Book review: Robert Williams: Conversations, ed. by Joseph R. Givens and Darius A. Spieth

 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.