California artist Robert Williams trained in painting first at Los Angeles City College and later at the Chouinard Art Institute. He got his first break when he became the art director for legendary hot rod hero Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. With the rise of the counterculture in the late 1960's, Williams found a growing audience in the underground comic milieu that nurtured such figures as Robert Crumb, Victor Moscoso and S. Clay Wilson.

Williams was one of the originators of Zap Comix, and in 1994 he founded Juxtapoz Art and Culture Magazine with a group of artists and collectors. The publication's mission statement was to present art that is provocative, technically adept and worthy of exposure, and the magazine has attracted broad attention to the style. In the magazine, he has claimed credit for inventing the term 'lowbrow' art.

His themes are deliberately low class, involving raunchy sexual jokes, and focusing on garish, bad taste and general synicism about everything. Underlying themes are a sophisticated concern with the modern world.

Perhaps his best known work is 'Appetite For Destruction' which features levels of human to robot rape, an image that was featured on a Guns and Roses album cover.

Robert William's work has been presented internationally on album covers and posters and in magazines and exhibitions, including the show 'Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s' at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1992, and the 1993 exhibition 'Kustom Kulture' at the Laguna Art Museum.

Williams has produced a number of publications such as Malicious Resplendence, Zombie Mystery Painting, Visual Addiction and Views from a Tortured Libido.


Source:
website: lowbrowart.com