The 1987 notoriety cemented Williams’ reputation as a major outsider artist with an outsized influence on a new generation of artists -- many of whom are now regularly featured in the magazine he co-founded 20 years ago, Juxtapoz.

Introduction to the art of Robert Williams.

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Robert Williams is an artist of extreme uniqueness. He paints art in such a way that inspires and repels at the same time. He reminds me of those “Hot Rod / Monster” models that I used to make in the 1960’s. You know the type, a big ugly hairy monster with big eyeballs is sitting in this deliciously tiny hot rod trying to drive it around. He’s a talent, for certain, but his work is not for everyone. 

I want to explain a bit about what lowbrow art  is.  The lowbrow or pop surrealism movement began in California among  the surfer and hot rod culture and was aimed squarely at that culture;  it’s therefore considered a populist art movement, unlike movements such  as abstract expressionism and the like, which are often regarded  (correctly or incorrectly) as elitist. 

The art is characterized by the  juxtaposition of “fine art” concepts or styles with kitsch,  comics—especially underground comix—cartoons and other pop cultural  ephemera, often in bizarre or humorous ways.  More recently, Japanese  culture and anime-style art have made their way into the movement.  The  founding father of lowbrow is usually considered to be Robert Williams, who facetiously adopted the title The Lowbrow Art of Robert Williams  for his first book of collected art, in response to the fact that at  the time no major galleries or museums would display his art,  considering it trashy and tasteless.  

The name stuck and became  associated with the movement as a whole, even though Williams himself  has since rejected it in application to his own work.  (If Williams is  the movement’s father, then its godfather is surely Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, famous for his Kustom Kulture art and especially for the character Rat Fink.) 

-Pigtails in paint
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Robert Williams paintings are a wild pop-culture pastiche of hot rods, pinup girls, and cartoon sex and violence. For the better part of the last 50 years, Robert Williams has waged war on the mainstream art world with those eye-popping paintings, a best-selling art magazine and a growing flock of like-minded rebel artists.

His paintings are a wild pop-culture pastiche of hot rods, pinup girls, and cartoon sex and violence. For the better part of the last 50 years, Robert Williams has waged war on the mainstream art world with those eye-popping paintings, a best-selling art magazine and a growing flock of like-minded rebel artists. In a Robert Williams painting, there might be blood, fiery hot rod crashes or lecherous robots. There have also been surly tooth fairies in torn fishnets that bear a passing resemblance to Symbionese Liberation Army-era Patty Hearst.

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In a Robert Williams painting, there might be blood, fiery hot rod crashes or lecherous robots. There have also been surly tooth fairies in torn fishnets that bear a passing resemblance to Symbionese Liberation Army-era Patty Hearst.

Oh, and don’t forget that sexy and very funny series that depicts half-naked women reclining seductively on giant platters of tacos and enchiladas. 

The term “Lowbrow” was coined by Juxtapoz magazine founder  Robert Williams in the late 1970s as a way to describe a modern art  movement that flew in the face of traditional, gallery-safe, “highbrow”  elements and imagery. In this eclectic style, which draws inspiration  from punk, metal, and rockabilly music, as well as the tattoo, hot rod,  tiki, and monster movie subcultures, all rules are thrown out the  window.

Williams later referred to the Lowbrow movement as "cartoon-tainted  abstract surrealism,” but it has also been called “pop surrealism” and  “underground art,” among other things. It often depicts the vehicles and  fashions derivative of the pin-up girls of the 1940s, the greasers and  cartoons of the 1950s, the Ed “Big Daddy” Roth custom car builders of  the 1960s, the music and lowriders of the 1970s, and the London and  SoCal street art of the 1980s.

The kustom kulture lowbrow scene emerged from—and remains most  prominent in—Los Angeles, where, on any given weekend, you can find an  event featuring amazing cars, top tattoo artists, great food, and lively  music. You’ll find Lozeau there, somewhere between the surf, skeleton,  hot rod, Poly-Pop, and zombie art, working on a new painting in his  signature illustrative style. 

