Wikipedia
Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine is a magazine created by painter Robert Williams1 to celebrate the genius of low brow art2. Williams began the magazine Juxtapoz in 1994. It has propelled to fame many artists with Willam's same taste for Americanized figurative nightmares and the blending of pin-up, religious and kitsch culture. Among such artists is Mark Ryden.It is published by Fausto Vitello's3 High Speed Productions, the same company who publishes Thrasher Skateboard magazine in San Francisco, California.
It reflects Williams' own sensibility a combination of California "Big Daddy" Ed Roth-style pop surrealism (identified by some as synonymous with low brow art and others as its own genre, as detailed in low brow art entry) and the serious figurative craftsmanship that is more likely to be found among illustrators than fine artists today.
Many famed illustrators and painters received their first serious recognition in Juxtapoz, including Mark Ryden.
C.R. Stecyk III, along with Williams is an executive editor.
Notes
1 Robert Williams is a famed, controversial painter and editor of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine.
Williams began as part of the trail-blazing Zap Collective, along with other underground cartoonist visionaries like Robert Crumb. His mix of California car culture, cinematic apocalypticism, and film noir helped to create a new genre of psychedelic imagery along with artists like "Big Daddy" Ed Roth.
Perhaps his most famous work, Appetite for Destruction, depicting interlocking levels of human-to-robot rape and brutality, was featured as the cover for the Guns N' Roses album of the same name, before controversy forced record company Geffen Records to move it to the inside cover.
2 Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other California subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism.
3 Fausto Vitello (born August 23, 1946 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, died April 22, 2006) was an American businessman and magazine publisher. Vitello was the creator of Thrasher magazine in 1981 and co-creator of Independent trucks, started in 1979.
Exhibitions
"Juxtapoz 10th Anniversary Show", 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, USA
“Submission” August 2004
Exhibition with work by the magazine readers
Onsix Gallery hosted SUBMISSION: A Group Art Show featuring work by Juxtapoz Magazine Readers. August 27th, 2004. The show was the final culmination of 111 Minna's Third Thursday monthly parties for Juxtapoz, where readers were invited to submit their work for this show, held at ONSIX. Click a photo below for a larger image.
(Photos courtesy of Eve Ekman and Lindsey Byrnes.)
2006 JUXTAPOZ GROUP SHOW – MARCH 24th 25th ,2006
Artists:
Aesthetic Apparatus • Kii Arens • Attaboy • Anthony Ausgang • Oksana Badrak • Glenn Barr • Gary Baseman • Bigfoot • Tim Biskup • Jim Blanchard • Buffmonster • Burlesque of North America • Ray Caesar • Colin Christian • Sas Christian • Dave Cooper • Dalek • Mark Dancey • Ron English • Shepard Fairey • Camille Rose Garcia • Doze Green • Ryan Greis • Thomas Han • Naoto Hattori • Jaime Hayon • Derek Hess • Seonna Hong • Aaron Horkey • Caroline Hwang • Nathan Jurevicius • Yumiko Kayukawa • Ryan Kelly • Tim Kerr • Dave Kinzey • Kozyndan • Charles Krafft • John Largaespada • Chris Mars • Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists • Angie Mason • Rob McBroom • Liz McGrath • Tara McPherson • Junko Mizuno • Mark Mothersbaugh • Scott Musgrove • Niagara • Martin Ontiveros • Mackie Osbourne • Pizz • Pooch • KRK Ryden • Chris Ryniak • Shag • Mark Smith (Hedcheq) • Jeff Soto • Bwana Spoons • Gary Taxali • Ben Tour • Robt. Williams • Keiko Yagashita
www.ox-op.com
Juxtapoz Double Show
www.gridskipper.com
Art magazine Juxtapoz decamps from Los Angeles for the wintry goodness of Minneapolis for the purposes of its 2006 Group Show. On view will be work from 70 artists, most heavily into the street art thang (highlights include titans like Shepard Fairey, the "Obey Giant" guy). The show is spread over two different venues the SOO Visual Arts Centre and Ox-Op Arts Gallery and there are opening parties tonight and tomorrow night, both featuring the musical stylings of the Melvins, and both of which are already sold out, suckah. The pay-party part should wrap up after 8 p.m. though, and then the actual art shows are free and open to all. The Group Show remains on view until April 22.
The Anti-Biennial
Juxtapoz
SOO Visual Arts Centre
Ox-Op Arts Gallery
The Anti-Biennial
Lowbrow art comes to the Upper Midwest
By Chris Kaye, www.men.style.com
March 20, 2006
For its 2006 Group Show, Juxtapoz, the magazine founded by Lowbrow Art pioneer Robert Williams, is abandoning L.A. for Minneapolis. To art snobs on either coast, that may seem an unlikely choice for the guy whose work inspired GNR's Appetite for Destruction album cover, but the bigger Twin City is in fact home to one of the country's more vibrant arts scenes. Starting Thursday night, two of the Minne-apple's coolest venues—the Soo Visual Arts Centre in boho Uptown and the Ox-Op Gallery downtown—will play host to works from more than 70 artists, including Shepard Fairey of "Obey the Giant" fame and former Devo front man (and current film-score impresario) Mark Mothersbaugh. His Rorschach-like photograph of his pug ("Fibi, Queen of Dune") is worth the price of admission alone (and we're not just saying that because getting in is free). And since no art show is complete without a little skank metal, the Melvins will be on hand to liven up the proceedings. If you'd rather not mix art and hearing damage, there's always Minneapolis's answer to the MoMA, the Walker Art Centre (which, like its NYC cousin, was recently revamped and expanded). Home to a killer permanent collection and a legendary sculpture garden, the museum is also currently hosting a well-received retrospective of the work of German-born sculptor Kiki Smith. What you listen to afterward is up to you.
Juxtapoz 2006 Group Show opens March 24 and 25 at, respectively, SOO Visual Arts Centre, 2643 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis, (612) 871-2263, www.soovac.org, and Ox-Op Arts Gallery, 1111 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis, (612) 259-0085, www.ox-op.com. Walker Art Centre, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, www.walkerart.com.
www.citypages.com
Ox-Op presents its biggest show and its last
No More Pooping Bambis
Chris Mars is a master painter of sunshine, rainbows, and lollipops
by Rod Smith
April 5, 2006
Half an hour into the second opening night of the "The Juxtapoz Group Show 2006," the Ox-Op Gallery is packed. A few members of the babbling throng are even looking at what's on the walls. Take the two tykes laughing at Two Heads, Chris Ryniak's cartoonishly hyperreal portrayal of a bicephalic hillbilly in flight from his burning shack. They'd probably be convulsed even if the hayseed's dick weren't hanging out.
Three paintings down, a tweedy, 40ish-looking couple confronts Chris Mars's Descendents of Hanford with amazement though not because of the painting itself. "Forty-thousand dollars?" the male half asks, enunciating slowly. "This artist must be awfully famous."
Dude doesn't realize that Mars probably priced the painting so high because he doesn't want to part with it. He's been using the tactic for years and all it's done is drive the value of his work up and get it into more museums. The oil painting depicts a convocation of spectres in various states of dissolution and decay, all gathered around a mysterious stone structure. As in all of Mars's paintings, the monstrous entities radiate dignity, vulnerability, and a gentle inner beauty.
Having even one of the artist's works in the show is a coup for Ox-Op owner Tom Hazelmyer, who has been courting Mars since day one of the gallery, three years ago. It's only fitting that he'd get his way for the Ox-Op's biggest exhibition to date and its last.
"It's the smoking ban," Hazelmyer says of his plan to shutter the gallery, which has operated out of the bar he owns on Washington Avenue. With his black wool toque, short, boxy jacket, and long goatee, the underground mogul is beginning to look like one of the complex's younger patrons though he's been a mainstay on the local scene for two decades. "The gallery has always been a more-or-less break-even proposition, but all the money for expenses from the everyday stuff to flying artists in for openings comes from the bar. Unlike a lot of places in town, we're not seriously hurting, but we have had to do some belt-tightening. I don't want to have to cut any more shifts or lay anybody off."
It's too bad. Ox-Op filled an unoccupied niche in these parts, mixing sold-out exhibitions by the high-profile lowbrow likes of Tiki-god Shag and creature king Gary Baseman with shows by lesser-known locals. (Minneapolis's own Charles S. Anderson graced the Ox-Op walls with the image of a deer taking a dump.) The gallery's emphasis on accessibility has moved a few naysayers to dismiss its offerings as mere illustration. But, as a purveyor of fun stuff you actually want to hang on your walls, it's been peerless.
Hazelmyer takes pains to point out that he's only shutting down the brick-and-mortar entity, while expanding the gallery's online presence and launching a new line of art toys. Likewise, he hopes to continue the relationship with SooVac that commenced with part one of "Juxtapoz," which opened in SooVac's Lyndale Avenue space.
Also, next year finds Hazelmyer touring Europe and the U.S. with Dalek, providing soundtrack music for the graffiti-prodigy's animated shorts. "I had to let something go," he says. He's not just talking about the gallery. In lieu of the guitar he wielded with his old band Halo of Flies, the punk-turned-neo-industrialist is now playing a computer.
"Finally, everything I hated about making music is gone," he says, lighting a cigarette, "bandmates, producers, collective decisions." To accommodate overflow from the project (which also entails a book/CD combo to be released by Ipecac), he's reviving Amphetamine Reptile the label he ran in the '90s for a series of 7-inch single collaborations with the likes of Craig Finn and Grant Hart. (Tangentially, Hart is currently making an album with Montreal maximalists Godspeed You Black Emperor.)
