Роберт Л. Уильямс: Суретші, карикатурист және «Juxtapoz» журналының негізін қалаушысы

American painter and cartoonist

Robert L. Williams, often styled Robt. Williams (born March 2, 1943), is an American painter, cartoonist, and founder of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine. Williams was one of the group of artists who produced Zap Comix, along with other underground cartoonists, such as Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, and Gilbert Shelton. His mix of California car culture, cinematic apocalypticism, and film noir helped to create a new genre of psychedelic imagery.

Robert L. Williams II was born on March 2, 1943, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Robert Wandell Williams and Betty Jane Spink. Williams was instilled at an early age with a love for car culture. His father owned The Parkmore, a drive in restaurant complete with carhops, which was frequented by hot rodders. Williams received his first car at twelve years old as a gift from his father: a 1934 Ford five window coupe. References to his childhood environment can be seen throughout Williams' work, as well as in the custom hot rods which he would later build himself. He became so skillful at painting specular reflection from chromed auto parts that he later drew the chrome parts for other comix artists, who then drew the rest of the auto. The Williams household was unstable, as his parents married each other a total of four times. During his early childhood, Williams was shuttled between Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his father's home in Montgomery, Alabama. His parents' final separation occurred in 1956, after which 12 year old Robert lived with his mother in Albuquerque. He became a delinquent, immersing himself in hot rods, hi jinx, and street gangs; this led to him being expelled from public school in the eleventh grade. To avoid the possibility of jail time, Williams moved to Los Angeles in 1963 when he was twenty years old. There, he enrolled in art courses at Los Angeles City College, where he contributed artwork to the school's paper, The Collegiate, and met Suzanne Chorna, his future wife. After that, he briefly attended the California Institute of the Arts (formerly the Chouinard Art Institute), where he was branded an "illustrator" in derogatory fashion. Now married, Williams left art school and became a professional artist in search of work. He worked for Black Belt magazine and designed containers for the Weyerhaeuser Corporation, before he found his dream job in 1965 working with Ed "Big Daddy" Roth.

In the late 1960s, while doing advertisements and graphics for Roth, Williams was also a productive oil painter. It was during this period that he created his "Super Cartoon" paintings. These included Appetite for Destruction (which depicts a robotic rapist about to be punished by a metal avenger) and In the Land of Retinal Delights. These paintings were meticulously created in the style of the old masters, using hand made paints and multiple layers of varnish. The "Super Cartoon" works sold well but were very time consuming to produce, sometimes requiring more than a year. In 1969 Williams joined the Zap Comix collective of artists with the infamous issue number 4 of Zap Comix. He flourished within the non conformist, anti establishment art movement of that time, along with Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Gilbert Shelton, Spain Rodriguez, Rick Griffin, and Victor Moscoso. That same year he created Coochy Cooty, his seminal underground comix antihero. His creation was unleashed in 1970 in Coochy Cooty Men's Comics and in many issues of Zap Comix, and is still alive today in Williams's oil paintings. as well as a lecture defining his art movement, Colloquial or Exploratory Realism (Feral Art). In 2010, Williams was busy with his inclusion in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and with the release of a feature length documentary film about himself. This was titled Robert Williams, Mr. Bitchin and premiered on June 16, 2010, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it received a standing ovation. The film was produced by Rhino Films and Foundation Films and documents Williams's rise to fame from his car culture and underground comix roots. On October 9, 2010, Williams was given a lifetime achievement award as part of the Beyond Eden Fair in Hollywood. In 2011, Williams took part in the Los Angeles Art Fair and delivered another lecture on his art movement. His work was also included in the "Two Schools of Cool" show at the Orange County Museum of Art. Williams has participated with other artists in "The Art Boys," a venture which included such notables as Gary Panter, Matt Groening, The PIZZ, Mike Kelley, Neon Park, and Mark Mothersbaugh. In 2015, Williams achieved a 51 year goal. After attending the 1964 Salvador Dalí exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Williams vowed to have his own work displayed in the same institution. This vision was realized in "Robt. Williams: Slang Aesthetics," which ran from February 22 thru April 19, 2015, setting the highest recorded attendance at over 20,000 visitors. The exhibition included new paintings and sculptures as well as a retrospective of past works, and was accompanied by a catalog of the same name as well as a 20 year anniversary group show for Juxtapoz magazine. Thematically, Williams postulates that slang is a valid form of communication: "In fact, slang represents freedom from pretension allowing artists to function as they please." October 2019, Williams released a career spanning book showcasing all of his paintings, drawings, and sculptures to date. "Robert Williams: The Father of Exponential Imagination", comprising 484 pages and weighing over 10 pounds, was also accompanied by a full retrospective exhibition of the same name at the Bellevue Arts Museum from October 4, 2019 to March 8, 2020. Of exponential imagination, Williams states: " In the case of exponential creativity, previously existing compounded ideas pursue irrational directions as they metastasize with unmanageable poetic abstraction. In other words: a calculable explosive aberration, sometimes in the guise of art "

Williams currently lives in the San Fernando Valley in California with his wife Suzanne, who is also a professional artist. He is also a unicyclist.

Robert Williams was referenced in the 1991 Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Mellowship Slinky in B Major" on the album Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Williams's art and personal rat rod were featured in the music video for the song "Who Was in My Room Last Night?" from the Butthole Surfers' 1993 album Independent Worm Saloon. Williams's painting Appetite for Destruction was used as the cover art on Guns N' Roses debut album which was also given the same name as the painting after Williams approved. Later public outrage forced Geffen Records to move the image to the inside sleeve.

The antics of Coochy Cooty and such paintings as Oscar Wilde in Leadville and Appetite for Destruction caused controversy. Here is Williams's response, excerpted from a 1992 interview:

Of his paintings, Williams has stated, "My paintings are not designed to entertain you; they are meant to trap you, to hold you before them while you try to rationalize what elements of the picture are making you stand there." And on being the driving force of the Lowbrow/Pop Surrealism art movement, he said, "It's been called Lowbrow Art and Pop Surrealism and a bunch of different names, but it's a feral art. It's an art that raised itself in the wilderness."