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The Sarcastic and Subversive
Low Brow Art of Robert Williams.
Childhood
At first glance, the violent and sarcastic
universe created by one of the great poineers in >
Low
Brow Art and
American Art in general,
> Robert
Williams, may shock, titilate or
disgust the beholder but when studied closer one will discover the more
profound meaning.
> Robert
Williams,
born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on March 2, 1943, grew up in a rather
capricious environment because his father and mother married four times, and
therefore he was bounced repeatedly between his father who lived in
Montgomery, Alabama and his mother's home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Therefore his only true companion was art, he drew and painted from an early
age.
When Robert Williams is twelve, this future >
Low
Brow art genius, failed the ninth grade twice, and was booted out of the
public school system for habitual truancy and transgressions against the code
of conduct. His only real interest was to be an artist, and while he doggedly
pursued this aspiration, he first became involved in gang activity resulting
in public drunkenness arrests and getting into fights. Williams tells:
"There wasn't a real bohemian society in Albuqueque for me to follow.
There were some people of that style that hung around college that were drug
addicts and stuff. I was obviously going to get in a lot of trouble if I
stayed in Alburqueque. I was trying to get an art education".
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| Low Brow Art Genius himself
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Los Angeles
Because there were few opportunities in
Albuquerque he went to Los Angeles in 1963.
He was drawn to the movie industry
and to the hot rod mystique in Los Angeles. Williams tells: "You know my
interest was getting into an art career and associating myself with this
hot
rod karma that I'd read about for years in car magazines".
He became an editorial cartoonist for the LACC
paper, The Collegiate, and he lost himself in the theory and technique
of art. He also tried to announce himself to the prestigious fine arts academy
The Chouinard Art Institute but he was refused because of his
insistence on mastering the technical virtuosity and pictorial representation,
so recognizable in his later Low Brow art work, while they focused on abstract
expressionism, emphasizing on unrecognizable imagery.
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Mentor Ed "Big Daddy" Roth
Then, after a series of fruitless attempts, the
manager of the unemployment office offered him a job that would chance his
life completely. This job was at a 'freak' called >
Ed "Big Daddy"
Roth. Williams knew his name and reputation and later told: "They told me that
the freak that ran it was some guy called Big Daddy and I said, 'Wait a
minute, would that be Ed Roth?' They said it was, and I said, 'Let me at it. I
was born for this job".
In Ed Roths atelier cars were created in a
freestyle manner, and he did it faster, more effective, and in an unmatched
style. This is were Robert Williams got the inspiration and most of the ideas
for his Low Brow Art. In his studio garage, Roth kept open house resulting in
a colorful amalgam of people frequenting his spot. Williams tells: "Every
day something amazing would happen. In the morning Sam the Sham and the
Pharaos' recording group could walk in and few minutes behind them would be
Sonny Barger and some Angels".
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| Ed "Big Daddy" Roth
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Williams work consisted of creating monthly
advertising, graphic design work, working on the elaborate hot rod projects
(like The Rat Fink and Peace Fink) and sometimes he also
contributed to Roth's periodical Chopper Magazine. When Roth's
financially rewarding association with Revell Models stranded because of his
loyalty towards the Hell's Angels, he quietly sold all of his inventory and
closed the doors of the studio. Most of his show cars, original art and
graphic designs were sold to James Brucker Jr. who also purchased many of
Robert Williams' important low brow art paintings.
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Low Brow Art
Due to Brucker's support, Williams was able to
work on his paintings for longer periods of time. In his work at that time he
already demonstrated that he not only had mastered the intricate underpainting
and overglazing techniques of his Renaissance and Flemish predecessors, but
also the theoretically based nuances of the modernists.
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'Irene Interfacing With an
Astrodynamic Epiphany'
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'The
Notion that Lurks Inevitably Between Two Adjacent
Thoughts (die sandwich)'
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His influences are grounded in comic art, like
Windsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905), in which a little
boy dozes off amidst the domestic security of his bedroom only to enter
parallel universes through previously unseen seams in the comic picture plane.
Using this kind of pictorial twists of the concious and the subconcious is a
common theme in Williams' low brow art.
In 1974 he underwent a complete paradigmatic
change when he broke with the general "rule" of the traditional
painterly canonizations dictating that the dark edged line which encompasses
all shapes in cartoons to avoid at all times. In his vision the exaggerated
forms in cartoons were the most true and pure examples of abstraction
comparable to the origins of art, found in the Paleolithic cave paintings.
Most of his recent low brow art paintings
consist of three levels. The first one is based on the traditional perspective
proportion of the Renaissance with foreground activity and dramatic recesses.
The second level contains a dreamscape where
almost everything seems floating in some kind of dynamic mixture of fear, lust
and the grotesque. Williams often separates this dream world using two graphic
techniques. One is essentially a realistic rendering of either commonplace,
but converted objects and events or supernatural, mythical, and atavistic
happenings. The other characteristic approach is the truthfully smooth
interruption of comic book style in which figurative, two-dimensional cartoon
designs drift and blend without restriction with the more realistically shaped
three-dimensional figures.
In the third level an conceptual zone is added
in which abstract decorative motifs form an energized visual background. This
zone of abstract pattern takes the gamut from idealized natural and universal
phenomena to fetishistic modeling and decoration to overt painterly techniques
of duplication and splashing.
In Williams' art, he supplies his public with a
lucid and lyrical, violent and ominous windscreen to view the disordered
landscape of American culture as it whooshes past our external vision into the
rear view mirror of art history.
All the quotes from Robert Williams in this
article are taken from the magnificent book:
>
'Malicious
Resplendence', the Paintings of Robt. Williams'
by C.R. Stecyk.
More Low Brow Art can be found on the great
>
Juxtapoz
site.
Also check out our
>
Movie Art
and
>
Outsider Folk Art
categories !
More Low Brow Art by Robert Williams
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' Death On The Boards'
(5' x 7' Oil / C) (Robt. Williams) |
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| ' The Voice From The Wee Gee Board'
(30" x 36" Oil / C) (Robt. Williams) |
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' A Life of Delusion'
(30" x 36" Oil / C) (Robt. Williams) |
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| ' Hell-Toons'
(30" x 36" Oil / C) (Robt. Williams) |
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| ' Putting the Genie Back in the Bottle' (30"
x 36" Oil / C) (Robt. Williams) |
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| ' In the Pavillion of the Red Clown'
(30" x 36" Oil / C) (Robt. Williams) |
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