"I never truly abandon anything," he snickers. "Sure, I might stuff it away in a closet. But I always water it just enough so that it'll still be alive when I want to put it back to work."
Articles
Juxtapoz
Reviewed by: Anna Burns, www.abc.net.au
"A new art magazine for a new art movement." Juxtapoz is bi-monthly magazine (which also has a couple of 'special editions' each year). As its tag suggests, it is an art magazine. With a twist. It maps the territory where art, music and alternate sub-cultures exist. In some stores it is catalogued in the 'underculture' section. Whatever that means exactly is up for debate. It's kinda like a gallery of underground artists whose influences range across the spectrum of music, fashion, graphics and 'new art'.
If you like Mark Ryden, Shag, Shepard Fairy, Damien Hirst, Ron English, Robert Crumb amongst a bunch of other varied artists then you'll probably dig Juxtapoz. If you like tattoos there's a regular section dedicated to that. If you're really into street art and graffiti you'll be chuffed to discover they're really well and widely represented. If you think doodle-art is highly under-rated then you'll be relieved to know that Juxtapoz are trying to restore the balance on that front too. Pop, pulp, hot rod, and skater art all get an even hand of attention, as do comics, photography, and sculpture, to name but a few art forms.
Juxtapoz was born in the Bay area in San Francisco, an area famous for its open-mindedness, creativity and also the irreverent and sometimes mind-warping Last Gasp imprint and distribution company. While this atmosphere is captured in the pages of the magazine and it is very much American it's also equally international. Juxtapoz celebrated its 10th anniversary early in 2004.
Founder Robert Williams is an accomplished artist in his own right. If you own or have ever seen the original pressing of Guns and Roses' Appetite for Destruction you've seen his work without knowing it. His controversial painting uncannily titled the same as the album was briefly the cover for Gun 'n' Roses debut album that is until Geffen Records succumbed to pressure and changed to safer cover art. They did however keep some of the liner art.
A couple of issues ago they did a feature on Wayne Coyne front man of The Flaming Lips, because all of that amazing artwork that you saw on Yoshimi came from his imagination and hands. Iggy Pop's painting also recently got a look in. Marilyn Manson's watercolours have been aired in the past. Feature articles on musicians, who are also visual artists of some form, is not unusual for Juxtapoz. There are always a couple of spot-on book, gallery and cd reviews.
Checkout their website (http://www.juxtapoz.com) for some visual stimulation. However you'll need to locate a hard copy of the magazine to experience the real deal, as they only have a few images and merch on their site (i.e. – there is no real on-line equivalent of the magazine.) Most large independent bookshops should be able to get it, especially if they've got a decent art or magazine section. Or you can always subscribe, via the website. If you're in Australia this can be a little slow, but always worthwhile. Although, do check out their site to trawl through the links section. There's a pretty ace collection of links to related and complimentary sites.
Art History 101: The Lowbrow Movement
From Shelley Esaak, http://arthistory.about.com
…Lowbrow-the-Movement has here been assigned a "circa" of 1994, as that is the year that Lowbrow artist extraordinaire Robert Williams founded Juxtapoz magazine. Juxtapoz showcases Lowbrow artists and is currently the second best-selling art magazine in the U.S. (This seems like a good time to mention, too, that Williams claims copyright on the word "Lowbrow". As both pioneer and current grandee of the movement, he is certainly entitled.)
The roots of Lowbrow, however, go back decades to Southern California hotrods ("Kustom Kars") and surf culture. Ed ("Big Daddy") Roth is frequently credited with getting Lowbrow, as a movement, underway by creating Rat Fink in the late 1950s. During the 60's, Lowbrow (not known as such, then) branched out into underground Comix (yes, that is how it is spelled, in this context) - particularly Zap and the work of R. Crumb, Victor Moscoso, S. Clay Wilson and the aforementioned Williams.
www.netmagazines.com
Juxtapoz magazine is bimonthly gallery of underground artists who influence much of the fashion, graphics, and modern art we see today. Full colour layouts featuring painters, sculptors, cartoonists, and photographers are featured along with in-depth interviews.
www.business-magazines.com
Juxtapoz magazine is bimonthly gallery of underground artists who influence much of the fashion, graphics, and modern art we see today. Full colour layouts featuring painters, sculptors, cartoonists, and photographers are featured along with interviews, rare portfolios, sketches, and reviews. Offers a gallery of underground artists. Includes full colour layouts featuring painters, sculptors, cartoonists, and photographers along with portfolios, sketches, interviews and reviews.
www.magsonthenet.com
Juxtapoz Magazine is a new art magazine for a new art movement and has emerged as a new art publication for our times. A magazine subscription to Juxtapoz would be perfect for anyone who wants to look beyond the limits of the traditional art world. Juxtapoz unites all kinds of artists and media in a common vision.
www.ebscomags.com
Juxtapoz magazine presents a gallery of underground artists who influence much of the fashion, graphics, and new art we see today. Full colour layouts featuring painters, sculptors, cartoonists and photographers are featured along with interviews, rare portfolios, sketches and reviews.
www.thisnext.com
Recommendations by the viewers of the site
Staviean
Updated Aug 27, 2006
Juxtapoz is a must read for those looking to dive into the artistic culture that drives so many of us. With in depth articles on artists/illustrators both established and up and coming, Juxtapoz has consistently provided artistic brain food for both the artistically inclined and challenged. I recommend this to people who like: Art, Illustration.
Libellus
Updated Apr 11, 2007
Hands down my favourite magazine. If you're a fan of artists like Mark Ryden or Joe Coleman or Camille Rose Garcia or Kathie Olivas or Liz McGrath- this magazine is for you. If you like low brow art or pop surrealism- this magazine is for you. I love discovering new artists and finding new things to spend money I don't have in the pages of Juxtapoz.
I recommend this for people who like: art, beautiful decay, design, emerging art, giant robot, graffiti, low brow.
Articles for Artists in Juxtapoz
Becca
Desperately Seeking Becca
By Hope Urban
From the littered streets of Hollywood to the whitewashed walls of its hotspot galleries and cultural institutions, the reclusive artist known to a nation of enchanted spectators simply as Becca has brought her tale of urban alienation and sly humour to life in the form of her little girls. Sometimes these girls come out as boys, men, women, and even superheroes, but they never betray their creator's passion for innocence and subtle commentary with their spontaneous presence. Hope Urban takes a closer look at the life of a true street artist.
Becca Midwood is speaking to me from Virginia, where she has been nursing a broken arm, setting up a studio, and making her first sketches since the accident: beatific saffron-robed monks with no arms.
"It's very frustrating," she says of her recovery from the mysterious, off-limits-as-a-topic accident which shattered some of the bones in her arm. "Like learning how to draw all over again."
Her work has always been autobiographical in nature. Prior to her eastward move, she called downtown Los Angeles home, where she lived in a domestic arrangement with another LA artist. Sans car, she spent a lot of time at home.
Appropriately, work from that period includes such images of domesticity as a glorified vacuum cleaner and idealized 1950s housewives serving up salad. "My work has always been a reflection of my life, like a soap opera," she admits.
See Juxtapoz #18 to see the full story.
Dean Karr
Of Flesh and Blood
by Hope Urban
Picking up the artistic gauntlet thrown down by forefathers like Joel-Peter Witkin and Odd Nerdrum, photographer Dean Karr's nouveau noir aesthetics are quickly transforming the face of contemporary pop photography. Hope Urban joins the freak show.
Known for his darkly arresting images which combine raw eroticism with elements of the grotesque and bizarre, thirty something photographer Dean Karr is an artist who moves seamlessly between the worlds of fine art photography, commercial images, and music video direction. Born in Seattle, Karr moved to Los Angeles to attend ArtCentre School of Design, but found himself lured away from the academic world by the extraordinary and malformed characters he found in the city. Gaining their trust, he passionately captured their uniqueness on film. His technique was highly original and shockingly beautiful, and the promise of his early work led to Karr being asked to direct Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams" video. The resulting piece was a shocker, drawing immediate and broad attention and it served to propel both Karr and Manson into the forefront of the visual rock world.
Karr has since lensed numerous videos for Dave Matthews, Ozzy Osborne, Cypress Hill, The Deftones, Dr Dre, Wyclef Jean, and John Lennon (from the tribute album, featuring Cheap Trick), and has shot the recent album covers for Cypress Hill, Method Man, Busta Rhymes, and Vanilla Ice.
See Juxtapoz #19 to see the full story
Mark Ryden
by Hope Urban, 1995
Informed as much by painters in the great neoclassical tradition as he is by the strange collection of kitsch objects which line the walls and countertops of his small studio, artist Mark Ryden is some- what of an anomaly in the art world these days: A meticulous illustrator and painter in oils who applies his highly disciplined approach to images that look as though the nostalgia factory blew up. He earned an illustration degree from Pasadena's Art Centre, where. Ryden says. "I had to seek out older professors to whom being able to draw well was still a priority." Of the art biz's tendency to give short shrift to draftsmen: "They really do seem to look down upon somebody who has high skill. It’s almost like they think you're copping out."
One arena where his skill has been appreciated, however, is in album cover art and magazine illustration. In both fields Ryden has raised tile level of the usual bourgeois fare; his work has even been nominated for a Grammy,
The early-1800s French pointer Ingres figures prominently as an influence in Ryden's work, but so does the By-Lo Baby, a popular 20s era doll whose freakishly wide-eyed visage is reincarnated as Jojo, Patron Saint of Clowns, in o painting of the same name.
