Chicago Imagists vs Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism)
シカゴ・イマジスツ / ローブロウ
Chicago Imagists comes from Pop and Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism) from Illustration Styles. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Chicago Imagists
Chicago painters who compressed comics, advertising, folk art, sideshows, and ornament into distorted bodies, hard contours, acidic color, and intensely personal hand-painted image worlds.
Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism)
Painting from outside the museum, schooled on hot rods, comics, tattoos and B movies. It renders pop memory in exacting oil technique, and Juxtapoz magazine gave it a home under the name Pop Surrealism.
| Chicago Imagists | Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism) | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | mid-1960s–1980s | 1979– |
| Family | Pop | Illustration Styles |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Distorted figures enclosed by hard black contour / Flat fluorescent and complementary color / Excessive mixtures of comics, signs, and ornamental frames / Symmetry or repetition sharpening the unease | Pop-culture iconography / Precise classical technique / Uneasy humor / Street-born heraldry |
| Best used for | Pushing comic figures past advertising friendliness into the strange and obsessive · Locking dense ornament and acidic color into one image for music, publishing, or exhibitions | Artwork for record labels, skate brands and tattoo shops · Covers for shows or books that reject museum politeness outright |
| Type | Put angular hand lettering inside the frame and keep explanatory copy outside. | Sign-painter and comic lettering rendered as carefully as the art |
| Composition | Enclose a central figure with ornament and small images until repetition fills the surface. | A central face with the surround filled by emblem-like motifs |
| Material | Use hard black line and enamel-like flat orange, yellow-green, and violet on a smooth support. | Oil gloss and smooth gradation, brushwork sanded away |
| Caution | A strange character alone is insufficient. Keep the obsessive handwork, Chicago artist networks, and distance from mass-produced Pop Art. | Picking creepy subject matter while skipping the rendering craft turns the work into doodling that only wants to shock. |