover artist for DC Comics, garnering seven Eisner awards, three consecutive Harvey awards, two gold medals and a silver from the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles, and a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators of New York.
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o達o Ruas paints a haunting world inhabited by enigmatic figures and regal beasts awash in a maelstrom of mysterious energies. His explorations of the darker realms of the spirit evoke states of emotional turmoil, spiritual hunger and troubled passion. Weaving together history, mythology and cryptic symbolism in a misty dreamscape where twilight is ever at hand and the bounds of gravity seem optional, he describes an ethereal mythos that is somehow deeply personal and disquietingly universal at the same time.
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