pop surrealism

I’m a big fan of Juxtapoz Magazine, because reading through the pages always feels a little like finding friends and coming home. During my long-fought battle to find an artistic identity for myself, Juxtapoz visits with artists who find themselves fighting the same creative fight as myself, and that’s comforting.

Juxtapoz has been acting as a chronicle of a the lowbrow / pop surrealist art movement since 1994, allowing spectators and participants alike to watch as the art collective evolves, transforms, and incorporates more and more into itself, with editor Robert Williams acting as the post-modern André Breton. Fortunately, Williams has been a lot more forgiving and accepting of the transformative nature of Surrealism than the dismissive Breton, who shunned more artists than he accepted into his clique. The result of Williams’ approach is a diverse magazine that addresses a very wide swath of creatives, from urban to rural, with their divergent influences and inspirations.

The magazine has recently begun to publish hardcover books, the first two being Juxtapoz Tattoo and Juxtapoz Illustration. In true Juxtapoz style, they’re handsome as hell. Juxtapoz Illustration has already made itself an essential inspiration and a bookshelf necessity, as well as something I plan on selectively using in my art classes. You know, skipping the pages with nipples and such – gotta keep it PG-13 when you have easily distractable, teenaged boys around. It’s like they have some kind of nudity radar.

Readers of Juxtapoz magazine will already be familiar with many of these 23 included artists, though the organizers of the book were careful to not repeat many pieces that were already featured within the magazine’s pages, and have even included a few artists that haven’t been featured in the magazine at all. After a half-page bio and artists’ statement, each artist is given eight quiet pages, full of beautifully printed artwork. No premise, no explanation – just art for the sake of art, unified under the nebulous idea of ‘illustration’. There’s a purity in this structure that’s exciting, and which isn’t allowed in a traditional magazine format. The translation is great, and every artwork is well-chosen.

No modern illustration book would be complete without the inclusion of the amazing James Jean, who I view as an essential 21st century illustrator to know – whether you’re an artist or just someone with eyes. Jeff Soto is also another name that’s thrown around a lot, and the tranquil artwork of Amy Sol (which was recently profiled in Hi Fructose magazine) is also featured here. Barron Storey is an oldschool illustrator and creative chameleon, whose dense, semi-abstract artwork has always been fascinating. The stark black and white of Mike Giant, the epic texture and motion of Nate Van Dyke, the supercomplex and unexpected vistas of San. What all of these people have in common is that they take the underappreciated world of ‘illustration’ and elevate it past the simple idea of ‘drawing a story’ and into places more painterly or abstract or energetic – many, many miles away from the rampant Photoshoppery that we’re assailed with on a daily basis.

While the collective work sometimes travels under the term ‘lowbrow’, I think that we now embrace the term as a way of ‘owning’ it. Anyone who gives these works even a cursory look will see the intellect, effort and artistry inherent in every one.

So, while there are many annual hardcovers that address ‘illustration’, Juxtapoz book eschews the commercial angle that runs through most of them, and gives the readers a brief but powerful look at the potential of the genre. It’s become a vital part of that indispensable shelf of inspirations in the ol’ studio space.

When one thinks of ‘fine art’, thoughts rarely stray into the realm of accessible collectability. Of course, the fabulously rich might own an original Lichtenstein or three, but there isn’t too much in the way of fine art for the average collector. Warhol’s pop art introduced the idea of mass production to the fine arts, but modern pop surrealist Takashi Murakami takes it even further, involving the collectible culture into his aesthetic, his products, and his philosophy. How many fine artists turn their creations into figures?

You’ve probably seen Murakami’s gleefully smiling flowers somewhere, or his Mickey Mouse-ish signature character, DOB. These finely defined figures strongly reference Japanese animation and the early influence that Walt Disney has has on the cartoon aesthetic. All of Murakami’s lines are crisp and clean, bringing the idea of cartooning onto canvasses lining the Brooklyn museum, mixing the artforms, and presenting an awesome show.

The Brooklyn Museum hasn’t just lined up some paintings in a room and invited people in. They’ve assembled an experience. An entire labyrinthine floor of the museum is dedicated entirely to Murakami’s works. If there’s a series of paintings with a cartoon eye theme, the room will be covered floor-to-ceiling with Murakami-designed cartoon eye wallpaper, and the floor will be patterned with eye decals. This happens in an overwhelming room after room, designed to emulate the experience of walking through an obsessive, terminally cheerful cartoon. Some of the paintings and prints are small, and some of the prints and paintings are vast, and almost all of them elaborate on the idea of ‘cartooning’.

The main floor of the museum was decorated with an enormous quintet of sculptures, posed around a circle in a pseudo-religious fashion. Of course, their cartoonishness and reference to animation divorces them from complete seriousness, but the overall impression is that such immense fiberglass statues imply a certain seriousness in these cartoon forms. An inflatable DOB hovers towards the ceiling, an obvious homage to Jeff Koons‘ famous inflatable rabbit. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed inside of the exhibit.

Please don’t let the overwhelmingness of cartoons fool you into bringing the kids to this exhibit, as there are five exceptionally explicit life-sized sculptures of nude and provocative anime-type people – nude women transforming into fighter planes (which makes for a great mixing of Japanese erotic animation and Transformers), and grossly exaggerated figures in other sensual acts. I won’t go into detail, but one of the more personally enjoyable parts of the show was standing back and witnessing peoples’ reactions as they walked past – usually very quickly, with their heads down and red-faced.

