News Art Blog

As artist Robert Williams grew up in his often dysfunctional, divorced home in the 1940s and 1950s, his mother wished he’d become a cowboy. After seeing Cecil B. DeMille’s 1935 film The Crusades(rereleased in 1948), however, young Bob decided on a career as a crusader instead. With a lion’s heart, fiercely wide-ranging intellect, and outsider’s eye, Robert Williams dreamed of a holy land where his unique brand of art would one day gain acceptance. Robert Williams: Mr. Bitchin’, now available on DVD and digital platforms, tells the story in Williams’ own words and pictures of that long, often lonely crusade to make art true to his experience that defied the mores of society at large and the art world in particular. Entertaining and enlightening, Robert Williams: Mr. Bitchin’offers the rare chance to see the real-life good guy win in the end. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Robert Williams: Bitchin’ Art Crusader?"




[Many thanks to Cinema Libre Studio for providing me with a review copy of Robert Williams: Mr. Bitchin’, available on DVD and digital platformsstarting July 30, 2013.]

“My earliest memory is of anxiety!” cartoonist Daniel Clowes tells an interviewer in The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist, the first serious monograph of the work of this seriously funny and seriously ambitious artist. Anxiety rules much of Clowes’ world, but it’s the anxiety that comes with questions of identity and belonging—all wrapped in a quirky and hilariously human package. “Unlike most writers and artists who take it for granted that human beings naturally seek each other’s company,” writes friend and fellow cartoonist Chris Ware, “Clowes seems to keep asking: What is it we really want from one another, anyway?” It’s Clowes’ complex technique matched with such deep questions as that one that lead at least one critic to claim that Daniel Clowes has reinvented comics. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Daniel Clowes Reinvented Comic Books."



[Many thanks to Abrams ComicArtsfor providing me with the image above and a review copy of The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist, edited by Alvin Buenaventura.]

If you’re a parent and you want to introduce your child to art, it’s sometimes hard to find that perfect combination of optimism and imagination in a single artist. Too often creativity comes in a dark, brooding package. In Wondering Around Wandering: Works So Far an artist’s book by Mike Perry, creativity—boundless, bubbling, beautiful—comes in a cheerful, colorful package. “While my early life was sometimes difficult,” Perry writes in his preface, “I’ve always sought to create artwork that includes a strong upward current.” Hoping to “invoke the solace of dreamspace,” Perry believes that “[e]very one of us has the innate potential to be bright, happy, and complete with sex, laughter, and outward expansion. Galaxies can exist anywhere—this is the universe at its best.” Mike Perry’s visual universe provides pictures to match those words and inspires others to wander and wonder their way to their own personal galaxy. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Why We Should All Wander and Wonder With Mike Perry."

[Image: Mike Perry. We Are the Infinity of Each Other, 2011. Paint, 1-color silkscreen, and resin on canvas board. 19 x 25 in.]

[Many thanks to Rizzoli USA for the image above and a review copy of Wondering Around Wandering: Works So Far by Mike Perry.]