-David Lozeau
Robert Williams 3
What do you think about art rooted in underground comix, hot rod cars and punk music? How would you imagine this kind of art? If you wouldn’t even call it art, then you are in line with some critics excluding this so called Lowbrow art that led to Pop Surrealism from “legitimate” art movements. Perhaps they are right. I mean, underground comix are cool for a lot of people, and so is punk music, but would you hang something like that in your apartment?

But in the pages of the ’60s counterculture underground comics, Williams flourished alongside like-minded artists who pushed the boundaries of free expression. He was a founding member of a San Francisco-based comic artist collective that also included Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and the late Spain Rodriguez.

All the while, Williams toiled away on his paintings.

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Merriam-Webster dictionary definesthe word “lowbrow” as “not interested in serious art, literature or ideas’ and ‘relating to or intended for people who are not interested in serious art, literature or ideas”. So, you get the idea. It was the late 1970s when Lowbrow started to emerge on the West Coast, particularly in Los Angeles.

Problem was, there was little space for the kind of hot-wired, pop culture-drenched representational paintings he was creating in an art world dominated by abstract expressionism.

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Some authors point out that Lowbrow movement has its roots in art movements from the beginning of the 20th century – movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Fauvism; some say that even the development of Lowbrow is similar to the development of aforementioned movements, as were the reactions of traditional art critics on the appearance of these new forms of art, back then.

Williams found an outlet and acceptance in after-hours galleries at punk rock clubs in L.A. and New York. His art work started appearing on record sleeves and concert posters for bands that have mostly vanished. But mainstream success remained elusive.

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Since Lowbrow is connected to underground comix, tattoo, illustration and street art, among other things, many Lowbrow artists are not artists by their education – they are self-taught, far away from anything that could be considered and called fine art. These are the reasons why art critics, museums and art galleries have their doubts about the whole Lowbrow movement and Lowbrow art – it’s simply not their world and people that are creating Lowbrow art couldn’t be further away from the milieu of gallery curators and art schools.

Until 1987, that is. That’s when yet another then-unknown band came knocking on his door after spotting what is today considered Williams’ most notorious painting.

A scruffy L.A. glam rock band called Guns N’ Roses wanted it for the cover of its debut album. They also wanted to name the record after the painting: “Appetite for Destruction.”

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Formally speaking, Robert Williams, the American painter and cartoonist, took credit for the creation of the term Lowbrow art. About 10 years ago, in his famous magazine Juxtapoz, he said that, back in 1979, it was expected of him to give the title of a book that featured his paintings. He named it The Lowbrow Art of Robert Williams (as opposed to “highbrow”), and explained that “no authorized art institution would recognize his type of art”.

In the painting, which Williams created in the late 1970s, a pretty young woman in a short skirt is selling toy robots on the street. Her kiosk is knocked over. So is she. A menacing robot in a trench coat stands over her.

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In its beginnings, Lowbrow art was completely underground, like we have seen. But, as did so many movements before, Lowbrow started to gain some popularity – that mentioned Juxtapoz magazine, as well as Hi Fructose magazine, popularized Lowbrow and helped it to be more visible. The result was that the number of individuals that are using Lowbrow style started to grow. However, the other result was that, with this enlargement of Lowbrow artists, some of them have started to go beyond Lowbrow style – raw, unpolished and simple – and to change it towards more sophisticated and refined one.

Williams told the band fine, use it. But he warned them the cover would probably land them in trouble with religious and feminist groups. It did. One organization famously referred to it as a “glorification of rape.”

The band rallied to his defense, singer Axl Rose telling MTV that he thought people were overlooking Williams’ artistic genius.

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A complete new sub-scene has showed up, consisted of classically and formally trained professionals that ruled the painting skills, but were still attached to Lowbrow’s inherent characteristics and motifs. In other words, we’ve got some creatives that were able to produce truly wonderful and beautiful paintings, with underground comix and punk rock motifs within. This style became known as Pop Surrealism, and some consider the artist Kenny Scharf to be the “godfather” of its name.

“I think since it was such an outrageous picture that the skill gets overlooked,” said Rose, standing alongside Williams in an interview shortly after the album’s release. “A lot more people, I think, are turned on to Robert’s artwork (because of the album) than were before, and I’m really glad to be a part of that.”

