Lowbrow Art

also: Pop surrealism

movement late 1960s-present Los Angeles, California United States

Lowbrow - often called pop surrealism - is an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles area in the late 1960s, rooted in underground comix, punk, tiki culture, graffiti and hot-rod culture rather than in any academy. Its first practitioners were cartoonists such as Robert Williams and Gary Panter, whose work was refused by authorized art institutions; in 1979 Williams gave the movement its self-deprecating name with the book The Lowbrow Art of Robt. Williams. Shows happened in alternative spaces - La Luz de Jesus, Psychedelic Solutions, 01 gallery - and in 1994 Williams co-founded Juxtapoz, the magazine that carried the scene worldwide. Paintings dominate, but toys, digital art and sculpture belong to it too. The tone is playful, cartoonish and gleefully transgressive, sometimes ghoulish, sometimes satirical.

Example work related to "Lowbrow Art".
Example work related to "Lowbrow Art".CC BY-SA 4.0 (credit: Old Man Parker) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Cartoon and comic-strip draftsmanship applied to fine-art painting
  • Pop-surrealist imagery: dreamlike, nightmarish or kitsch scenes rendered with polished technique
  • Low-culture source material - hot rods, tiki, toys, pin-ups, monster movies and old children's books
  • A gleeful, impish or sarcastic humor running through the subject matter
  • Narrative figuration: characters, monsters and storybook scenes rather than abstraction
  • Work circulating outside the gallery system: comics, zines, album covers and designer toys

Key figures

  • Robert Williams (b. 1943) — Zap Comix painter whose 1979 book named the movement; co-founder of Juxtapoz
  • Gary Panter (b. 1950) — Cartoonist-painter whose punk-inflected Jimbo helped define the look
  • Mark Ryden (b. 1963) — Dubbed "godfather of pop surrealism": kitsch-surreal paintings and cover art such as Dangerous
  • Camille Rose Garcia (b. 1970) — California painter working in a goth-subculture cartoon style

Example works

  • The Lowbrow Art of Robt. Williams (book of paintings that named the movement) — Robert Williams (1979)
  • Dangerous (cover painting for Michael Jackson) — Mark Ryden (1991)

Sources

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