Rvden's work also gives a nod to surrealism, especially if that old maxim regarding the movement as "an umbrella and a sewing machine on an operating table" is weighed. Consider The Birth a ginseng root delivers, via Caesarean, o blue bunny (right now weirdly staring down at me from a cabinet of oddities.) as a nurse sadistically wields some sort of medical torture device,
Loosely modelled after Ingres' Odalisque, the minutiae of details in this bizarre scene render it realer than real: the infinitely subtle gradations of light and shade that lay across the satiny fabric folds make the viewer long to touch them, the perfectly executed medical instruments that reside on the table, along with a little bottle of Tiki Tonic and the anatomical illustrations that line the qall make this pointing a joy to view.
A newly started painting at the studio gives greater insight into how Ryden goes about creating his canvases, which can take months to complete: daubs of paint and sketched-out faces will take on layers of oil; a slow building up which results in the richly-layered surface whose finish appears so effortless.
In the studio, a circa 1800s lithos of Siamese twins Chang and Eng cohabitates comfortably with a stuffed head of the strange and beautiful jackelope, a rare model of a knocked-up Barbie, and the most amazing collection of Tiki matchbooks I've ever seen. This open and genuinely nice artist soys. rather self-consciously, "I'd rather you talk about this stuff than the art.' Enough said.
Pending Doom: The Art of Jason Maloney
by John Gunnin, November 2006 #70
The pop culture images in Jason Maloney’s art can be edgy or satirical, but they often represent the painful saga of the artist’s past. Maloney likes to peel back his scar tissue to remember himself as a teenager watching his parents get a divorce. His stress was amplified a year later when his stepfather died of AIDS. Soon the high-strung young artist got derailed into a world of booze and drugs that sent him spiralling downward for eight years until he woke up as a hog-tied amnesiac fumbling to explain his actions to the police. “I was a lost 26-year-old nightmare,” he says. “Then I went to a 12 step meeting and never left. I started painting again and my real life began.”
Maloney moved from Tennessee to California when he was a kid and spent most of his childhood bouncing from school to school. When he settled into Damien High School, an all-boys Catholic school in La Verne, California, he became a class clown immersed in skateboarding and looking to get high. “We were hell-bent on breaking as many rules as we could,” he says. He built his reputation as the school artist and soon was drawing flyers for parties based on the Iron Maiden album covers of Derek Riggs. While family strife ate up him up on the inside, he responded by becoming a risk-taking rebel who soon had his first run in with the cops. He started tattooing his arms—“a big fuck you to my parents”—and hanging out with losers and stoners.
Maloney’s attendance at Cal Poly Pomona in the fall of 1994 was cut short when he was arrested for breaking into cars. Fortunately his art training picked up again at Citrus College in Azusa under an encouraging teacher named Cliff Cramp who recognized and cultivated the young man’s talent. He then went on to Cal State Fullerton where teachers praised and nurtured his weirdness. He integrated illustration and fine art by combining tightly rendered images with the colour field painting that is typical of minimalism. He now admits, “Those colour fields calmed me down when anxiety attacked.” He devoured issues of the pedantic Art Forum magazine and would use his newly acquired vocabulary to spar in painting critiques. But his artistic success was sabotaged by the inner demons that prompted him to medicate himself. He was being groomed for the master’s program when a teacher saw through him and asked, “Do you do a lot of cocaine?” He wasn’t fooling anyone and was on the brink of discovering that the hole in his chest was just too big to fill. He stopped painting altogether and tried with all his strength to block out the monsters of addiction and self-doubt.
The panic attacks increased and he fought back with drug use. He drank so much that he started blacking out. One day he got drunk at a party, passed out, and woke up hogtied and under arrest, with a gang of policemen staring down at him. As he wondered what he had done to get there, a moment of clarity descended upon him. As he headed for jail he finally acknowledged the nature of his progressive illness. A few weeks later, in a 12-step meeting, he found a supportive surrogate family and in a few months he picked up his brush again. Maloney graduated from Fullerton with a BFA in Painting and Drawing in fall of 2000. About this time he quit bartending and got an interview with the entertainment division of Disneyland. He put on his best smiles and charms and got his foot in the door. Suddenly he had the job security he needed to develop his own art. His day job continues to this day at with Disney where he works alongside a group of top scenic artists who have immigrated to Orange County from Walt Disney Imagineering in Burbank, California. The work has included such tasks as remodelling the Haunted Mansion into Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas.
Maloney still struggles with demons but the war is played out in his art. Murderers and monsters symbolize his addiction and self-doubt. He reflects and filters his experiences into tightly rendered images full of metaphor. Desires, compulsions, vulnerability and fear of abandonment get distilled and polished with the patience of an old master. If he runs short of personal angst, there’s always his perennial problem with women to use for source material. Sometimes his old girlfriends turn up in portraits. Maloney never hesitates to peel back his psychic layers, mining himself for ideas, and pursuing painful and threatening themes. He can be funny as well, irreverently appropriating pop culture. This can be seen on his biceps, tattooed with Marylyn Monroe and Frankenstein’s monster. “I paint what I see everyday,” he says, “The bizarreness of the world is my main source. We live in a time when Jenna Jameson can explain the legitimacy of her act on Oprah. It’s natural that my art would be bizarre. I pick out brand names, new gadgets, celebrities in pop life, or whatever people deem popular and then make fun of it. Like talking shit do it with paint.” Maloney’s latest pop imagery includes sinister versions of Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan.
Maloney’s creative process fluctuates with his mood. When an idea germinates, he works feverishly. But he is also prone to depression, an art-killer. He says, “I get in a self-loathing mode sometimes, marinating in my own crap. It’s the flip side of the mania. But I just hang out there because it always passes.” He sometimes takes a break from art and slows down to observe the world with calm and detachment. In these quiet times his new ideas emerge.
In technical terms, Maloney uses old master techniques combined with skills he learned at Disney, such as the use of cut out masking. A painting in progress is always littered with technical notes. He paints with a limited palette of earth tones and the primary colours applied to primed linen. He orchestrates colour conversations –– contrasting colours in layers or adjoining positions –– in order to focus the viewer’s attention. “Whenever I need an idea I look at the old masters,” he says. “I was attracted to the work of Seventeenth Century painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres most of all. I read all the books on him and then later studied his paintings and drawings up close at the Norton Simon Museum and the Louvre in Paris.”
Old master techniques play an important part in the construction of Maloney’s work. “My paintings are built up very slowly,” he says. “I like to use a full range of earth colours in the beginning—raw umber, raw sienna, burnt umber, burnt sienna. I lay those in on top of a bright lead white ground. After a day or so the earth colours are dry. I then use warm and cool values of the primary colours—blue, yellow, and red. Next I use very thin glazes of medium and build the image up from there. This way my colours are always talking to each other from the start of the painting because I'm constantly mixing them together. The painting can sometimes take months to finish, depending on size.”
He has never used a tube of black in his painting. “The tube black makes the dark areas of the painting appear flat,” he says. “I mix my own black with five or six different values. An example would be ultramarine blue, with alizarin and a hint of burnt umber.” In the final stages of a painting, Maloney employs a Vermeer-like obsession with detail. “I'm a detail freak,” he says, “like the tiny threads on a fucked up teddy bear, sparks from a wire or highlights on blood. It makes all that study of form, line and colour worth it.”
Maloney applies a similar approach to drawing. “I build each drawing up in a full range of pencils 8h (the hardest) to 8b (the softest). I work very slowly until the image is fully developed, being aware to show the form of whatever I'm drawing along with a simple single light source.” Maloney’s drawings sparkle with a meticulous craftsmanship that’s reminiscent of the French masters Ingres and David.
Besides the old masters, Maloney admires the work of Ryden and Eric White as well as the British wunderkind, Damien Hirst. In music, he gravitates towards Atrayu, Poison the Well, and My Chemical Romance, in addition to the older heavy metal classics. Maloney reads a lot. “I still read Art forum to this day,” he says. “It's a hard read but the show critiques in the back are outstanding. I also read Art News and Art in America. Juxtapoz Magazine was the turning point for me while in College at Cal State Fullerton. It’s the art magazine of my generation. Finally there’s a forum for us to express our voice.”
The latest image percolating in Maloney’s Newport Beach studio is a drunken Popeye lolling around inside the cut out of a pink elephant. He also keeps returning to the theme of predator and prey. His latest drawings, combinations of graphite and acrylic, once again deal with vulnerability and abandonment in relationships. He says, “I never really want to let women into my life, in case it ends like it always does.” He tries to step outside himself to observe the psychic and emotional drama in his own life, and then transform his feelings into imagery with a detached and rational perspective.
The very act of painting has been essential to the artist’s recovery process. “It's pretty hard to get into a painting after eating pills, doing a bunch of coke and drinking all day and night,” he says. “Now that I'm sober, I can really tap into something and the best part of it all is that you really feel it inside. It's weird, but I like it and I will keep doing it.”
Maloney began showing at the Cannibal Flowers happenings in Los Angeles in 2004. His presence increased when Billy Shire picked three of his works to exhibit in a group show at La Luz de Jesus in March of 2005. In April 2006 he showed at Billy Shire Fine Art in Culver City. He is now represented in Jan Helford’s Culver City location as well. Maloney hopes to visit New York and exhibit there someday. His big dream is to show at the Whitney. At present he is enjoying the ride of his newfound success. “I never want to arrive,” he says. “I want to always remain teachable and to help other artists, especially younger ones who are just starting out.”
