Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Funk Art: One lumpen object shot frontally, filling the frame, with nothing composed around it
- Type
- Set in Funk Art's manner (Hand-pushed uneven lettering, left slumped and never cleanly typeset), and let Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism)'s lettering (Sign-painter and comic lettering rendered as carefully as the art) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Funk Art's material (Bright running glazes over bare clay, with drips, thumbprints and firing accidents kept); bring in exactly one thing from Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism) (Oil gloss and smooth gradation, brushwork sanded away).
- Colour
- Build on #e6e0c8, #85ab7a, #15120a and admit one accent from #e2cfd6, #1152b3, #121112.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- Funk Art Aiming only at vulgarity and making it rough removes the base, which is the knowing misuse of craft materials, and the result reads as merely careless.
- Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism) Picking creepy subject matter while skipping the rendering craft turns the work into doodling that only wants to shock.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Funk Art (style, 1960s–1970s) and their accent from Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism) (style, 1979–). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Funk Art exists for: merchandise, ceramics and product ranges for brands that would rather be funny and physical than tasteful, in food, drink and nightlife, or art direction for youth and counterculture work, where an aggressively unrefined finish signals independence from corporate polish. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Funk Art - Garish glaze colours - Bodily, off-colour motifs - Craft materials deliberately misused - Finishes that keep their handmade roughness Composition: One lumpen object shot frontally, filling the frame, with nothing composed around it. Type and lettering: Hand-pushed uneven lettering, left slumped and never cleanly typeset. ## Accent comes from Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism), used sparingly - Pop-culture iconography - Precise classical technique - Uneasy humor - Street-born heraldry Let one material quality come from it: Oil gloss and smooth gradation, brushwork sanded away. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #e6e0c8, carry the structure in #85ab7a and #15120a, and let a single accent come from #1152b3. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: play, rebellion, exhilaration, nostalgia. ## What goes wrong - Funk Art: Aiming only at vulgarity and making it rough removes the base, which is the knowing misuse of craft materials, and the result reads as merely careless. - Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism): Picking creepy subject matter while skipping the rendering craft turns the work into doodling that only wants to shock. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Funk Art 1960s–1970s / Style / Postwar American Art
A movement in ceramics and sculpture around the San Francisco Bay Area that deliberately soiled good taste and the authority of abstraction alike. Garish colour, bodily humour and the wilful misuse of craft materials laugh at the hierarchy of art itself. An early precedent for treating coarseness as a strategy.
- Lowbrow (Pop Surrealism) 1979– / Style / Illustration Styles
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.
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