But the band ultimately caved and yanked the artwork.

Robert Williams 10
A consequence of the creation of the movement was the acceptance by the world of so-called high art, or fine art. With the emergence of Pop Surrealism, the line between Lowbrow and Highbrow art was blurred and became indistinguishable. This new style helped Lowbrow achieve some validation and approval of the fine art world, and, at the same time, these new creatives have brought fine art closer to Lowbrow admirers – their style was so polished that it could have passed easily as something from the Old Masters tradition; however, their inspiration was drawn from counter-cultural icons: this way, Pop Surrealists brought both to high and low art something they’ve missed up until then. Pop Surrealism also had a warm reception and a big welcome from regular, average citizens – for those who were not interested, let alone educated, in high art and its history, or anything even remotely linked to it, but who were at the same time totally into pop culture and its icons.

The painting caused a stir again in 2012 when a reformed Guns N’ Roses used the image in a concert poster and companion DVD. Subsequent copies of the DVD still employ the Williams painting, but in denuded form. The girl is removed, the painting devoid  of its original power.

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The typical and a bit subversive characteristic of the movement and its artists was to use pop icons, such as Marilyn Monroe or Disney’s characters in order to pass their political or social messages, and at the same time, they’ve used painting style that referenced on Picasso or Van Gogh. One of the most popular artists, who has made the most successful across over between the high and the low art is Mark Ryden. Not only had he influenced many others, such as Ray Caesar and Jeff Soto, but he was also someone whose works have entered the world of the biggest auction houses on the planet and were able to fetch six-figure prices without a problem. Another good example is Yoshimoto Nara who sold seven of his artworks in the price range of $1-$5 million at auctions in 2015 alone.

The 1987 notoriety cemented Williams’ reputation as a major outsider artist with an outsized influence on a new generation of artists — many of whom are now regularly featured in the magazine he co-founded 20 years ago, Juxtapoz.

Presented for your enjoyment and horror.

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Lowbrow art has gone a long way, from not being recognized as art at all, to a respectable and acclaimed style of Pop Surrealism. It had also changed over the years, transforming its style from rough, raw and uncultivated to polished and beautiful. As a true child of its time, it even followed transformation to the digital world of today. What a ride it was, from an unwanted and unloved infant to multi-million dollars sales in the biggest auction houses and galleries of the world!

Movies that Inspired Me

Here are some movies that I consider noteworthy and worth a view. Enjoy.

The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.
Jason and the Argonauts
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Stories that Inspired Me

Here are reprints in full text of stories that inspired me, but that are nearly impossible to find in China. I place them here as sort of a personal library that I can use for inspiration. The reader is welcome to come and enjoy a read or two as well.

Link
R is for Rocket
Space Cadet (Full Text) by Robert Heinlein
Link
Link
Link
Correspondence Course
Link
Link
Link
Link
Link
The Last Night
The Flying Machine
A story of escape.
All Summer in a day.
The Smile by Ray Bradbury
The menace from Earth
Delilah and the Space Rigger
Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby’s Is a Friend of Mine
Life-Line
The Tax-payer
The Pedestrian
Time for the stars.
Glory Road by Robert Heinlein
Starman Jones (Full Text) by Robert Heinlein.
The Lottery (Full Text) by Shirley Jackson
The Cold Equations (Full Text)
Farnham's Freehold (Full Text) by Robert Heinlein
Invisible Boy (Full Text) by Ray Bradbury
Job: A Comedy of Justice (Full Text) by Robert Heinlein
Spell my name with an "S" by Isaac Asimov
The Proud Robot (Full Text)
The Time Locker
Not the First (Full Text) by A.E. van Vogt
The Star Mouse (Full Text)
Space Jockey (Full Text) by Robert Heinlein
He who shrank (Full Text).
Blowups Happen by Robert Heinlein
Uncle Eniar by Ray Bradbury
The Cask of Amontillado

My Poetry

My Kitten Knows

Art that Moves Me

An experiment of a bird in a vacuum jar.

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