More work of Jason Maloney is on view at Corey Helford Gallery.com, La Luz de Jesus.com, and JasonMaloney.art.com
Ron English Interview JUXAPOZ magazine
by Zephyr
Reprinted by permission from the spring 1998 issue of JUXAPOZ magazine
Ron English has made quite a reputation for himself as an artist who doesn't play by the rules of polite society. He's been called the Robinhood of Madison Avenue for his seminal work in billboard subvertising and is widely considered, along with San Francisco's legendary Billboard Liberation Front, to be a founding member of the Culture Jamming movement. A new CD ROM chronicles fifteen years of balls, energy and imagination courtesy of a unique artist and social commentator who drives his points home with offbeat wit and amazing technique. Also recently released is the CD "POPaganda", a rock opera of Ron's artistic sojourn to hell and back. I recently spoke with Mr. English at his Manhattan studio.
Z: Hey, Ron. So how old are you?
RE: I'm 35. How old are you?
Z: 35.
RE: Really? I guess around the same time you were doing subways I was painting billboards in Texas.
Z: How long have you been in New York?
RE: Ten years.
Z: You're from Texas originally?
RE: I'm from the Midwest, but I moved to Texas after high school. I'd heard it was naturally surreal.
Z: You did a lot of billboard assaults back in Texas?
RE: Yeah. Texas is littered with billboards, so it was a pretty logical thing to do. Millions of billboards in your face, very few galleries, very little interest in art. I actually had no idea how to break into art as a career, not that I calculated billboards as a way to do that, but I just thought I wanted tons of people to see my work, even anonymously. I admit it was kind of an ego thing. I started doing the billboards and other painters saw me and wanted to do them too, so we started doing strips of them in Dallas, Houston, Austin, and then after we were done we'd have big keg parties nearby. It became a regular thing from '80 till around '84.
Z: How'd you get the idea to paint billboards?
RE. I thought of staging a play on the scaffold. I just remember looking at a billboard and wondering how I could possibly use that much space. First I thought of it as a huge canvas. Only later did I pay attention to the advertisement subversion aspect of it. My early billboards were more like paintings. There was a lot of social commentary in them, but they weren't specifically commenting on the advertising medium. That evolved gradually for me.
Z. Were you in school at the time?
RE: I was at North Texas State studying Photography. I also worked in a photo studio in Dallas, Messina Studios. My boss, John Messina, loved the idea I was doing these billboards and provided me with seamless backdrop paper, paint, and let me work on them after hours at his studio.
Z: So you were a photographer?
RE: I was studying art photography. I created these photorealistic drawings of people that I placed in situations and photographed. The drawings were done in sections with distortions that were corrected by the flattening effect of photography. So a person could be standing in the foreground reaching his hand around a person 30 feet behind. I shot the photos in seedy topless bars or wino camps or any social situation off the beaten path.
Z: When did you start painting on canvas?
RE. Not until I moved to New York. Before that all my art was in environments, on billboards, my photographic stagings. I painted photorealistic shadows on walls; I painted on cows, chickens, dogs. My house was painted top to bottom with sideshow imagery. I had old cars flipped upside down in my yard that we painted on. I had a mud wrestling pit in my front yard complete with a painted pet pig. I painted dinosaur skeletons on rock formations. I body painted people, but I guess painting on canvas hadn't occurred to me.
Z: You painted the Berlin Wall too, I remember seeing a photo.
RE: I was having a show of my photography in Amsterdam so I decided to make a pilgrimage to the wall to do a mural. I wanted to create the longest one.
Z: Was it the longest mural?
RE: At that moment yes. Ever? I don't know. I did have the dubious distinction of being detained in East Germany. I was there for two weeks painting the mural, and the guards would sneak up behind me and try to grab me. A few escaped East German kids were camped out there this was at Check Point Charlie and they watched my back. How I screwed up is I tried to visit East Germany with a friend when I was finished painting and they caught me with some West German articles about my mural. I felt like a complete idiot.
Z: What happened?
RE: They detained us in a room for a few hours and had various officials interrogate us. Finally they kicked us out of their country. We were happy to leave, believe me.
Z: You were also busted doing billboards, right?
RE: Eight of us snagged second degree felonies in Dallas in 1984. I know with graffiti artists it's a point of honour to never get caught, but with me it was inevitable. I think I wanted to get caught because it would prove I fully understood the consequences. If I continued after that I would truly be legitimate.
Z: And you did continue on.
RE: Within hours of being released from jail in Dallas I was in Austin painting over a Stuckeys billboard. You have to get back on the horse. I think that's the first true advertising subversion I did, too. The sign read "2 eggs, toast, $1.99." I wrote "tits" over the toast and painted a lovely buxom woman reclining on the breakfast plate.
Z: You probably know Rosenquest was a billboard painter who took his style to his paintings.
RE: I definitely learned to paint by doing the billboards. After years of painting things at that scale, canvasses were a piece of cake.
Z: Is it fair to say you concentrate more of your energies on canvasses at this point?
RE: I still paint a lot of billboards but nowhere the volume I once did. Most of my energies are focused on my canvasses. It's idea-based art. I have an idea and the painting is the vehicle to express it. I may at times try to be more painterly or use other techniques, but it's all about expressing that idea.
Z: Do you consider yourself a pop artist?
RE: Not in the strict sense of the term. I don't take a bland enough look at the surface of pop culture. The pop guys only commented on it in the sense that it existed there it is. But I'm passionately engaged in pop culture, I have opinions about it, I bring the subconscious into play with it. My work is more about social commentary. It just has the look of pop because I'm using pop iconography as a sort of visual vocabulary with which to comment on my life and times. And in this way I feel more akin to the social realists or even the surrealists. It's like this: Art is polite society, and there are two things you don't mention in polite society politics and religion. My work is filled with both, and that may make it unpalatable to polite society, but at least it's never boring. It's Popaganda!
Z: What's the story with "POPaganda"?
RE: It's a CD ROM and a separately released soundtrack to the CD ROM. The CD ROM lets you check out my illegal billboards, paintings, photographs, video clips of my wife and I crashing talk shows with phony problems, tons of wild stuff. The CD is a sort of rock opera featuring Tripping Daisy, Wesley Willis, Daniel Johnston, The Sutcliffes and a bunch of other bands. It's truly phenomenal.
Z: Are you upset by labels?
RE: I like labels. Used correctly, they're a good thing. They serve a purpose by instantly narrowing things down so you can zero in on something. But used incorrectly they can replace authentic critical thought.
Z: So how would you describe yourself as an artist? I think of you as a great painter and a great self promoter as well.
RE: Some people think it's crass to be a self promoter. But I say either you're doing it or someone else is doing it for you or to you, and doing it yourself lets you control it to some extent. If you're a musician, then the record company is in charge of helping create and disseminate your image. So you're technically not a self promoter, you're not crass. But let someone take things into their own hands and it makes people uncomfortable. I've had over 60 bands record songs about me. People think that's crass, but when a band asks me to shoot their press photos, paint them for their CD cover, shoot a video of them, then there's nothing crass with that. Yes, I have an ego, yes, I think I'm good, and maybe we should be worrying about people who don't.
Z: You've created a lot of paintings that are take-offs on famous paintings. What does this work mean to you?
RE: I call that series Revisionist Modernism. The '90s have generated a lot of revisionist interpretations of history, and these paintings are responding to that. It's also about living inside a manmade visual environment. The work is akin to a ritualistic personalization of my surroundings. That includes the common visual environment like corporate logos, famous works of art, ads, you know, the common visual vocabulary. Once you experience my version, you'll never see the original quite the same. Do you know what I'm trying to say?
Z: Like when I'm in the soup isle at the grocery I catch myself pondering Andy Warhol.
RE: Exactly.
Z: How's the art world of the '90s treating you?
RE: Oddly, when the art market crashed, suddenly I had a career. I think the '90s are finally emerging from the shadow of the '80s, and it's less about making it and having lots of money to spend and more about surviving and establishing your dignity and social stature as an artist. But both decades have produced some amazing art.
Z: What do you think of the gift marketing practices of some of the '80s legends like Haring?
RE: I notice some people get very upset when an artist produces knick knacks for the general public, like it somehow demeans his paintings or the seriousness of his art, but that sort of thinking is so one dimensional, so elitist. Keith broadened the spectrum of what an artist can do. I think he was a very healthy thing for the art world and the real world.
Z: What artists do you admire?
RE: I like artists that really seem like they're being themselves, unfettered by market forces, criticism, artists like Peter Saul for instance. You can tell he just wants to make great paintings. And he does. There are a lot of great artists up and running at this point in history. Maybe more than at any single point in history. Loads of garbage too. That's why the good lord created editors and curators.
Z: What do you feel about Warhol?
RE: Warhol ended the notion of the great suffering artist and replaced it with the notion of the great irreverent, partying, social climbing artist. You know, the artist studio as social club, art as the perfect background for a great party. The artist as producer of films, the artist as producer of bands, the artist moving in the same social/economic sphere as his collectors. And he was from modest means. A great American story or what!
Z: How do you want to be judged?
RE: By the quality of my collectors. I'm very proud of the people that have bought my art, those whom I've met. They're impressive people, and if my work connects with them in some way, then I guess I'm doing something right.
Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine is a magazine created by painter Robert Williams1 to celebrate the genius of low brow art2. Williams began the magazine Juxtapoz in 1994. It has propelled to fame many artists with Willam's same taste for Americanized figurative nightmares and the blending of pin-up, religious and kitsch culture. Among such artists is Mark Ryden.It is published by Fausto Vitello's3 High Speed Productions, the same company who publishes Thrasher Skateboard magazine in San Francisco, California.
It reflects Williams' own sensibility a combination of California "Big Daddy" Ed Roth-style pop surrealism (identified by some as synonymous with low brow art and others as its own genre, as detailed in low brow art entry) and the serious figurative craftsmanship that is more likely to be found among illustrators than fine artists today.
Many famed illustrators and painters received their first serious recognition in Juxtapoz, including Mark Ryden.
C.R. Stecyk III, along with Williams is an executive editor.
Notes
1 Robert Williams is a famed, controversial painter and editor of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine.
Williams began as part of the trail-blazing Zap Collective, along with other underground cartoonist visionaries like Robert Crumb. His mix of California car culture, cinematic apocalypticism, and film noir helped to create a new genre of psychedelic imagery along with artists like "Big Daddy" Ed Roth.
Perhaps his most famous work, Appetite for Destruction, depicting interlocking levels of human-to-robot rape and brutality, was featured as the cover for the Guns N' Roses album of the same name, before controversy forced record company Geffen Records to move it to the inside cover.
2 Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other California subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism.
3 Fausto Vitello (born August 23, 1946 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, died April 22, 2006) was an American businessman and magazine publisher. Vitello was the creator of Thrasher magazine in 1981 and co-creator of Independent trucks, started in 1979.
Exhibitions
"Juxtapoz 10th Anniversary Show", 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, USA
“Submission” August 2004
Exhibition with work by the magazine readers
Onsix Gallery hosted SUBMISSION: A Group Art Show featuring work by Juxtapoz Magazine Readers. August 27th, 2004. The show was the final culmination of 111 Minna's Third Thursday monthly parties for Juxtapoz, where readers were invited to submit their work for this show, held at ONSIX. Click a photo below for a larger image.
(Photos courtesy of Eve Ekman and Lindsey Byrnes.)
2006 JUXTAPOZ GROUP SHOW – MARCH 24th 25th ,2006
Artists:
Aesthetic Apparatus • Kii Arens • Attaboy • Anthony Ausgang • Oksana Badrak • Glenn Barr • Gary Baseman • Bigfoot • Tim Biskup • Jim Blanchard • Buffmonster • Burlesque of North America • Ray Caesar • Colin Christian • Sas Christian • Dave Cooper • Dalek • Mark Dancey • Ron English • Shepard Fairey • Camille Rose Garcia • Doze Green • Ryan Greis • Thomas Han • Naoto Hattori • Jaime Hayon • Derek Hess • Seonna Hong • Aaron Horkey • Caroline Hwang • Nathan Jurevicius • Yumiko Kayukawa • Ryan Kelly • Tim Kerr • Dave Kinzey • Kozyndan • Charles Krafft • John Largaespada • Chris Mars • Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists • Angie Mason • Rob McBroom • Liz McGrath • Tara McPherson • Junko Mizuno • Mark Mothersbaugh • Scott Musgrove • Niagara • Martin Ontiveros • Mackie Osbourne • Pizz • Pooch • KRK Ryden • Chris Ryniak • Shag • Mark Smith (Hedcheq) • Jeff Soto • Bwana Spoons • Gary Taxali • Ben Tour • Robt. Williams • Keiko Yagashita
www.ox-op.com
Juxtapoz Double Show
www.gridskipper.com
Art magazine Juxtapoz decamps from Los Angeles for the wintry goodness of Minneapolis for the purposes of its 2006 Group Show. On view will be work from 70 artists, most heavily into the street art thang (highlights include titans like Shepard Fairey, the "Obey Giant" guy). The show is spread over two different venues the SOO Visual Arts Centre and Ox-Op Arts Gallery and there are opening parties tonight and tomorrow night, both featuring the musical stylings of the Melvins, and both of which are already sold out, suckah. The pay-party part should wrap up after 8 p.m. though, and then the actual art shows are free and open to all. The Group Show remains on view until April 22.
The Anti-Biennial
Juxtapoz
SOO Visual Arts Centre
Ox-Op Arts Gallery
The Anti-Biennial
Lowbrow art comes to the Upper Midwest
By Chris Kaye, www.men.style.com
March 20, 2006
For its 2006 Group Show, Juxtapoz, the magazine founded by Lowbrow Art pioneer Robert Williams, is abandoning L.A. for Minneapolis. To art snobs on either coast, that may seem an unlikely choice for the guy whose work inspired GNR's Appetite for Destruction album cover, but the bigger Twin City is in fact home to one of the country's more vibrant arts scenes. Starting Thursday night, two of the Minne-apple's coolest venues—the Soo Visual Arts Centre in boho Uptown and the Ox-Op Gallery downtown—will play host to works from more than 70 artists, including Shepard Fairey of "Obey the Giant" fame and former Devo front man (and current film-score impresario) Mark Mothersbaugh. His Rorschach-like photograph of his pug ("Fibi, Queen of Dune") is worth the price of admission alone (and we're not just saying that because getting in is free). And since no art show is complete without a little skank metal, the Melvins will be on hand to liven up the proceedings. If you'd rather not mix art and hearing damage, there's always Minneapolis's answer to the MoMA, the Walker Art Centre (which, like its NYC cousin, was recently revamped and expanded). Home to a killer permanent collection and a legendary sculpture garden, the museum is also currently hosting a well-received retrospective of the work of German-born sculptor Kiki Smith. What you listen to afterward is up to you.
Juxtapoz 2006 Group Show opens March 24 and 25 at, respectively, SOO Visual Arts Centre, 2643 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis, (612) 871-2263, www.soovac.org, and Ox-Op Arts Gallery, 1111 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis, (612) 259-0085, www.ox-op.com. Walker Art Centre, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, www.walkerart.com.
www.citypages.com
Ox-Op presents its biggest show and its last
No More Pooping Bambis
Chris Mars is a master painter of sunshine, rainbows, and lollipops
by Rod Smith
April 5, 2006
Half an hour into the second opening night of the "The Juxtapoz Group Show 2006," the Ox-Op Gallery is packed. A few members of the babbling throng are even looking at what's on the walls. Take the two tykes laughing at Two Heads, Chris Ryniak's cartoonishly hyperreal portrayal of a bicephalic hillbilly in flight from his burning shack. They'd probably be convulsed even if the hayseed's dick weren't hanging out.
Three paintings down, a tweedy, 40ish-looking couple confronts Chris Mars's Descendents of Hanford with amazement though not because of the painting itself. "Forty-thousand dollars?" the male half asks, enunciating slowly. "This artist must be awfully famous."
Dude doesn't realize that Mars probably priced the painting so high because he doesn't want to part with it. He's been using the tactic for years and all it's done is drive the value of his work up and get it into more museums. The oil painting depicts a convocation of spectres in various states of dissolution and decay, all gathered around a mysterious stone structure. As in all of Mars's paintings, the monstrous entities radiate dignity, vulnerability, and a gentle inner beauty.
Having even one of the artist's works in the show is a coup for Ox-Op owner Tom Hazelmyer, who has been courting Mars since day one of the gallery, three years ago. It's only fitting that he'd get his way for the Ox-Op's biggest exhibition to date and its last.
"It's the smoking ban," Hazelmyer says of his plan to shutter the gallery, which has operated out of the bar he owns on Washington Avenue. With his black wool toque, short, boxy jacket, and long goatee, the underground mogul is beginning to look like one of the complex's younger patrons though he's been a mainstay on the local scene for two decades. "The gallery has always been a more-or-less break-even proposition, but all the money for expenses from the everyday stuff to flying artists in for openings comes from the bar. Unlike a lot of places in town, we're not seriously hurting, but we have had to do some belt-tightening. I don't want to have to cut any more shifts or lay anybody off."
It's too bad. Ox-Op filled an unoccupied niche in these parts, mixing sold-out exhibitions by the high-profile lowbrow likes of Tiki-god Shag and creature king Gary Baseman with shows by lesser-known locals. (Minneapolis's own Charles S. Anderson graced the Ox-Op walls with the image of a deer taking a dump.) The gallery's emphasis on accessibility has moved a few naysayers to dismiss its offerings as mere illustration. But, as a purveyor of fun stuff you actually want to hang on your walls, it's been peerless.
Hazelmyer takes pains to point out that he's only shutting down the brick-and-mortar entity, while expanding the gallery's online presence and launching a new line of art toys. Likewise, he hopes to continue the relationship with SooVac that commenced with part one of "Juxtapoz," which opened in SooVac's Lyndale Avenue space.
Also, next year finds Hazelmyer touring Europe and the U.S. with Dalek, providing soundtrack music for the graffiti-prodigy's animated shorts. "I had to let something go," he says. He's not just talking about the gallery. In lieu of the guitar he wielded with his old band Halo of Flies, the punk-turned-neo-industrialist is now playing a computer.
"Finally, everything I hated about making music is gone," he says, lighting a cigarette, "bandmates, producers, collective decisions." To accommodate overflow from the project (which also entails a book/CD combo to be released by Ipecac), he's reviving Amphetamine Reptile the label he ran in the '90s for a series of 7-inch single collaborations with the likes of Craig Finn and Grant Hart. (Tangentially, Hart is currently making an album with Montreal maximalists Godspeed You Black Emperor.)
