Customer Reviews

Tiki Art Two: The Second Coming of a New Art God

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For those of you who enjoyed "Tiki Art Now!", this redux book by Otto Von Stroheim is an impressive, if not better performance of art, than his first book. "Tiki Art Two" is different from "Tiki Art Now" in that it is set up in chapters of various artists, showing multiple pages of works by each one.

The foreward by Jeffrey Vallance gives a background to the Polynesian Pop culture and to where its roots can be traced. Following, the introduction by Otto Von Stroheim helps explain the origins of the Tiki Art genre and how it is a fixed art form of American Folklore.

The artwork itself is as spectacular as it was in the first book, and yet in my opinion, seems to be more targeted at the "tiki bar" style of art that most of us, who are not experts in the tiki art form, know and love of the Tiki Style.

This 112 page 8x10" book is a nice collection of a wide range of modern-day tiki-influenced art. Roughly 16 artists splay out a nice array of styles and moods. What I like about the tiki art form is that it lends itself very much to being playful, or dark, or both at times, which is wonderful, and this collection captures that range.
Not owning the first volume of this kind, I noticed that curator Otto mentions that he has more work by fewer artists in this one, which is intriguing, because you'll find that there are only 2-3 pieces per artist in this volume.. I'm wondering if the previous had twice the artists with one piece apiece! All the same, being a devoted, manic tiki fan, I can find absolutely no fault in this collection, except one person's work was a bit.. flat & unimaginative, and another's pointed towards psychedelic graffiti-style, but all the rest were absolutely captivating, so how could one complain?!?
And in what I wouldn't even call a complaint, I'll say that I wish it had 200 more pages! 79 pages of art, 33 of words and wallpaper.. I would pay commensurately for another hundred or so of examples!
So, overall, worth every penny. I wish local booksellers would have the other volumes, so I could peruse, but I will probably take the risk and dive into the others, based on the quality of this book. I'm sure now that curator von Stroheim & crew have sufficient taste to deliver many more successes. Thanks be for this collection; would strongly recommend to the Tiki-enchanted out there!