In the midst of this exhibit, planted between rooms, was the Louis Vuitton / Murakami gift shop, an integral part of the show experience. It mixed the idea of viewing art with the idea of producing and collecting art by introducing this marketplace as part of the show. Couple this with the showroom that included an under-glass, shop-like display of products that Murakami has designed or been associated with, and you have a man who has embraced collector culture as part of his artform. Sure, the main gift shop has flower pillows that cost upwards of $150, but it also had Murakami-designed dolls that were being clutched lovingly by young children.

As you exit the exhibit, a line of Murakami-designed figures are lined up in a case, spanning the variety of characters and styles he’s employed. He’s borrowing heavily from Japanese toy culture, and now he contributes back to it.

When CBS Sunday Morning did their part to overanalyze Murakami’s art and asked the artist himself what he wanted people to take away from the show, he simply replied the he wanted them to think, “Wow, that’s big!” It’s this kind of unpretentiousness that allows him to breach the strange gap between the fine artist and the audience, so I’ll just say simply, “Some of that stuff was really big!”

Say what you will about filling your life with unique and rare and masterfully executed works of art, dusty first editions of Moby Dick, and that fine china that you bring out when your demanding older sister comes for a visit – give me hunks of mass-produced plastic any day. Especially if they’re in the shape of Momaw Nadon. Or better yet, metal bikini Princess Leia. They may not be worth anything in a tag sale, but that’s the last way that I’ll assign value to anything. I value the cultural and personal resonance of any item before I’ll value how much I could get for it from a greasy guy hanging out in my driveway, breathing all over my LPs and eyeing my cat nervously.

I have a deep appreciation for art and literature, and am a firm believer that underneath a pop culture-dominated world, these are the things that truly keep us advancing as the human race. Our dominant culture is, after all, this same art and literature made accessible to the masses through simplification and mass production and the exhortations of Oprah. The value of ‘art’ and ‘things that are mass produced’ aren’t mutually exclusive, though. I’m sure you’re familiar with Andy Warhol, but it’s worth investigating why he did what he did with the replication of his own artwork. Also, while you’re there, check out why Jackson Pollack splattered things. It’s really very interesting, and also culturally significant.

My mind has almost fully divorced the idea of a ‘figural toy’ from being only a plaything, instead replacing the definition with ‘representation of a pop culture (or subculture) icon’. We live in a society that is largely dominated by pop culture, from American Idol to Batman, so why deny these things? It’s better to accept them, but keep a careful eye on them. That’s why the nascent art movement of pop surrealism has blossomed : to incorporate pop culture into unique artworks and reveal the true value of both elements. The art might not be one hundred years old, but that doesn’t invalidate it as art.

There is art in toys. There’s sculpting, there’s engineering, and there’s coloration, but mostly I’m enamored with the sculpting. Somewhere, someone sculpted that tiny head into that 6” Skywalker, capturing the emotion and energy of the character as best they could. And then they made 10,000 copies of that so that everyone could see.

Not only that, but Star Wars in particular is a cinematic work (cinema being an art form) that redefined the genre of fantasy storytelling on-screen, and it’s important to recognize. Do you need to recognize it by buying action figures of Greedo and Yoda? Absolutely not. Hasbro, most of all, has notoriously overproduced the Star Wars line, revisiting the same figures and using the same sculpts time and time again, further preying upon our collector instincts by re-packaging figures into retro-styled black and white packages, giving us that thrill that we felt when we first saw the figures on store shelves in our youth. Hasbro CREATED the word ‘action figure’. They know how to drive it into the ground. Drive it with a ten-ton hammer in the shape of Chewbacca. I’ll be the last person to be a Star Wars completist, but I still can’t get enough Darth Vaders.

I don’t collect toys to recapture some lost vestige of my youth. For that, I play 8-bit Nintendo games and sometimes watch bootleg DVDs of Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. I never collected toys while I was growing up, and I don’t collect toys now as some way to make up for lost toy time. I went across the street to play with Ninja Turtles if I wanted to make little plastic guys flip around and kick each other in their respective faces, slide down the firepole in the Ghostbusters Firehouse playset, squeeze Superman’s legs together to make his fists flail wildly – and I had a great time doing it. When I was at home, I drew pictures and caught bugs. Now, I draw pictures and catch bugs and collect action figures. They don’t all make it onto shelves, and in fact many are still cruelly trapped in their packaging, waiting for a time when they’ll be set up in a grand display that has no value to anyone but myself. Sure, I could sell a truckload of them if I ever found myself needing a new kidney, but let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that.

Toys represent, and are deeply related to, things that are important to me. Not as ‘toys’, but as representations of greater things. The process of creation, the fact that a small idea can blossom into universally recognized cultural consciousness, and the value of a well-realized character in anything. No, one doesn’t need a little Darth Vader next to you to remind you of the power of the dark side, but you don’t need a crucifix over your bed to truly remind you of the story of Jesus either. It just helps to have something tangible and tactile to represent these things. And I don’t think it cheapens it in any way.