Art

Item Description

Robert Williams is an American painter, cartoonist, and founder of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine.  His mix of California car culture, cinematic apocalypticism, and film noir helped to create a new genre of psychedelic imagery.

Williams pursued a career as a fine arts painter years before joining the art studio of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth in the mid-1960¿s. In this position, as the famous custom car builder¿s art director, he moved into the rebellious, anti-war circles of early underground comix.

In the late 1960s, while doing advertisements and graphics for Roth, Williams was also a productive oil painter. It was during this period that he created his "Super Cartoon" paintings, which included Appetite for Destruction and In the Land of Retinal Delights. These paintings were meticulously created in the style of the old masters, using hand-made paints and multiple layers of varnish. The "Super Cartoon" works sold well but were very time-consuming to produce, sometimes requiring more than a year.

In the late 20th and 21st centrury diverse forms of commonplace and popular art appeared to be coalescing into a formidable faction of new painted realism. The new school of imagery was a product of art that didn¿t fit comfortably into the accepted definition of fine art. It embraced some of the figurative graphics that formal art academia tended to reject: comic books, movie posters, trading cards, surfer art, hot rod illustration, to mention a few.

This alternative art movement found its most congealing participant in one of America's most opprobrious and maligned underground artists, the painter, Robert Williams. It was Robert who brought the term "lowbrow" into the fine arts lexicon, with his ground breaking 1979 book, The Lowbrow Art of Robt. Williams. It was from this point that the seminal elements of West Coast Outlaw culture slowly started to aggregate.

Robert currently lives in the San Fernando Valley in California with his wife Suzanne, who is also a professional artist.

Derision Finds Its Greatest Success In Those Who Attempt To Avoid It
2014
Printed photocloth surfboard
78 x 21 x 2.5 inches (198.1 x 53 x 6.4 cm)

Item Special Note

Shipping and handling not included. This board is physically located in New York City. The board will be available for pick up or shipping on or after Thursday, January 1, 2015.