Topics
Section I. Genealogy of the Plastic Mutant: From California Underground to Total Revision of the Canon
1.1. The birth of pop-surrealism (Lowbrow Art) from garage culture, pulp comics, and protest against the sterility of museum modernism. 1.2. The mechanics of consumption: how the mass-production assembly line digests ancient myth and Renaissance harmony. 1.3. The figure of Robert Williams and visual overload as a method of combating elitist pathos.
Section II. Ron English and the Anatomy of «Popaganda»: Dissecting the Idols of Consumerism
2.1. Popaganda Concept: the appropriation of advertising surfaces and the weaponization of corporate imagery against itself. 2.2. Deconstruction of the classic sex symbol and the goddess of fertility: the «Marilyn with Mickeys» series (Pop-Marilyn). 2.3. The mutation of the totem of innocence: dissected Mickey Mouse as the skull and gas mask of the entertainment industry. 2.4. The clown at the fast-food slaughterhouse: the image of MC Supersized and the grotesque obesity of the imperial myth. 2.5. The invasion of the toy assembly line into high tragedy: the reassembly of Picasso’s «Guernica.»
Section III. Matthew Grabelsky and the Banality of Myth: Ancient Monsters on the Subway Car
3.1. The Academic School of Florence in Service of the Absurd: The Conflict Between Old Master Technique and Underground Prose. 3.2. The Minotaur, the Gorgon, and the Totem Animal at Rush Hour: Stripping the Heroic Aura Through Metropolitan Routine. 3.3. The Archetypes of the Knight, the Beauty, and the Monster in the Settings of a Suburb and a Train Car.
Section IV. The Fall of the Goddess, the Knight, and the Saint: A Collective Diagnosis of Pop Surrealism
4.1. Mark Ryden and the sacred butcher shop: the transformation of the Madonna and the infant into a gastronomic fetish. 4.2. Todd Schorr and the synthetic epic: the collision of classical painting with the toxic plastic of toy factories. 4.3. Greg «Kraola» Simkins and the rot of the cartoon paradise: biomechanical chimeras under the sheen of childhood.
Section V. Colonizing the Past: A Retrospective Deconstruction of Hero and Savior Archetypes
5.1. Alex Gross and Victorian Cabinet Portraits: The Forced Implantation of Superhero Masks into Bourgeois Genealogy. 5.2. Nicola Verlato and Paco Pomet: The Collapse of the Monumental Hero Amid Car Accidents, Neon Signs, and Historical Farce.
Section VI. The Aesthetics of the Chewed World: Why the Plastic Monster Became the Era’s Primary Mirror
6.1. The Anatomy of Visual Cannibalism: Stages of Transforming the High Canon into a Vinyl Souvenir. 6.2. Irony as the Only Form of Defense and the Limits of Deconstruction in Twenty-First-Century Art.
Section I. Genealogy of the Plastic Mutant: From the Californian Underground to a Total Revision of the Canon
Illustrative Material #1 Robert Williams, «Appetite for Destruction» (1978, lithograph 1989): illustrates section 1.3 regarding visual overload and the deconstruction of the maiden-from-monster rescue narrative (a robot rapist, a mechanical toy vendor, and a reddish biomechanical demon looming over them).
In addition to section 1.1, Andy Warhol’s «Marilyn Diptych» (1962, Tate Gallery) illustrates the thesis regarding the cold reproduction of mass media faces in classical Pop Art as «new Byzantine icons» in contrast to the aggression of Pop Surrealism.
In addition to section 1.1: The «Zap Comix» collective (Robert Crumb, Robert Williams, et al., starting in 1968) illustrates the origins of pop surrealism within the underground comix culture of Southern California.
In addition to sections 1.1 and 1.3, Ed «Big Daddy» Roth, the Rat Fink character, and the hot rod custom culture illustrate the garage aesthetic of Ed Roth’s studio, where Robert Williams worked.
Cover of the book The Art of Ed «Big Daddy» Roth
In addition to section 1.3 Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine (founded by Robert Williams in 1994): illustrates the institutionalization of Lowbrow Art and Williams’s own work.
Section II. Ron English and the Anatomy of «Popaganda»: Dissecting the Idols of Consumerism
In addition to section 2.1, Ron English’s guerrilla takeovers of billboards (Subverting/Popaganda Billboards, since the 1980s) illustrate the «cult-jacking» method and the illegal defacement of advertising billboards in the United States.
Illustrative Material #2 Ron English, «Marilyn with Mickeys» (2005) and «Pop Marilyn Mickeys» (2011–2012): illustrates section 2.2 on the deconstruction of the classic sex symbol (the Venus of the 20th century) and the fusion of eroticism with Disney’s children’s animation.
Illustrative Material No. 3 Ron English, «Mousemask Murphy» (painted versions and full-scale sculpture, 2009): illustrates Section 2.3 on the transformation of Mickey Mouse’s head into a heavy rubber gas mask as a metaphor for a toxic information environment.
