ROBERT WILLIAMS: SLANG AESTHETICS
GALLERY GUIDE
ADMISSION DESK
RESTROOMS
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Fantastical Amusement
Robert Williams’ Death by Exasperation uses the image of the Jabberwock to create “fantastic amusement.” Williams asserts “bizarre and bewildering” visuals should not only exist for children. Here, he draws upon 19th-century English artist Sir John Tenniel’s illustration for Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem Jabberwocky to produce his own nonsense creature. Williams’ gelatinous, metallic creature formed of mismatched eyes and human and non-human body parts emits question marks and bears the latin label non sequitur meaning “it does not follow [logic].” Williams’ work does not make logical sense—it is fantastical and imaginative. So how do you make sense of it?...You don’t, or like the jabberwock, you’ll suffer “traumatic exasperation… overcome by staggering incomprehension!”1
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Robert Williams’ statement for Death by Exasperation.
IMAGES: LEFT: John Tenniel, The Jabberwock (detail), An illustration to the poem Jabberwocky. First published in Carroll, Lewis. 1871. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There RIGHT: Robert Williams (American, b. 1943), Death by Exasperation (detail), 2010, oil on canvas, 38 x 42 inches, courtesy of the artist.
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“What about…
...comic book cartoons, pulp magazine covers, hot rod art, biker art, tattoos...and other second-class disciplines that don’t quite make the cut?” 4
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Highbrow Influences
“Visually
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enous”
Romanticism Romanticism, an early to mid 19th-century art movement, emphasized imagination and emotion over logic and reason. The excessive sentimentality, drama, and somtimes terror evoked by Romantic paintings is echoed in Williams’ descriptions of his own painting. Williams’ lowbrow take on Waldmüller’s 1839 The Shattered Rose foregrounds the excesses of imagination and sentimentality.
“Spomoakytic
Melodra s” Exces
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“Maudlinp,y, sappy, syruely saccharin l...” sentimenta
Surrealism Surrealism became a dominant visual art movement in the 1920s and 1930s, led by artists such as René Magritte whose print Le Prêtre Marie is featured below compared a particularly surrealist work of Williams, Terra Facia, The Exaggerated Persona of Poetic Location. Surrealism sought to break down the rational systems that limit what is accepted as reality and limit human creativity.
Lowbrow
Naming the Style
The term applied in the early 80s to Robert Williams (and others) underground, comix-inspired, anti-fine art style. This moniker suggests the lowbrow sources of inspiration for the imagery such as underground comix, kustom kars, punk rock, and other kitsch, popular culture, but is seen as denigrating by some artists.
Pop surrealism Escaping the negative connotation of “lowbrow” pop surrealism references both popular culture-inspired imagery and the influence of surrealism in the style’s adoption of imaginative, illogical ideas, non-linear, dreamlike narrative, and absurd imagery.
Conceptual Realism The term Robert Williams currently applies to his work which emphasizes the craftsmanship related realism and figuration, but also the conceptual nature of “fantastic exploration.” This term moves away from the “pop” of pop surrealism, which overly emphasizes appropriation of existing imagery rather than imaginative creation. IMAGES: Page 6: TOP: Ferdinand Waldmüller (1793–1865), The Shattered Rose, 1839, oil on panel, 25x19 ¼ in; Galerie des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Vienna; Image from John Edwin Canaday, Mainstreams of Modern Art, New York: Holt, 1959. BOTTOM: Robert Williams (1943–), The Shattered Rose, 2010, oil on canvas, 30x36 in Page 7: TOP: Robert Williams (1943–), Terra Facia, The Exaggerated Persona of Poetic Location, 2013, oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches. BOTTOM: René Magritte (1898–1967), Le Prêtre Marie (The Priest Marie), from “Signe de survie aux temps d’Amour”, (Signs of survival during times of love), 1968, etching, 13.8x9.2 cm; From the Collection of Georges Visat.
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PROGRAMS RECEPTION Thursday, March 8, 6–8:30 p.m. Fifth floor Gallery Talk with artist Robert Williams and public opening of Slang Aesthetics. Free for members, $5 students and faculty, $10 for general public.
ROBERT WILLIAMS: MR. BITCHIN’ AT MANSHIP THEATRE
Sunday, March 11, 2 p.m. First floor
Manship Theatre will screen the documentary Robert Williams: Mr. Bitchin’ in conjunction with Slang Aesthetics. Museum admission before the film is included in the ticket price. $8.50 for general public, $7 for LSU MOA members. $7 for members, $8.50 for general public.
THIRD THURSDAY Thursday, March 15, 6–8 p.m. Fifth floor LSU art history professor Joe Givens will give a gallery talk on the work of Robert Williams, followed by a beer tasting with Brasseurs a la Maison. Free for Contemporaries, $5 for members, $10 for general public.
BROWN BAG LUNCH: HORRORS OF MORALITY Wednesday, April 4, 12–1 p.m. Third floor LSU art history professor Joe Givens on morality in the work of Robert Williams and William Hogarth. Free to attend.
Robert Williams: Slang Aesthetics is supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council, and as administered by the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge. Funding has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Works and Annual Exhibition Fund donors The Imo N. Brown Memorial Fund in memory of Heidel Brown and Mary Ann Brown; Louisiana CAT; Charles Schwing; Alma Lee, H.N. and Cary Saurage Fund; Newton B. Thomas Family/Newtron Group; LSU College of Art & Design; and Susanna Atkins McCarthy.
ON THE COVER IMAGE: Robert Williams (American, b. 1943), Purple as an Inexplicable Poetic Force, 2015, oil on canvas, courtesy of the artist
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