Theater and Arts Preview: Underground Art Gets Over

If you visited the Frye Art Museum in November 2004 expecting to see its then-usual offering of 19th-century portraiture and pastoral landscape paintings, you were likely shocked by Wondertoonel–an exhibit featuring the sweetly sinister paintings of pop surrealist master Mark Ryden. Hanging on the walls near paintings of farm animals and stoic characters from centuries past were Ryden's otherworldly dreamscapes: a cute, cartoonish rabbit dressed in a butcher's apron happily sawing away at a hunk of raw meat, gothic-looking children crying tears of blood.

Not only was Wondertoonel extremely popular, it was an extreme departure for the perennially stuffy Frye and a sign that pop surrealism—an amalgam of figurative art, fantastic imagery and pop culture references that originated in L.A. in the late '60s—had truly arrived in Seattle's mainstream gallery/museum culture.

Around that same time, Belltown gallery Roq La Rue was coming into its own, offering the once-underground pop surrealism an aboveground habitat. Two years later, Roq La Rue owner Kirsten Anderson helped open BLVD, a Belltown art space dedicated to graffiti, pasteups, stencils and other urban art forms. Local artists such as Sam Sneke and Robert Hardgrave, whose graffiti-inspired work once adorned train cars and brick buildings, were suddenly showing at BLVD. Then, last December, legendary alt publisher Fantagraphics opened a bookstore and gallery in Georgetown that shows art inspired by graphic novels and comics. Again, here's an example of fringe imagery—local illustrator Peter Bagge's gross-out comics, for example—reaching a wider audience in a gallery setting. Throw in the rise of the concert poster as fine-art commodity and Seattle's growing tattoo art movement, and you've got what Marvin Gaye would call a "What's Going On?" kind of moment.

What is going on is that pop surrealism, graffiti, comic book art, poster art and tattoo art—all kindred spirits that often share visual motifs (a strong figurative and narrative focus) and an edgy," "underground" and "alternative" reputation—are increasingly finding homes in local galleries and private collections. Seattle museums and galleries have shown pop surrealism and its brethren in the past, but these exhibits were sporadic. These days, art that used to be considered the lowest of the "lowbrow" (the term used by Fantagraphics curator Larry Reid as a catchall for these alt art forms) is having a consistent presence in Seattle. 

This under-getting-over movement starts with Roq La Rue, which Anderson opened in 1998 after falling in love with pop surrealism a couple of years earlier. Back then the gallery was one of five in the world dedicated to showing paintings by the likes of Ryden as well as locals such as Lisa Petrucci (who makes erotically tinged pop art) and Scott Musgrove (celebrated for his fabulously ugly monsters)—currently two of Seattle's most respected pop surrealist artists.

"People were looking for something new," says Anderson of pop surrealism's recent surge. "Especially in Seattle, where the art scene was stuck with a lot of outdated conceptualism and abstract work. Pop surrealism is the visual equivalent of punk rock music, which makes it very appealing to new collectors. You don't have to have formal education to get it."

Roq La Rue soon became the place to see the who's who in pop surrealist art, as well as poster art by locals like the Ames Bros. or Maple Valley illustrator Jim Blanchard's edgy graphics. Anderson's interest in showing pop surrealism's kin has rubbed off on newer spaces such as BLVD, which periodically departs from its urban focus to exhibit, say, tattoo art by Damon Conklin, owner of Super Genius Tattoo parlor on Capitol Hill. Reid, who has been curating underground art shows in Seattle for nearly 30 years, has guest curated for BLVD and Roq La Rue.

"It all does mesh together," says Anderson about the aforementioned genres of underground art. Reid points to Seattle's rich history of adventurous graphic artists (poster art legend Art Chantry came up through Seattle; celebrated graphic novelist Charles Burns honed his craft here) as setting the groundwork for our flourishing lowbrow scene. "This is art that is really accessible," says Reid. "It's accessibly priced and not condescending like traditional art. The more traditional art found in the Pioneer Square galleries doesn't speak to me."

It doesn't speak to local collectors Marlow Harris and JoDavid (yes, just JoDavid), either. For more than a decade the couple has been filling their Capitol Hill home with pop surrealist works by Ryden, Marion Peck and others. "The feeling we have for this art," says JoDavid, "is about passion, not intellectualization."

Lowbrow may have gone mainstream—Anderson says Roq La Rue's shows almost always sell out, and she's noticed a huge influx of new collectors in the past few months—but it's done so in the shadow of SAM's coming-out year as well as the Pioneer Square gallery scene.

"Several people who live around here have some of the best pop surrealism collections around," says Anderson, "but no one in the general public really knows about it." She claims Roq La Rue gets more national attention from rags such as lowbrow-focused Juxtapoz, which, according to Anderson and Reid, is the most popular art magazine in the world (further proof of lowbrow art's popularity).

And while lowbrow continues to gain momentum locally—OKOK Gallery in Ballard has started showing pop surrealism, as has Belltown's Schmancy—Reid maintains that lowbrow, by nature, will never totally fit in. "It's art for miscreants," he says, laughing. 

• BLVD, Belltown, 2316 Second Ave.; blvdart.com. NEXT SHOW: 9/7–10/6, Strange Brew, a group show of Canada’s Finest

• Fantagraphics, Georgetown, 1201 S Vale St.; 206.658.0110; fantagraphics.com. NEXT SHOW: 9/21, Jim Flora

• OKOK Gallery, Ballard, 5107 Ballard Ave. NW; 206.789.6242; weareokok.com. NEXT SHOW: 9/8, Fighting

• Roq la Rue, Belltown, 2312 Second Ave.; 206.374.8977; roqlarue.com. NEXT SHOW: 9/7, Amy Sol, Oksana Badrak and Stella Im Hultberg

• Schmancy, Belltown, 1932 Second Ave.; 206.728.8008; schmancytoys.com. NEXT SHOW: September, UNKL Brand