"I never truly abandon anything," he snickers. "Sure, I might stuff it away in a closet. But I always water it just enough so that it'll still be alive when I want to put it back to work."
Articles
Juxtapoz
Reviewed by: Anna Burns, www.abc.net.au
"A new art magazine for a new art movement." Juxtapoz is bi-monthly magazine (which also has a couple of 'special editions' each year). As its tag suggests, it is an art magazine. With a twist. It maps the territory where art, music and alternate sub-cultures exist. In some stores it is catalogued in the 'underculture' section. Whatever that means exactly is up for debate. It's kinda like a gallery of underground artists whose influences range across the spectrum of music, fashion, graphics and 'new art'.
If you like Mark Ryden, Shag, Shepard Fairy, Damien Hirst, Ron English, Robert Crumb amongst a bunch of other varied artists then you'll probably dig Juxtapoz. If you like tattoos there's a regular section dedicated to that. If you're really into street art and graffiti you'll be chuffed to discover they're really well and widely represented. If you think doodle-art is highly under-rated then you'll be relieved to know that Juxtapoz are trying to restore the balance on that front too. Pop, pulp, hot rod, and skater art all get an even hand of attention, as do comics, photography, and sculpture, to name but a few art forms.
Juxtapoz was born in the Bay area in San Francisco, an area famous for its open-mindedness, creativity and also the irreverent and sometimes mind-warping Last Gasp imprint and distribution company. While this atmosphere is captured in the pages of the magazine and it is very much American it's also equally international. Juxtapoz celebrated its 10th anniversary early in 2004.
Founder Robert Williams is an accomplished artist in his own right. If you own or have ever seen the original pressing of Guns and Roses' Appetite for Destruction you've seen his work without knowing it. His controversial painting uncannily titled the same as the album was briefly the cover for Gun 'n' Roses debut album that is until Geffen Records succumbed to pressure and changed to safer cover art. They did however keep some of the liner art.
A couple of issues ago they did a feature on Wayne Coyne front man of The Flaming Lips, because all of that amazing artwork that you saw on Yoshimi came from his imagination and hands. Iggy Pop's painting also recently got a look in. Marilyn Manson's watercolours have been aired in the past. Feature articles on musicians, who are also visual artists of some form, is not unusual for Juxtapoz. There are always a couple of spot-on book, gallery and cd reviews.
Checkout their website (http://www.juxtapoz.com) for some visual stimulation. However you'll need to locate a hard copy of the magazine to experience the real deal, as they only have a few images and merch on their site (i.e. – there is no real on-line equivalent of the magazine.) Most large independent bookshops should be able to get it, especially if they've got a decent art or magazine section. Or you can always subscribe, via the website. If you're in Australia this can be a little slow, but always worthwhile. Although, do check out their site to trawl through the links section. There's a pretty ace collection of links to related and complimentary sites.
Art History 101: The Lowbrow Movement
From Shelley Esaak, http://arthistory.about.com
…Lowbrow-the-Movement has here been assigned a "circa" of 1994, as that is the year that Lowbrow artist extraordinaire Robert Williams founded Juxtapoz magazine. Juxtapoz showcases Lowbrow artists and is currently the second best-selling art magazine in the U.S. (This seems like a good time to mention, too, that Williams claims copyright on the word "Lowbrow". As both pioneer and current grandee of the movement, he is certainly entitled.)
The roots of Lowbrow, however, go back decades to Southern California hotrods ("Kustom Kars") and surf culture. Ed ("Big Daddy") Roth is frequently credited with getting Lowbrow, as a movement, underway by creating Rat Fink in the late 1950s. During the 60's, Lowbrow (not known as such, then) branched out into underground Comix (yes, that is how it is spelled, in this context) - particularly Zap and the work of R. Crumb, Victor Moscoso, S. Clay Wilson and the aforementioned Williams.
www.netmagazines.com
Juxtapoz magazine is bimonthly gallery of underground artists who influence much of the fashion, graphics, and modern art we see today. Full colour layouts featuring painters, sculptors, cartoonists, and photographers are featured along with in-depth interviews.
www.business-magazines.com
Juxtapoz magazine is bimonthly gallery of underground artists who influence much of the fashion, graphics, and modern art we see today. Full colour layouts featuring painters, sculptors, cartoonists, and photographers are featured along with interviews, rare portfolios, sketches, and reviews. Offers a gallery of underground artists. Includes full colour layouts featuring painters, sculptors, cartoonists, and photographers along with portfolios, sketches, interviews and reviews.
www.magsonthenet.com
Juxtapoz Magazine is a new art magazine for a new art movement and has emerged as a new art publication for our times. A magazine subscription to Juxtapoz would be perfect for anyone who wants to look beyond the limits of the traditional art world. Juxtapoz unites all kinds of artists and media in a common vision.
www.ebscomags.com
Juxtapoz magazine presents a gallery of underground artists who influence much of the fashion, graphics, and new art we see today. Full colour layouts featuring painters, sculptors, cartoonists and photographers are featured along with interviews, rare portfolios, sketches and reviews.
www.thisnext.com
Recommendations by the viewers of the site
Staviean
Updated Aug 27, 2006
Juxtapoz is a must read for those looking to dive into the artistic culture that drives so many of us. With in depth articles on artists/illustrators both established and up and coming, Juxtapoz has consistently provided artistic brain food for both the artistically inclined and challenged. I recommend this to people who like: Art, Illustration.
Libellus
Updated Apr 11, 2007
Hands down my favourite magazine. If you're a fan of artists like Mark Ryden or Joe Coleman or Camille Rose Garcia or Kathie Olivas or Liz McGrath- this magazine is for you. If you like low brow art or pop surrealism- this magazine is for you. I love discovering new artists and finding new things to spend money I don't have in the pages of Juxtapoz.
I recommend this for people who like: art, beautiful decay, design, emerging art, giant robot, graffiti, low brow.
Articles for Artists in Juxtapoz
Becca
Desperately Seeking Becca
By Hope Urban
From the littered streets of Hollywood to the whitewashed walls of its hotspot galleries and cultural institutions, the reclusive artist known to a nation of enchanted spectators simply as Becca has brought her tale of urban alienation and sly humour to life in the form of her little girls. Sometimes these girls come out as boys, men, women, and even superheroes, but they never betray their creator's passion for innocence and subtle commentary with their spontaneous presence. Hope Urban takes a closer look at the life of a true street artist.
Becca Midwood is speaking to me from Virginia, where she has been nursing a broken arm, setting up a studio, and making her first sketches since the accident: beatific saffron-robed monks with no arms.
"It's very frustrating," she says of her recovery from the mysterious, off-limits-as-a-topic accident which shattered some of the bones in her arm. "Like learning how to draw all over again."
Her work has always been autobiographical in nature. Prior to her eastward move, she called downtown Los Angeles home, where she lived in a domestic arrangement with another LA artist. Sans car, she spent a lot of time at home.
Appropriately, work from that period includes such images of domesticity as a glorified vacuum cleaner and idealized 1950s housewives serving up salad. "My work has always been a reflection of my life, like a soap opera," she admits.
See Juxtapoz #18 to see the full story.
Dean Karr
Of Flesh and Blood
by Hope Urban
Picking up the artistic gauntlet thrown down by forefathers like Joel-Peter Witkin and Odd Nerdrum, photographer Dean Karr's nouveau noir aesthetics are quickly transforming the face of contemporary pop photography. Hope Urban joins the freak show.
Known for his darkly arresting images which combine raw eroticism with elements of the grotesque and bizarre, thirty something photographer Dean Karr is an artist who moves seamlessly between the worlds of fine art photography, commercial images, and music video direction. Born in Seattle, Karr moved to Los Angeles to attend ArtCentre School of Design, but found himself lured away from the academic world by the extraordinary and malformed characters he found in the city. Gaining their trust, he passionately captured their uniqueness on film. His technique was highly original and shockingly beautiful, and the promise of his early work led to Karr being asked to direct Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams" video. The resulting piece was a shocker, drawing immediate and broad attention and it served to propel both Karr and Manson into the forefront of the visual rock world.
Karr has since lensed numerous videos for Dave Matthews, Ozzy Osborne, Cypress Hill, The Deftones, Dr Dre, Wyclef Jean, and John Lennon (from the tribute album, featuring Cheap Trick), and has shot the recent album covers for Cypress Hill, Method Man, Busta Rhymes, and Vanilla Ice.
See Juxtapoz #19 to see the full story
Mark Ryden
by Hope Urban, 1995
Informed as much by painters in the great neoclassical tradition as he is by the strange collection of kitsch objects which line the walls and countertops of his small studio, artist Mark Ryden is some- what of an anomaly in the art world these days: A meticulous illustrator and painter in oils who applies his highly disciplined approach to images that look as though the nostalgia factory blew up. He earned an illustration degree from Pasadena's Art Centre, where. Ryden says. "I had to seek out older professors to whom being able to draw well was still a priority." Of the art biz's tendency to give short shrift to draftsmen: "They really do seem to look down upon somebody who has high skill. It’s almost like they think you're copping out."
One arena where his skill has been appreciated, however, is in album cover art and magazine illustration. In both fields Ryden has raised tile level of the usual bourgeois fare; his work has even been nominated for a Grammy,
The early-1800s French pointer Ingres figures prominently as an influence in Ryden's work, but so does the By-Lo Baby, a popular 20s era doll whose freakishly wide-eyed visage is reincarnated as Jojo, Patron Saint of Clowns, in o painting of the same name.
