ARTIST ROBERT WILLIAMS HONORED BY SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS
Guest of Honor + Screening of Documentary Film Robert Williams Mr. Bitchin’
During 2014 MoCCA Arts Festival in NYC
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LOS ANGELES, CA
The Zap Comix anti-hero R. Crumb says of Robert Williams: “He’s an art
hero, that’s the truth!” And this April, Robert Williams’ contributions
to popular culture are being recognized by the Society of Illustrators
during the 2014 Museum of Comic and Cartoon Arts (MoCCA) Arts Festival
the weekend of April 5 – 6, 2014 at the 69th Regiment Armory in Manhattan. To kickoff the festival, the documentary film about Williams’ creative process and cultural impact, ROBERT WILLIAMS’ MR. BITCHIN’ will screen on Thursday April 4 at 7:00pm at Beatrice Theatre.
This
irreverent documentary delivers insight into multiple American
counter-cultures by following the great American artist and underground
legend Robert Williams. From Hot Rods to Punk and Metal, from LSD to the
top of the art world, the influential paintings of Robert Williams
defied categorization until they became their own art movement. Williams,
age 70, will be enjoying the fruits of hard-fought recognition when he
is honored by the Society of Illustrators. Williams is currently
preparing for a one-man show later this Fall at the prestigious Tony
Shafrazi Gallery (http://www.tonyshafrazigallery.com/).
The film won Best Documentary at the Comic Con International Film Festival, was an
official selection at the Big Sky Film Festival, and has screened to
standing room audiences at MoMA, MOCA, OCMA, LACMA, Art Miami-Basel and
the American Cinematheque Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. Called “the best movie about an artist I’ve ever seen,” by artist Ed Ruscha, it is directed and edited by Mary C. Reese and co-directed by Nancye Ferguson (Flying with the Angels), Doug Blake, Stephen Nemeth and Michael LaFetra. Ferguson, Blake (The Sessions) and LaFetra (Night Train), also served as producers and Nemeth (The Sessions, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas) executive produced with Charles Solomon Jr. (Nate & Margaret) co-executive producing.
The screening will take place on Thursday, April 4 at 7:00pm at the Beatrice Theatre at SVA, located at 333 West 23rd Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.
A Q & A will follow with Williams and Co-Director/Producer Nancye
Ferguson, and will be moderated by culture critic and curator Carlo
McCormick. The screening is open to the public but tickets are required: http://www.societyillustrators.org/Film.aspx?id=11297&terms=williamsbp
The
Society of Illustrators, founded in 1901, is the oldest nonprofit
organization solely dedicated to the art and appreciation of
illustration in America. Prominent Society members have been Maxfield
Parrish, N.C. Wyeth and Norman Rockwell, among others. The Museum of
American Illustration was established by the Society in 1981 and is
located in the Society’s vintage 1875 carriage house building in
mid-town Manhattan. The two-day festival will also recognize the Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, and Fiona Staples. Details can be found here: http://www.societyillustrators.org/Society-News/News/2013/MoCCA-Fest/Alison-Bechdel,-Howard-Cruse,-Fiona-Staples-and-Robert-Williams-Headline-2014-MoCCA-Arts-Festival.aspx
FILM SYNOPSIS: Robert Williams was an artist in search of a movement. A
prolific oil painter whose painstakingly detailed work often featured
naked women, death, destruction, booze and clowns, he didn’t quite fit
the fine art mold. In
the early 1960s he was confronted with trendy abstraction and
superficial pop art. Schooled in the Hot Rod culture of Ed “Big Daddy”
Roth and Von Dutch, he emerged as a leader in the Underground Comic
revolution along with R. Crumb, contributing regularly to Zap Comix. His
antisocial paintings of an alternative reality were marginalized by the
art world for decades although he became a hero of sorts for
underground artists. His notoriety exploded when his painting Appetite for Destruction was used (and much vilified) as the cover for that 1987 Guns N’ Roses album.
When
he started Juxtapoz Magazine in 1994, his movement found him. Legions
of artists looking for a place within the contemporary art world for
their cartoonish realism identified with his “low brow” aesthetic. At
the time, Williams predicted that “low brow and alternative art are the crack in the dam and with this leak the art world will never be the same.”By 2010 the art world could ignore him no longer and he was included in the prestigious Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. ROBERT WILLIAMS MR. BITCHIN’ documents this influential artist as he rises to the top of the art world, always an outsider.
An irreverent, convention-defying tale of life and art as lived by a maverick in the contemporary art world.
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