{"id":89755,"date":"2025-01-20T14:46:18","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T21:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=89755"},"modified":"2025-03-17T15:04:25","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T22:04:25","slug":"from-iron-ons-to-icons-slcc-show-celebrates-low-brow-arts-place-in-american-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/from-iron-ons-to-icons-slcc-show-celebrates-low-brow-arts-place-in-american-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"From Iron-Ons to Icons: SLCC Show Celebrates Low Brow Art\u2019s Place in American Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Works in “Low Brow Art,” curated by James Walton, before the hanging. Image by Steve Coray.<\/p><\/div>\n

Artists identify so well with the insults their critics hurl at them, that some of those eventually became the proper names of the most popular and respected artistic styles in history: \u201c<\/span>Impressionism,\u201d \u201cCubism,\u201d and \u201cBaroque\u201d come to mind. Meanwhile, Americans have always had ambivalent feelings about intellectual pursuits: \u201cHigh brow\u201d is not a phrase we commonly use to describe ourselves, and it was probably inevitable that its democratic alternative, \u201cLow Brow,\u201d would eventually become the identity of one of the longest-lasting and most influential movements in American art.<\/h4>\n

Beginning in the Sixties, what had been underground\u2014even borderline illegal\u2014images surfaced on hot rods, record jackets, comic books, clothing, motion pictures and television shows, surf boards, graffiti, and countless other places. When the gatekeepers of culture, what musicians called \u201cthe suits,\u201d lost control and the power to censor, Low Brow became the catch phrase for a host of popular styles that have become permanent, if largely ignored, elements of American taste. When Salt Lake Community College Gallery and Art Collection Specialist James Walton decided it was time to not just choose artists to show in the George S and Dolores Dor\u00e9 Eccles Gallery, but to build his own exhibition, he chose one of his favorite styles: one he felt too often went missing from the local fare. Low Brow Art<\/i> is the result, a brief-but-timely monument to what feels, for good or bad, to be a challenging historical moment.<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s a daunting task to try to catalog such a vast and sprawling artistic impulse. Fortunately for Walton, he found help in some unexpected places. Like him, his brothers took part in it, striving to give nepotism a good name for a change. Saul Gilbert, a colleague in the maintenance department who routinely supports the Gallery\u2019s projects, came forward with a stunning collection of pristine wax transfers. The Sixties was when iron-ons went public, with those who liked the idea of wearing a logo on their t-shirt but didn\u2019t care for the corporate endorsements generally available discovered they could do something more personal with a transfer bought in a local shop and applied at home. Not many of these would have survived, but thanks to Gilbert, Low Brow Art<\/i> has a vitrine full of original examples.<\/h4>\n
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Underground comics from the 1960s. Image by Geoff Wichert.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Unused wax transfers. Image by Geoff Wichert.<\/p><\/div>\n

That short life cycle helps explain Low Brow\u2019s continuing appeal. It exists in the moment and gives rapid but fleeting expression to feelings that may come quickly and pass away over time. In the mid-1970s, the Topps company, maker of sports memorabilia, trading and baseball cards, commissioned comix artists Norm Saunders and Art Spiegelman to produce collectable stickers that followed Mad Magazine\u2019s manner of mocking mass-produced and impersonal consumer products. For his part, Spiegelman was then in the early stages of drawing Maus,<\/i> his comix novel version of his parents\u2019 experiences in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. And as it happens, Saul Gilbert also collected these stickers, and provided a vitrine full of them as well.<\/h4>\n

Other unexpected contributions came from current students who feel a kinship with what is, after all, a school of art that continues to entertain those, like students, who haven\u2019t yet and perhaps may never settle comfortably into a pre-existing social niche. Brianna Beck\u2019s \u201cAnywhere But Here\u201d demonstrates the ongoing value to artists and audiences alike of collaging multiple cultural references, while Megan Wilson proves the continuing relevance of such \u201cpsychedelic,\u201d or consciousness expanding tricks as breaking out of the complex picture plane with a subject in the third dimension.<\/h4>\n