High Lowbrow

The pop art scene is at an all time high. Perhaps not in the world of city centre art galleries, but within the realm that divides the academic and the commercial it is rocketing along. Cool exhibitions and groovy art books are the standard. So too are the prints and vinyl toys. It's a happening thing. Something I'm greatly appreciating.

Two artists finding good niches, if not prominence in this current rich arena are Tara McPherson and Mark Ryden. Their work is rather different from each other's but they seem to easily sit together. They comfortably share the same room of pop-surrealism. Granted, they sit at different ends of the room, but all the same they share the space.

McPherson works more in the style of poster art and print making, using strong contrasts in colours, keeping her compositions clutter free, her lines simple, eloquent, being very aware of her two dimensional surface to play on her three-dimensional shapes. Tara McPherson was born in '76 and grew up in Los Angeles and other parts of California. Her skills developed out of the world of animation, comics and poster gigs. Exhibitions and commissioned work for publication was then a not-so-simple hop, skip and jump.

Ryden follows the path of traditional painting and the techniques of fine art. He has a craftsman's discipline but dances all along the line of painting history from Heronimous Bosh to Diego Rivera. Mark Ryden was born in '63 in Oregon, studied in Pasadena and lives in California. His influence is classical symbolic art and pop ephemera and the cultures that surrounded such art, from secret societies teen idols, from old toys to Freud. The language of dreams seems to have a lot to do with his texts and subtexts. Ryden's career has been pretty much as an exhibition artist but his works naturally pops up everywhere. You can't have a book or magazine article about pop surrealism without a reference to Ryden.

The notable contrast between McPherson and Ryden, besides the obvious one of styles, is their manner of humour. Both are humourous artists, both are playing on the idea of art as self-important forms of philosophy. But Ryden employs a dark irony. He has cute animals and sweet little doll-like children, but in the context of the worlds they inhabit, they look creepy, disturbing, and even violent in some hidden ritual kind of way. Ryden plays on a paranoia that under the surface is the sinister, but he also shows that underneath can be the transcendent, albeit through some ritualised symbolic status. Regardless, the works become mesmerising for all of it. You are compelled to seek for secret messages.

Tara McPherson puts her heart on her sleeve. Though that heart can more often look like a hole through the chest.  Like Ryden she plays with dream, but hers are waking dreams, fantasy dreams that touch on many aspects of the emotional life, especially of the female spirit. She touches on sad themes and angry themes, hopes and fears, but there's no alternate meaning, she keeps it up front. To me most of her work is about searching, learning, finding truth where all is illogical. All with a charming veneer of honesty and cuteness, but not Ryden's creepy kind.

I really like both their pre-rendering drafting techniques and their pencil studies and preliminaries. I fully understand why those works are cherished like their finished paintings. I also like how they both explore outside the two-dimensional medium and have done sculptures and vinyl toys. Their art worlds are wanting to be more intertexual and interactive.

Tara McPherson's work has found a bit more of a commercial home over Ryden's, appearing in Vertigo comics and magazine illustrations. Still her exhibitions are very successful and she's about to come out with a second book Lost Constellations, after the first, Lonely Heart, hit the mark. Her art is also very much at home adorning journals and diaries. But I find her Somewhere Under the Rainbow Coloring Kit exceptionally cool. I love the whole packaging from colouring book with crayons and a clear plastic schoolbag nicely decorated.

Ryden's work has gone more in the direction of prints and very exclusive art books. Too exclusive in my mind. Still, we have his Bunnies and Bees Micro Portfolio #3 of fourteen prints. And his art books Fushigi Circus and The Tree Show. Otherwise his work will always make appearances in new pop modern art anthologies like The Upset: Young Contemporary Art and the annual Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art.