reviewed by John A. Lent
Joseph R. Givens and Darius A. Spieth, eds. Robert Williams: Conversations. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2023. 183 pp. US $25.00 (Paperback). ISBN: 978-1-4968-4403-3. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/R/Robert-Williams
Robert Williams makes for a fascinating
interviewee, with his vast knowledge on an assortment of subjects, his
unwavering opinions, and his ability to take a conversation afar--strengthening
it with variants of the word “fuck” and punctuating it with some wicked humor--and
then return it to the question posed with an erudite answer. He is capable of
playing havoc with the established protocol and schema of interviewing, and
does, to good effect.
These traits are evident in the 15
interviews with Williams that Joseph R. Givens and Darius A. Spieth pulled
together, spanning the period from 1987 to 2015. The first interview, conducted
by Paul Gravett, appeared in the tenth number of his Escape. Among other
interviewers were the actor Nicolas Cage and the tattoo specialist, Jonathan
Shaw. A sixteenth interview of Greg Escalante, promoter of lowbrow art and
Williams, was made by the editors. Eighteen images are scattered throughout the
book, and a very useful chronology of Williams’ life is provided.
Each interview introduces different
aspects of Williams’ life and career, though duplication is to be expected,
especially when interviews commence with, “Let’s start at the beginning.” In
this set of interviews, when Williams received such a request, he answered that
he was born in Albuquerque in 1943, on a cold and rainy morning. In her
interview with Williams, Michelle Delio followed up with a jocular, “And then
what happened?” to which he answered, “Well, my parents got married and
divorced about four or five times.” To another interviewer, he claimed vaguely
recalling that he did not want to emerge from his mother’s womb. The unexpected
can be expected of Williams, an example being when Delio was about to conclude
their conversation and asked, “Anything else we should talk about?” “Women’s
asses,” Williams retorted, and then launched into a spiel on “whether a
“woman’s ass is a temple of God or merely an object of beauty?”
In a number of the interviews, Williams
reflects on his youth--moving about with his military father, not doing well in
school, getting into trouble with the police as a gang member, his absorptive
interest in hot rod cars and girls, and his being fired from one job after
another until he was hired by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth in 1965 He also spends
considerable time discussing his introduction to underground comix, joining the
Zap collective in 1969, and drawing a cover for Yellow Dog in
1970, how his and other underground artists’ “asses were up for grabs” with the
police, and how the underground bridged the gap between his fine art and
comics.
Williams minces no words about his
feelings towards many aesthetic principles and the work churned out in the name
of art. He refers to himself as a “counter aesthetician” and carries a business
card inscribed with, “Fouling the Art World’s Nest since 1957.” About many contemporary
artists, he said, “You’ve got all these fuckin’ flash geniuses, but they are
not going to hold up posthumously. There again, I’m not interested in
posthumous success. I want to live now, and after that, I really just don’t
give a shit.” At other times, he has compared the art world to a “locked matrix
of economics and people trying to get involved,” lamented that he has had
difficulty getting into galleries, while his artwork “sells like crazy,” and
told his British interviewer that England’s art “seems very constipated.”
Two events that came up more than once in
the interviews were his painting of the cover of “Appetite for Destruction” for
the rock band, “Guns N’ Roses,” and his participation in 1992, in the “Helter
Skelter” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Both
caused Williams considerable consternation, while vaulting him to “the rank of
a figure of public notoriety.” “Appetite for Destruction,” sometimes
interpreted as a secret rape fantasy, met much protest from feminist groups and
others, resulting in the record company replacing the original cover and moving
Williams’ painting to an inside sleeve. Williams was hesitant to do the cover
when first approached by the then little-known band in 1979 and finally relented
in 1987. The album became the best-selling debut album in the U.S. and sold
more than 30 million copies worldwide. Williams received a few hundred dollars.
The “Helter Skelter” exhibition allocated
a room for the display of Williams’ paintings. A large canvas titled, “Oscar
Wilde in Leadville, April 13, 1882,” meant to be an homage to the famous writer
whom Williams admires, was misinterpreted as a slur about Wilde’s
homosexuality, leading to the gay and feminist communities picketing him on the
night of the opening.
In other chapters, Williams chatted with
Jonathan Shaw about tattooing; about beatniks, the abstract movement,
surrealism, and the “Zombie Mystery Paintings,” with Donald M. Bailey and Long
Gone John; his being an “esthetician of the preposterous” by Delio; movies,
virtual reality, and hot rods with Cage; cartoon surrealism and Williams’ “new
work” with Carlo McCormick; Roth with Gwynned Vitello; his sculptures with
Kenny Scharf; Williams as the “master of the slang aesthetic” with Jeffrey Deitch,
and his paintings as very “kitsch to an abstract level” with Chris Campion.
Robert Williams: Conversations
is a vault of rich data and opinions, on a wide scattering of topics, and
presented in everyday discourse, fit for casual reading and serios contemplation.
Highly recommended.
Posts
