Painter and cartoonist Robert Williams is a maverick in the art world, and he doesn’t hesitate to clarify that his art is not for everybody.
“My art is not designed for general art consumption,” Williams said. “It’s for people with a Bohemian leaning who use their eyes as well as their minds.”
Williams acknowledged he comes from an “odd background,” but it’s his varied career path that has shaped his trailblazing style and the formation of a modern art genre. Williams fled a creatively stifling art school in the ’60s to get his start in the underground comic scene, illustrating ZAP Comix in 1969.
He carried his cartoon influence over to increased work with oils and canvas. His self-proclaimed “lowbrow” art stood in stark contrast to the rigid, exclusive art scene of the day. Although galleries at the time were not eager to show his work, Williams found an audience and arena that broke as many rules as his paintings.
Williams said Los Angeles’ after-hours clubs would often hang his paintings as a “ruse to sell liquor without a license.”
The psychedelic paintings would qualify a gathering as an art showing, allowing club owners to sell alcohol after 2 a.m.
Williams’ art justified illegal imbibing, but it also garnered a fan base. His paintings’ dynamic movement, unapologetic violence and vibrant colors fit well with another artistic movement during the ’80s — punk rock.
Williams said a band he had never heard of before, Guns N’ Roses, asked to use a painting of his as the album cover for its 1987 debut album. The band would subsequently adopt the painting’s title, “Appetite for Destruction,” as the album title.
“I cautioned them it wasn’t designed for general art consumption,” Williams said. “But if they had the guts to use it, they could.”
The album has sold an excess of 28 million copies to date, but not without sparking some controversy. Feminist groups criticized the work as a depiction of rape, and the art was ultimately moved to the album’s inside sleeve.
“That set him up for a scandalous reputation,” said Darius Spieth, assistant professor of art history and one of the chief organizers for Williams’ visit to LSU.
Spieth met Williams while completing a visiting professorship at Caltech in 2011 and convinced the free-thinking artist to pay LSU a visit. Spieth owns two original Robert Williams paintings and said he views the artist’s work as “crudely rendered and in-your-face.”
Williams’ paintings resemble technicolor nightmares, lurid fantasies and dense commentaries on various facets of society. All of the paintings share a commitment to cerebral narratives, a knack left over from the story-telling ways of his comic book days.
“Everything is worked out in sketches beforehand, and the idea is fermented in my head,” Williams said.
The Albuquerque native released several books of his work to rave reviews, but his most famous publication came in the form of a periodical.
“Artists in the ’90s didn’t have a world to fit in,” Williams said, so he crafted one.
Williams created the magazine JUXTAPOZ in 1994. He described other art publications as “academic forms of boredom” and endeavored for his magazine to bring the shadowy underbelly of the art world to light. Williams began JUXTAPOZ at a circulation of roughly 13,000. Today, it is the top-selling art magazine with a circulation exceeding 130,000.
Joseph Givens, guest curator for the exhibit, said JUXTAPOZ was revolutionary, as it provided a vehicle for “populist art” outside of academia. He said he admired Williams’ ability to combine cartoon comics with classroom technique.
“He has been my favorite artist for 17 years,” Givens said.
With decades to ruminate on the nuances of artistic movements, Williams has branded his style as “conceptual realism.” The movement is a confluence of Williams’ realist training and forays into conceptualist point-of-view.
The artist sounds equally melancholic and amused about the legacy of the artistic movement he forged.
“Any time an art movement gets successful, it dies,” Williams confided. “Art is strongest when it’s on the upward climb.”
Williams has built his career on the “upward climb” and still feels he has heights to ascend.
“My burden hasn’t eased up any; I’m still trying to earn praise at the blue-chip level,” Williams said of the academic art world’s slowly crumbling reluctance to accept him.
Williams said he worries schools are creating poor environments for aspiring artists, environments where “nobody dares to step out of line, like a school of fish.”
Williams is journeying south to the Bayou state — a momentous occasion because he rarely lectures at universities — to impart hope upon art students.
“I want to show that I was so left-field, but still succeeded, and I want to show that young artists who have the gumption can still do that,” Williams said.
- What: Lecture by Robert Williams
- When: 5 p.m. today
- Where: LSU Union Theater
- Cost: Free
