A month or so ago, in LA Weekly, LA’s largest liberal giveaway newspaper, there was a fine set of articles on the emerging specialty art dealing with progressive realism and, in particular, ‘Lowbrow Art’. It seems that two LA Weekly writers, Holly Myers and Doug Harvey, have to some extent broken ranks with the usual editorial art program and come to the defense of the outlaw arts.
But one issue that appears to be a bone of contention with practitioners of this sub-bona fide art is the name “Lowbrow Art.” And I for one certainly share this resentment.
About every three or four years I feel compelled to explain my position to the readers of Juxtapoz regarding the name, so let me again take this opportunity to shed some more light on this Lowbrow stigma.
During the mid-1960s in the United States, there were basically two quasi-surreal-fantasy painters who dared to confront the sterile, non-objective abstract art world presiding over culture at that time. In New York, that banner was carried by the very talented painter Mati Klarwein. And in Los Angeles, the battle standard was held aloft by (with all humble respect) myself. After a few years, Mati Klarwein caved in to the modernist pressures of the New York art scene and went into self-imposed exile on the island of Majorca. That left my insignificant artistic self to carry the torch for cartoon-tainted abstract surrealism.
At the time, I was still doing Zap Comix strips with Gilbert Shelton, the creator of The Furry Freak Bros. He also partially owned an underground publishing company called Rip-Off Press. In 1979 Gilbert offered to do an art book of all my paintings. No other publishing company anywhere would dare to undertake such an unorthodox project. It was decided at that time, since no authorized art institutions would recognize this form of art, to call my book The Lowbrow Art of Robt. Williams.
There was never any intention to make the title of my book the name of a fledging art movement but, over time, that seems to be what has transpired. The original connotation was to suggest that this self-deprecating name would, over a matter of time, rise from the lowest cultural phylum of art to ironically (and much to the consternation of the art world) climb to the top–but this wasn’t a serious conjecture.
The term “Lowbrow” was always unsettling to me because it made light of how seriously I took my art.
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