Alex Grey Australian tour 2011!

Yes, the heading speaks the truth! Alex Grey, one of the greatest visual artists of our time will be in Melbourne January 24 at the Astor Theatre, St Kilda!
Most people would be familiar with Alex Grey's work on the cover of the TOOL albums "10,000 Days" and "Lateralus". Grey is a visionary, his psychedelic art is truly unique and amazing! If you don't know Alex Grey, you are missing out!
http://www.agmtours.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=55

Mmm Delicious!

So heres a link to my delicious page where you can find a whole bunch of bookmarks i saved tat i found useful and informative!
http://www.delicious.com/katw_86
In it you'll find my latest bookmark for Gelaskins. For those of you who dont know about this site, if your a Lowbrow and Pop Surrealist fan you will want to check this out!
http://www.gelaskins.com/
Gelaskins is a site that sells skins for phones, computers, ipads and gaming consoles, but heres the best part... Gelaskins specialize in making skins from works of some of the greatest Lowbrow and Pop Surrealist artists! I actually found this site from one of those little annoying facebook adds you get at the side of your page. Anyhoo this site is great! It provides full details of the artists so you can look them up and visit their site etc.. this site is how i found 2 of my most favorite artsits, Kukula and Audrey Kawasaki!

Much better then Wiki

So in my first post on this blog the only information and intellectual insight i could offer on the subject of Pop Surrealism was a rather short Wiki entry. Upon further and more thorough research on the matter for an assignment i came across this fantastic ArtForum article on bnet written by Yale art critic and Author, Steven Henry Madoff.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_n2_v37/ai_21230382/

And here's a little info on Steven Henry Madoff
http://art.yale.edu/StevenHenryMadoff

Lovely YouTube video

A collection of random works accompanied by a lovely french song

What is Pop Surrealism?

Lowbrow, or lowbrow art^[1], describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Lowbrow art often has a sense of humor - sometimes the humor is gleeful, sometimes impish, and sometimes it's a sarcastic comment.^{[2]  - Wikipedia.}

  
<sup>Pop Surrealism or Lowbrow Art is a genre i have very much fallen in love with primarily because it celebrates the alternative, its art is truthful, it is bold, daring, confronting yet also delicate, cute and beautiful. Pop Surrealism usually has a style that i would describe as Story Book Illustration with an edgy twist. It comes in many mediums such as paintings, digital art, toys, drawings and airbrushing. The style usually incorporates an illustration of beautiful yet twisted characters, it is not uncommon to see the odd tattoo added to the characters and a few pop culture references.  Some styles that exist within this genre include character illustrations, book illustrations, comic book style art, tattoo art, manga and modern pin ups.

Why I love Pop Surrealism

I have always loved character illustration and i guess you could say i have an overall admiration of the human body. When watching Disney films or reading picture books as a kid i would always pay close attention to the characters, their features, their outlines and try to understand how they were drawn and put together to produce the fascinating end result of a beautiful princess, a cute fuzzy little critter, or a strong hero! I still have a love for these classically, beautiful characters but i have also grown into a somewhat alternative person with a love for the "underground" and things that are not so widely socially accepted like tattoos and piercings (although i have very little myself). I embrace things, people and worlds that are different and i am a firm believer and admirer of self expression. I find Pop Surrealism expresses all these things i love, the artists aren't afraid to be themselves and show their art to the world, an art that combines the dark, freaky and alternative with a soft, dreamlike whimsical quality that makes you admire and fall in love.
I wish I could describe this art on a more technical level but there really isn't a lot of in depth information of this genre on the web or in libraries, i think this is due to the fact that Pop Surrealism has not yet been granted the same status as "Fine Art" as stated in Wikipedia -</sup> 

Museums, art critics, mainstream galleries, etc., have been uncertain as to the status of lowbrow in relation to the fine art world, and to date it has been largely excluded - although this has not stopped some collectors from buying the works. Some art critics doubt that lowbrow is a "legitimate" art movement, and there is thus very little scholarly critical writing about it. The standard argument of critics is that critical writing arises naturally from within an art movement first, and then a wider circle of critics draws upon this writing to inform their own criticism. This apparent absence of internal critical writing may be because many lowbrow artists began their careers in fields not normally considered fine art, such as illustration, tattooing and comic books. Many lowbrow artists are self-taught, which further alienates them from the world of museum curators and art schools.^{[citation needed]}

Many in the art world have deeper difficulties with lowbrow's figurative focus, its cultivation of narrative, and its strong valuing of technical skill.^{[citation needed]} All these aspects of art were deeply disparaged in the art schools and by curators and critics throughout the 1980s and 90s.^{[citation needed]}