In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor
June 22 – October 5, 2008

Since 1994, this ground swelling of lowbrow, surrealistic, pop, figurative, and narrative work has coalesced and found a voice in the pages of Juxtapoz magazine published in San Francisco. This “rag” has become the most widely read art magazine in the U.S. It is an influencing force on the aspiring artists of generation Y and the millenials, who are now enrolling in art schools in numbers never before seen.

Juxtapoz magazine was founded by Los Angeles artist Robert Williams. The “Juxtapoz aesthetic or lowbrow art” is almost always figurative and is inspired by movies, TV, advertising, black-velvet painting, psychedelic posters, pulp porn, sci-fi and horror, carnival art, comics books and all things lower and middle class. The magazine has and does provide a voice and validation for a brand of artist, like Williams, who has not been accepted traditionally by the typical art-world infrastructure of collector, curator, and critic. However, since its founding, it has been the inspiration for the creation of its own infrastructure supported by Juxtapozian art galleries (in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York), collectors, critical attention, and museum exhibitions at adventurous institutions. Since the mid 1990s, with its growing success, Juxtapoz has been a major contributor to the acceptance of painting again as a valid practice for artists, countering forty years of art school canon, which focused on the conceptual practice of context, collectivization, and dematerialization of the art object.

For the last decade the art establishment (collector, curator, critic) has argued that the idea, or construct, of an art movement is outmoded. This exhibition explores the idea of the “Juxtapoz Factor.” Is it an organized movement operating under a singular manifesto? Or is it a wave of talented overlooked artists who decided to reach out to the public and create their own canon?

Laguna Art Museum
307 Cliff Dr., Laguna Beach, CA 92651

image credit: op left: Robert Williams, In the Land of Retinal Delights (detail), 1968. Oil on canvas. Collection of Mark Parker
Top Right: Laurie Hogin, Indicator Species, 2005. Oil on canvas. Collection of Cynthia and Michael Sitton
Left: Mark Ryden, The Creatrix (detail), 2005. Oil on canvas. Collection of Mark Parker
Right: Miriam Wosk, It Flows Everywhere Out of Itself (detail), 2005. Paper collage with crystals. Courtesy of the Artist and Billy Shire Fine Arts.

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