Post #211410 by hewey on Mon, Jan 30, 2006 4:01 AM

I was cruisin through the magazine from the newspaper from the weekend and I stumbled across their FYI section (For Your Information - they outline kinda obscure stuff for the general public to 'ooh' and 'aah' and 'tut-tut' over - like graffiti art). For the Aussies it was the Good Weekend from the Sydney Morning Herald.

It was just 3 paragrpahs, Ill pull out the bits that are of interest.

Also known as Pop Surrealism, Lowbrow is an artistic movement inspired by the pop culture of the late 1950s and early 1960s: hot rods, horror films, comic books, pulp novels, tiki, religious iconogrpahy, cocktails, TV sitcoms, cartoons, rock-concert posters, tattoos, Nazi regalia, Asian art and animals with big eyes

Apparently we dont have any of those things today! Then it goes on to discuss why lowbrow isnt 'valued' in the 'art' world.

• There's an unspoken consensus that Lowbrow is more suited to a teenagers bedroom wall than a gallery... It maybe competent design or illustration, but not good art. Lowbrow is representational not conceptual, mercantile not political... One "bitter art-world insider" quoted in LA Weekly dismissed the movement as the "art-world equivalent of a thousand-dollar black leather jacket".*

Apparently he's not a fan. Neither is Robert Williams, one of the founders of Juxtapoz magazine (and considered a father of lowbrow). They reckon its gone wayward and now desribe it as "unibrow". The article says he has given up all together and quotes him as saying:

"There isn't any more outlaw art. All this tiki and big-eye crap is just a bunch of illustrators looking for a new place for their stuff because they lost their jobs to computers"

And that is the end of the article. Neither the art-world wankers or the traditional lowbrow artists want us.

Bugger em all - lets make some Mai Tais, crank up the exotica and make some mongrel half breed bastard form of art that only a mother like us could love.

Stay tiki!