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| Robert Williams, The Hermit Waif's Vulnerable Reverie, 2020 |
Born in Albuquerque in 1943, Robert Williams skipped town as a juvenile delinquent and landed in Los Angeles at the age of 19. There he briefly attended the Chouinard Art Institute, forerunner of Cal Arts. By the mid 1960s Williams was working for hot rod maestro Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, helping to imagineer the "Ratfink" meme. He teamed with Robert Crumb, among others, in launching Zap Comix and the underground comics movement. Another project was Juxtapoz magazine, devoted to the Lowbrow zeitgeist. Meanwhile Williams was scoring exhibitions at New York's Tony Shafrazi Gallery and places in MOCA's Paul Schimmel-curated "Helter Skelter" (1992), and the 2010 Whitney Biennial. LACMA has a Williams painting (donated by Ed and Danna Ruscha, no less). The latest item on Williams' long resume is a show at the Long Beach Museum of Art,"Robert Williams: Fearless Depictions" (through May 31, 2026). It's a survey of 54 paintings, plus some watercolors and sculptures, spanning 2007 to the present.
Williams has an avid following, and his collectors don't necessarily collect the sort of contemporary art you see at MOCA. Williams' paintings are hermetic allegories trading in body horror, psychedelia, science fiction, and dad humor. You cannot relate to Williams in the default modes that apply to other artists. Is Williams even an artist at all? It would be easy to peg him as an illustrator, had he stuck more to comics and magazines, like Crumb or Norman Rockwell for that matter. Likewise, had he been a self-taught artist whose oeuvre was discovered without explanation in a storage locker somewhere, he'd be the king of all outsiders. Williams reminds us that "fine" art is not, after all, the big tent it pretends to be. The issues Williams raises are particularly pertinent as George Lucas opens the Pandora's box of "narrative" art.
At 82, Williams has no late style that I can discern. At various times in his career he explored less meticulous styles in order to increase his output and income. He always seems to trend back to the illusionistic, illustrational style that the started with.
Williams supplies essays describing each work, and LBMA uses them rather than a curator's take. That's a mixed blessing. Williams' grandiloquent descriptions are satire, much in the spirit of the paintings themselves. It's not easy for a curator to compete against that, but a little more context—from a more reliable narrator—might be welcome.
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| Robert Williams, The Spirit of Malfeasance Hanging Out the World's Wash, 2011 |
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| Gallery label, "Robert Williams: Fearless Depictions" |
Williams'
The Spirit of Malfeasance… is an homage to Basil Wolverton's cover for
MAD magazine #1 . While Williams name checks Wolverton, and the
MAD cover is shown elsewhere in the exhibition, a more helpful label might trace Wolverton's influence on Williams.
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| Robert Williams, Diamond in a Goat's Ass (fiberglass, steel, and auto paint), 2009 |
The exhibition has two large fiberglass sculptures plus several small 3D-printed works.
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| Robert Williams, American Cognizance, 2018 |
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| Robert Williams, Terra Facia, the Exaggerated Persona of a Poetic Location, 2013 |
Comments
> collect the sort of contemporary
> art you see at MOCA
Or LACMA. I recall a time when the museum on Wilshire Blvd was causing resentment in people - both artists and collectors - who were fans of newer art. They didn't think LACMA exhibited enough of what they liked or created. That seems like a million years ago.
The Lucas Museum will hopefully help fill in the gap between a MOCA, Broad or Hammer (or Marciano or Hauser/Wirth) and the style and format of an artist like Williams.
Abstract or non-representational after awhile becomes monotonous or a gigantic blur. It's the opposite extreme of what's in the Louvre.
Since LA doesn't have an overwhelming museum of older styles and periods of art similar to a Louvre or the new Grand Egyptian, the region right now seems lopsided.