THE LIVES OF LOWBROW ARTISTS

These biographical sketches celebrate underground artists who brought popular cartoon imagery into the avant-garde.

In this first volume of his survey, Costa interviews and profiles five painters in the second wave of the California-centered lowbrow art movement. They moved in the 1990s and 2000s beyond the “classic” first-wave subjects of hot rods and pin-up girls to tackle subtler themes using mid-20th-century graphic styles, South Pacific idols, and other Tiki motifs. His subjects include grand old man Josh “Shag” Agle, whose brightly colored paintings have the feel of a Jetsons’ soirée from 1961, with chic girls listening to cool jazz at swizzling cocktail parties amid hypermodernist décor, and Tim Biskup, whose more abstract bent features his trademark technique of decomposing figures into assemblages of polygons. The others are Miles Thompson, whose images are inspired by the Ren and Stimpy cartoon series and also incorporate firefighting icons Smokey the Bear and Woodsy Owl into environmentalist-themed pieces; Atlanta artist Derek Yaniger, whose style recalls old-school Mad Magazine, with seedy men leering at buxom burlesque girls; and Brandi Milne, who paints greeting-card depictions of adorable kids and cute critters but complicates and deepens them with dark hints of distortion and distress. It’s a varied set of artists, but commonalities emerge in their life stories: precocious fascination with drawing, encouraged by parents and teachers; punk-rock phases that often led to the formation of garage bands at art school; starter careers in commercial art and graphic design, where they soaked up styles while drawing album covers or working as Hollywood animators; the leap to the fine art side, nurtured by La Luz de Jesus gallery in Los Angeles and Outré in Melbourne, Australia; and a continuing commercial focus with online stores, sales of reproductions and merchandise, and animation projects.

Costa’s knowledgeable examination of lowbrow gives a cogent, unifying account of a diversity of styles. These motifs are rooted in an impulse to elevate cartoons and other demotic visuals into fine art; in a reaction against the overintellectualization of modern art, one grounded in skilled drawing rather than airy concepts; and in an avid engagement with art’s tradition of representational paintings that tell stories. His commentary on individual works is evocative, insightful, and very readable. (“The female Hamlet is meant to juxtapose the certainty of death and the vanity of life with the former court jester’s skull, and Biskup hoped that the viewer might contemplate how giants in history such as Alexander the Great and the lowly Yorick have returned to mere dust. But unfortunately, the symbolism was lost on most viewers, who just saw a sexy cartoon girl.”) The biographical material, it must be said, is not very gripping because artists just don’t live as colorfully as they used to. Agle recalls drinking and pitching bloodily through a glass window, but otherwise there is little indecorous behavior and no dueling or cutting off of ears. The most dramatic moments usually involve the selling out of a show. Frustratingly, the book has no illustrations of the paintings discussed (but they are easily Googled). Still, cognoscenti will be interested in Costa’s probing insider’s story of lowbrow’s evolution while casual art lovers will be pointed toward a trove of captivating paintings.

An informative and enlightening, though visually barren, exploration of a vibrant contemporary art scene.