{"id":3904,"date":"2009-08-29T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2009-08-29T06:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=3904"},"modified":"2009-09-23T15:12:15","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T15:12:15","slug":"american-surreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2009\/08\/29\/american-surreal\/","title":{"rendered":"American Surreal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/American-surreal-2-150x226.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"226\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-4018\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/American-surreal-2-150x226.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/American-surreal-2-250x376.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/American-surreal-2.jpg 540w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><br \/>\nBy <strong>Todd Schorr<\/strong> (Last Gasp)<br \/>\nISBN: 978-0-86719-709-9<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s an intriguing coagulation of populist imagery and the childhood iconography happening on the capital &#8220;A&#8221; art-scene which blends baby-boomer memories of cartoons, comics, television, toys, monster-movies and a million other empty, unforgettable delights into a high gloss, stunningly lavish exploration of modern culture.<\/p>\n<p>These lush and lavish pictorial conglomerations assemble myriad nostalgia-drenched components into stunning investigations of modernity. Whimsical and sly yet searching they take as their starting point the hyper-realistic painterly techniques of early Salvador Dali and the master artists of the Renaissance. The movement is known as &#8220;Lowbrow&#8221; or Pop Surrealism and the supreme master of this visual sampling is Todd Schorr.<\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>American Surreal<\/strong> collects his latest works (2003-2009) with many beautifully luxurious close-up and detail sections, explores his work philosophy and techniques and even examines his twin affinities: the Old Masters of the art world &#8211; particularly the narrative genius of Peter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch (imagine what they could have done with editorial independence and an exclusive contract with Vertigo Comics) &#8211;<em> <\/em>and the gestalt synthesis of childhood diversions that shaped his own life.<\/p>\n<p>Wry and absurdist, these astonishingly compelling paintings are presented in a deluxe, wonderfully large format (38.6 x 25.7 x 1.8 cm) in eye-popping colour. This exquisite tome is a fabulous treat for anybody who&#8217;s ever regretted growing up, put away their toys a little too soon or recently felt the guilty pangs of pure, unadulterated nostalgia.<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk\/e\/cm?t=allanharveyne-21&#038;o=2&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0867197099&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;m=amazon&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u00c2\u00a9 2009 Todd Schorr. Text \u00c2\u00a9 2009 the respective authors. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Todd Schorr (Last Gasp) ISBN: 978-0-86719-709-9 There&#8217;s an intriguing coagulation of populist imagery and the childhood iconography happening on the capital &#8220;A&#8221; art-scene which blends baby-boomer memories of cartoons, comics, television, toys, monster-movies and a million other empty, unforgettable delights into a high gloss, stunningly lavish exploration of modern culture. These lush and lavish &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2009\/08\/29\/american-surreal\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;American Surreal&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-10Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}