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LowBrow Article for Kitschykoo Magazine by Munkaspeni

Lowbrow...? What the F**k is Lowbrow?

Cowtown, biggest small town in western Canada. Home of conservatives, rednecks and the world’s most famous drunken Cowboy-fetish Mardi-Gras festival.
Calgary boasts a hard to match standard of living, thriving job market, rapidly expanding international population and is only 90 minutes drive from the Rockies. The local theatre scene is thriving and full of cutting edge creativity, the city has multiple music venues catering to small local bands through to major, world famous stars.
Why then does the art scene comprise almost entirely of landscape, western themed and designer led abstract?
Why does Canada’s richest city have the lowest registered income for artists in the country?
Why does Wes LaFortune get away with boring the crap out everybody in the majority of local arts coverage providers and justifying the stagnant local art scene.
And why has no-one even ‘heard’ of lowbrow here?

Get used to this term: ‘lowbrow’, lowbrow’, lowbrow’. You are going to hear it repeatedly over the next few years. Coined in 1979 by Robert Williams, the term labels the latest art movement to challenge the established elitist art echelons or ‘arty farties’ as I like to refer to them. You know the ones, they wear berets and have a habit of stroking their chins whilst talking pretentiously about art… love em! Lowbrow, also referred to as ‘Pop Surrealism’, is so called as an ironic criticism of what the ‘farties’ like to call highbrow and the lack of recognition for work inspired by illustration, tattooing, comic books, animation and popular culture in general.
The movement, following closely in the anti-establishment footsteps of Dadaism and Pop art, has been well established for the last 20 years. Juxtapoz Magazine, which focuses solely on Lowbrow has been running for 11 years and is now the second most popular art magazine in North America. If you haven't already, go read it!
Recently, a television documentary, ‘The Lowdown on Lowbrow’ aired on national TV, showcasing the work of west coast Lowbrow artists. Yves Laroche, good friend of the famous Jonathon Levine in New York, has just opened an exclusively Lowbrow gallery in Montreal. Lowbrow is finally hitting Canada.

So what about Calgary?
Quab Gallery, in the Art Central complex downtown, has represented a few Lowbrow artists over the last two years, including the wonderful Susanne Apgar, the sophisticated and intricate Jerome Prieur, not to mention myself, the irreverent and subversive Munkaspeni. Yet the over all vision has proved inconsistent and has recently turned to more conservative commercial work. The fact that their outspoken manager has just quit and they have lost their top selling artist to Looks Could Kill Art Boutique in the same building speaks volumes.
Looks Could Kill, run by the lovely Jennifer McCaw, is a true Lowbrow venue, crammed from floor to ceiling with yummy goodies by fashion & jewelry designers including Jen herself and featuring artists Kaitkaboom, 12 Midnite (featured in ‘The Lowdown on Lowbrow’), Baron von Reilander and Munkaspeni amongst others.
It’s worth keeping an eye on some of the artist run centers and funded galleries such as The New Gallery, Skew, Stride, Truck and the Art Gallery of Calgary… the work varies from show to show and often has elements of Lowbrow.

Calgary WILL catch on, it’s only a matter of time. Lowbrow will get more and more coverage over the next few years. More venues will spring up, the existing ones will get bigger and the wealthy people in this city will start buying what the magazines (and their designers) tell them is cool and worth lots of money. Hopefully someone will catch up with Wes LaFortune in a dark alley way (it certainly wouldn’t be at an art opening as he is famous for not actually going to the shows he writes about) and in a few years this promising, vibrant city will have the art scene it so desperately needs and wants… in the mean time, go see Susanne Apgar and Jerome Prieur at Quab, go to Looks Could Kill and buy stuff. If these artists follow the North American Lowbrow trend, a painting you pick up for $400 today will be worth $20,000 in five to ten years… seriously!
Watch this space!

Munkaspeni, January 2007.