Rvden's work also gives a nod to surrealism, especially if that old maxim regarding the movement as "an umbrella and a sewing machine on an operating table" is weighed. Consider The Birth a ginseng root delivers, via Caesarean, o blue bunny (right now weirdly staring down at me from a cabinet of oddities.) as a nurse sadistically wields some sort of medical torture device,
Loosely modelled after Ingres' Odalisque, the minutiae of details in this bizarre scene render it realer than real: the infinitely subtle gradations of light and shade that lay across the satiny fabric folds make the viewer long to touch them, the perfectly executed medical instruments that reside on the table, along with a little bottle of Tiki Tonic and the anatomical illustrations that line the qall make this pointing a joy to view.
A newly started painting at the studio gives greater insight into how Ryden goes about creating his canvases, which can take months to complete: daubs of paint and sketched-out faces will take on layers of oil; a slow building up which results in the richly-layered surface whose finish appears so effortless.
In the studio, a circa 1800s lithos of Siamese twins Chang and Eng cohabitates comfortably with a stuffed head of the strange and beautiful jackelope, a rare model of a knocked-up Barbie, and the most amazing collection of Tiki matchbooks I've ever seen. This open and genuinely nice artist soys. rather self-consciously, "I'd rather you talk about this stuff than the art.' Enough said.
Pending Doom: The Art of Jason Maloney
by John Gunnin, November 2006 #70
The pop culture images in Jason Maloney’s art can be edgy or satirical, but they often represent the painful saga of the artist’s past. Maloney likes to peel back his scar tissue to remember himself as a teenager watching his parents get a divorce. His stress was amplified a year later when his stepfather died of AIDS. Soon the high-strung young artist got derailed into a world of booze and drugs that sent him spiralling downward for eight years until he woke up as a hog-tied amnesiac fumbling to explain his actions to the police. “I was a lost 26-year-old nightmare,” he says. “Then I went to a 12 step meeting and never left. I started painting again and my real life began.”
Maloney moved from Tennessee to California when he was a kid and spent most of his childhood bouncing from school to school. When he settled into Damien High School, an all-boys Catholic school in La Verne, California, he became a class clown immersed in skateboarding and looking to get high. “We were hell-bent on breaking as many rules as we could,” he says. He built his reputation as the school artist and soon was drawing flyers for parties based on the Iron Maiden album covers of Derek Riggs. While family strife ate up him up on the inside, he responded by becoming a risk-taking rebel who soon had his first run in with the cops. He started tattooing his arms—“a big fuck you to my parents”—and hanging out with losers and stoners.
Maloney’s attendance at Cal Poly Pomona in the fall of 1994 was cut short when he was arrested for breaking into cars. Fortunately his art training picked up again at Citrus College in Azusa under an encouraging teacher named Cliff Cramp who recognized and cultivated the young man’s talent. He then went on to Cal State Fullerton where teachers praised and nurtured his weirdness. He integrated illustration and fine art by combining tightly rendered images with the colour field painting that is typical of minimalism. He now admits, “Those colour fields calmed me down when anxiety attacked.” He devoured issues of the pedantic Art Forum magazine and would use his newly acquired vocabulary to spar in painting critiques. But his artistic success was sabotaged by the inner demons that prompted him to medicate himself. He was being groomed for the master’s program when a teacher saw through him and asked, “Do you do a lot of cocaine?” He wasn’t fooling anyone and was on the brink of discovering that the hole in his chest was just too big to fill. He stopped painting altogether and tried with all his strength to block out the monsters of addiction and self-doubt.
The panic attacks increased and he fought back with drug use. He drank so much that he started blacking out. One day he got drunk at a party, passed out, and woke up hogtied and under arrest, with a gang of policemen staring down at him. As he wondered what he had done to get there, a moment of clarity descended upon him. As he headed for jail he finally acknowledged the nature of his progressive illness. A few weeks later, in a 12-step meeting, he found a supportive surrogate family and in a few months he picked up his brush again. Maloney graduated from Fullerton with a BFA in Painting and Drawing in fall of 2000. About this time he quit bartending and got an interview with the entertainment division of Disneyland. He put on his best smiles and charms and got his foot in the door. Suddenly he had the job security he needed to develop his own art. His day job continues to this day at with Disney where he works alongside a group of top scenic artists who have immigrated to Orange County from Walt Disney Imagineering in Burbank, California. The work has included such tasks as remodelling the Haunted Mansion into Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas.
Maloney still struggles with demons but the war is played out in his art. Murderers and monsters symbolize his addiction and self-doubt. He reflects and filters his experiences into tightly rendered images full of metaphor. Desires, compulsions, vulnerability and fear of abandonment get distilled and polished with the patience of an old master. If he runs short of personal angst, there’s always his perennial problem with women to use for source material. Sometimes his old girlfriends turn up in portraits. Maloney never hesitates to peel back his psychic layers, mining himself for ideas, and pursuing painful and threatening themes. He can be funny as well, irreverently appropriating pop culture. This can be seen on his biceps, tattooed with Marylyn Monroe and Frankenstein’s monster. “I paint what I see everyday,” he says, “The bizarreness of the world is my main source. We live in a time when Jenna Jameson can explain the legitimacy of her act on Oprah. It’s natural that my art would be bizarre. I pick out brand names, new gadgets, celebrities in pop life, or whatever people deem popular and then make fun of it. Like talking shit do it with paint.” Maloney’s latest pop imagery includes sinister versions of Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan.
Maloney’s creative process fluctuates with his mood. When an idea germinates, he works feverishly. But he is also prone to depression, an art-killer. He says, “I get in a self-loathing mode sometimes, marinating in my own crap. It’s the flip side of the mania. But I just hang out there because it always passes.” He sometimes takes a break from art and slows down to observe the world with calm and detachment. In these quiet times his new ideas emerge.
In technical terms, Maloney uses old master techniques combined with skills he learned at Disney, such as the use of cut out masking. A painting in progress is always littered with technical notes. He paints with a limited palette of earth tones and the primary colours applied to primed linen. He orchestrates colour conversations –– contrasting colours in layers or adjoining positions –– in order to focus the viewer’s attention. “Whenever I need an idea I look at the old masters,” he says. “I was attracted to the work of Seventeenth Century painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres most of all. I read all the books on him and then later studied his paintings and drawings up close at the Norton Simon Museum and the Louvre in Paris.”
Old master techniques play an important part in the construction of Maloney’s work. “My paintings are built up very slowly,” he says. “I like to use a full range of earth colours in the beginning—raw umber, raw sienna, burnt umber, burnt sienna. I lay those in on top of a bright lead white ground. After a day or so the earth colours are dry. I then use warm and cool values of the primary colours—blue, yellow, and red. Next I use very thin glazes of medium and build the image up from there. This way my colours are always talking to each other from the start of the painting because I'm constantly mixing them together. The painting can sometimes take months to finish, depending on size.”
He has never used a tube of black in his painting. “The tube black makes the dark areas of the painting appear flat,” he says. “I mix my own black with five or six different values. An example would be ultramarine blue, with alizarin and a hint of burnt umber.” In the final stages of a painting, Maloney employs a Vermeer-like obsession with detail. “I'm a detail freak,” he says, “like the tiny threads on a fucked up teddy bear, sparks from a wire or highlights on blood. It makes all that study of form, line and colour worth it.”
Maloney applies a similar approach to drawing. “I build each drawing up in a full range of pencils 8h (the hardest) to 8b (the softest). I work very slowly until the image is fully developed, being aware to show the form of whatever I'm drawing along with a simple single light source.” Maloney’s drawings sparkle with a meticulous craftsmanship that’s reminiscent of the French masters Ingres and David.
Besides the old masters, Maloney admires the work of Ryden and Eric White as well as the British wunderkind, Damien Hirst. In music, he gravitates towards Atrayu, Poison the Well, and My Chemical Romance, in addition to the older heavy metal classics. Maloney reads a lot. “I still read Art forum to this day,” he says. “It's a hard read but the show critiques in the back are outstanding. I also read Art News and Art in America. Juxtapoz Magazine was the turning point for me while in College at Cal State Fullerton. It’s the art magazine of my generation. Finally there’s a forum for us to express our voice.”
The latest image percolating in Maloney’s Newport Beach studio is a drunken Popeye lolling around inside the cut out of a pink elephant. He also keeps returning to the theme of predator and prey. His latest drawings, combinations of graphite and acrylic, once again deal with vulnerability and abandonment in relationships. He says, “I never really want to let women into my life, in case it ends like it always does.” He tries to step outside himself to observe the psychic and emotional drama in his own life, and then transform his feelings into imagery with a detached and rational perspective.
The very act of painting has been essential to the artist’s recovery process. “It's pretty hard to get into a painting after eating pills, doing a bunch of coke and drinking all day and night,” he says. “Now that I'm sober, I can really tap into something and the best part of it all is that you really feel it inside. It's weird, but I like it and I will keep doing it.”
Maloney began showing at the Cannibal Flowers happenings in Los Angeles in 2004. His presence increased when Billy Shire picked three of his works to exhibit in a group show at La Luz de Jesus in March of 2005. In April 2006 he showed at Billy Shire Fine Art in Culver City. He is now represented in Jan Helford’s Culver City location as well. Maloney hopes to visit New York and exhibit there someday. His big dream is to show at the Whitney. At present he is enjoying the ride of his newfound success. “I never want to arrive,” he says. “I want to always remain teachable and to help other artists, especially younger ones who are just starting out.”
More work of Jason Maloney is on view at Corey Helford Gallery.com, La Luz de Jesus.com, and JasonMaloney.art.com
Ron English Interview JUXAPOZ magazine
by Zephyr
Reprinted by permission from the spring 1998 issue of JUXAPOZ magazine
Ron English has made quite a reputation for himself as an artist who doesn't play by the rules of polite society. He's been called the Robinhood of Madison Avenue for his seminal work in billboard subvertising and is widely considered, along with San Francisco's legendary Billboard Liberation Front, to be a founding member of the Culture Jamming movement. A new CD ROM chronicles fifteen years of balls, energy and imagination courtesy of a unique artist and social commentator who drives his points home with offbeat wit and amazing technique. Also recently released is the CD "POPaganda", a rock opera of Ron's artistic sojourn to hell and back. I recently spoke with Mr. English at his Manhattan studio.
Z: Hey, Ron. So how old are you?
RE: I'm 35. How old are you?
Z: 35.
RE: Really? I guess around the same time you were doing subways I was painting billboards in Texas.
Z: How long have you been in New York?
RE: Ten years.
Z: You're from Texas originally?
RE: I'm from the Midwest, but I moved to Texas after high school. I'd heard it was naturally surreal.
Z: You did a lot of billboard assaults back in Texas?
RE: Yeah. Texas is littered with billboards, so it was a pretty logical thing to do. Millions of billboards in your face, very few galleries, very little interest in art. I actually had no idea how to break into art as a career, not that I calculated billboards as a way to do that, but I just thought I wanted tons of people to see my work, even anonymously. I admit it was kind of an ego thing. I started doing the billboards and other painters saw me and wanted to do them too, so we started doing strips of them in Dallas, Houston, Austin, and then after we were done we'd have big keg parties nearby. It became a regular thing from '80 till around '84.
Z: How'd you get the idea to paint billboards?
RE. I thought of staging a play on the scaffold. I just remember looking at a billboard and wondering how I could possibly use that much space. First I thought of it as a huge canvas. Only later did I pay attention to the advertisement subversion aspect of it. My early billboards were more like paintings. There was a lot of social commentary in them, but they weren't specifically commenting on the advertising medium. That evolved gradually for me.
Z. Were you in school at the time?
RE: I was at North Texas State studying Photography. I also worked in a photo studio in Dallas, Messina Studios. My boss, John Messina, loved the idea I was doing these billboards and provided me with seamless backdrop paper, paint, and let me work on them after hours at his studio.
Z: So you were a photographer?
RE: I was studying art photography. I created these photorealistic drawings of people that I placed in situations and photographed. The drawings were done in sections with distortions that were corrected by the flattening effect of photography. So a person could be standing in the foreground reaching his hand around a person 30 feet behind. I shot the photos in seedy topless bars or wino camps or any social situation off the beaten path.
Z: When did you start painting on canvas?
RE. Not until I moved to New York. Before that all my art was in environments, on billboards, my photographic stagings. I painted photorealistic shadows on walls; I painted on cows, chickens, dogs. My house was painted top to bottom with sideshow imagery. I had old cars flipped upside down in my yard that we painted on. I had a mud wrestling pit in my front yard complete with a painted pet pig. I painted dinosaur skeletons on rock formations. I body painted people, but I guess painting on canvas hadn't occurred to me.
Z: You painted the Berlin Wall too, I remember seeing a photo.
RE: I was having a show of my photography in Amsterdam so I decided to make a pilgrimage to the wall to do a mural. I wanted to create the longest one.
Z: Was it the longest mural?
RE: At that moment yes. Ever? I don't know. I did have the dubious distinction of being detained in East Germany. I was there for two weeks painting the mural, and the guards would sneak up behind me and try to grab me. A few escaped East German kids were camped out there this was at Check Point Charlie and they watched my back. How I screwed up is I tried to visit East Germany with a friend when I was finished painting and they caught me with some West German articles about my mural. I felt like a complete idiot.
Z: What happened?
RE: They detained us in a room for a few hours and had various officials interrogate us. Finally they kicked us out of their country. We were happy to leave, believe me.
Z: You were also busted doing billboards, right?
RE: Eight of us snagged second degree felonies in Dallas in 1984. I know with graffiti artists it's a point of honour to never get caught, but with me it was inevitable. I think I wanted to get caught because it would prove I fully understood the consequences. If I continued after that I would truly be legitimate.
Z: And you did continue on.
RE: Within hours of being released from jail in Dallas I was in Austin painting over a Stuckeys billboard. You have to get back on the horse. I think that's the first true advertising subversion I did, too. The sign read "2 eggs, toast, $1.99." I wrote "tits" over the toast and painted a lovely buxom woman reclining on the breakfast plate.
Z: You probably know Rosenquest was a billboard painter who took his style to his paintings.
RE: I definitely learned to paint by doing the billboards. After years of painting things at that scale, canvasses were a piece of cake.
Z: Is it fair to say you concentrate more of your energies on canvasses at this point?
RE: I still paint a lot of billboards but nowhere the volume I once did. Most of my energies are focused on my canvasses. It's idea-based art. I have an idea and the painting is the vehicle to express it. I may at times try to be more painterly or use other techniques, but it's all about expressing that idea.
Z: Do you consider yourself a pop artist?
RE: Not in the strict sense of the term. I don't take a bland enough look at the surface of pop culture. The pop guys only commented on it in the sense that it existed there it is. But I'm passionately engaged in pop culture, I have opinions about it, I bring the subconscious into play with it. My work is more about social commentary. It just has the look of pop because I'm using pop iconography as a sort of visual vocabulary with which to comment on my life and times. And in this way I feel more akin to the social realists or even the surrealists. It's like this: Art is polite society, and there are two things you don't mention in polite society politics and religion. My work is filled with both, and that may make it unpalatable to polite society, but at least it's never boring. It's Popaganda!
Z: What's the story with "POPaganda"?
RE: It's a CD ROM and a separately released soundtrack to the CD ROM. The CD ROM lets you check out my illegal billboards, paintings, photographs, video clips of my wife and I crashing talk shows with phony problems, tons of wild stuff. The CD is a sort of rock opera featuring Tripping Daisy, Wesley Willis, Daniel Johnston, The Sutcliffes and a bunch of other bands. It's truly phenomenal.
Z: Are you upset by labels?
RE: I like labels. Used correctly, they're a good thing. They serve a purpose by instantly narrowing things down so you can zero in on something. But used incorrectly they can replace authentic critical thought.
Z: So how would you describe yourself as an artist? I think of you as a great painter and a great self promoter as well.
RE: Some people think it's crass to be a self promoter. But I say either you're doing it or someone else is doing it for you or to you, and doing it yourself lets you control it to some extent. If you're a musician, then the record company is in charge of helping create and disseminate your image. So you're technically not a self promoter, you're not crass. But let someone take things into their own hands and it makes people uncomfortable. I've had over 60 bands record songs about me. People think that's crass, but when a band asks me to shoot their press photos, paint them for their CD cover, shoot a video of them, then there's nothing crass with that. Yes, I have an ego, yes, I think I'm good, and maybe we should be worrying about people who don't.
Z: You've created a lot of paintings that are take-offs on famous paintings. What does this work mean to you?
RE: I call that series Revisionist Modernism. The '90s have generated a lot of revisionist interpretations of history, and these paintings are responding to that. It's also about living inside a manmade visual environment. The work is akin to a ritualistic personalization of my surroundings. That includes the common visual environment like corporate logos, famous works of art, ads, you know, the common visual vocabulary. Once you experience my version, you'll never see the original quite the same. Do you know what I'm trying to say?
Z: Like when I'm in the soup isle at the grocery I catch myself pondering Andy Warhol.
RE: Exactly.
Z: How's the art world of the '90s treating you?
RE: Oddly, when the art market crashed, suddenly I had a career. I think the '90s are finally emerging from the shadow of the '80s, and it's less about making it and having lots of money to spend and more about surviving and establishing your dignity and social stature as an artist. But both decades have produced some amazing art.
Z: What do you think of the gift marketing practices of some of the '80s legends like Haring?
RE: I notice some people get very upset when an artist produces knick knacks for the general public, like it somehow demeans his paintings or the seriousness of his art, but that sort of thinking is so one dimensional, so elitist. Keith broadened the spectrum of what an artist can do. I think he was a very healthy thing for the art world and the real world.
Z: What artists do you admire?
RE: I like artists that really seem like they're being themselves, unfettered by market forces, criticism, artists like Peter Saul for instance. You can tell he just wants to make great paintings. And he does. There are a lot of great artists up and running at this point in history. Maybe more than at any single point in history. Loads of garbage too. That's why the good lord created editors and curators.
Z: What do you feel about Warhol?
RE: Warhol ended the notion of the great suffering artist and replaced it with the notion of the great irreverent, partying, social climbing artist. You know, the artist studio as social club, art as the perfect background for a great party. The artist as producer of films, the artist as producer of bands, the artist moving in the same social/economic sphere as his collectors. And he was from modest means. A great American story or what!
Z: How do you want to be judged?
RE: By the quality of my collectors. I'm very proud of the people that have bought my art, those whom I've met. They're impressive people, and if my work connects with them in some way, then I guess I'm doing something right.
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