Like a corpse in a zombie movie, the Goth movement has been resuscitatedstronger, more powerful, and more contagious than ever before. From fashion to music, Goth influences have crept into every area of pop culture, and nowhere is that influence creepier, more fascinating, and more playful than in the art world. Weirdo Noir is the follow-up volume to Weirdo Deluxe, the book that brought the once underground Low Brow art scene to prominence in the public eye. In these pages you'll find the latest and greatest work from 30 Low Brow arists who have embraced the dark side, employing gothic themes in their art. Spooky and witty, Weirdo Noir is destined to become a classic of the millennial Goth aesthetic.
I love art and film and poetry from a wide range of people including Giotto and Duchamp and Caravaggio and Godard and Tom Waits and David Lynch and Orson Welles and Denis Johnson and Glenn Barr and Isabel Samaras and many more.... and I write about what I love...
Also, I make my own art and films and I write poetry and fiction and jottings on walls of mountains....
Art liberates, heals, entertains, enlightens... we need this for personal fun but also for a larger good...
Laughter is healing. The lowbrow-pop surrealist / underground art that I write about and the writings of Bukowski make me laugh.... so do films like THE NUTTY PROFESSOR..... or THE CIRCUS by Chaplin... released in 1928...
How does art liberate? Just by imagining something other than the consensus reality, the "givens" that we are surrounded by in our culture and society, we are liberated. Art provides insights, shows how things are artificial or constructed by media, by society. Art can help deconstruct the illusions, thus freeing us...
The pop surrealist - lowbrow artists are satirists. They make carnivalesque work that turns the "givens" in society and culture upside down. They celebrate the grotesque and forbidden as ways to free our minds. So does Bukowski...
We need to stay open-minded and consider alternatives, to imagine, to dream, to laugh, to freely think about anything--- not only for personal good, but also for the oceans and plants and other species and our species. Too much ego-driven exploitation stifles and is not based on sustaining resources and life....
I'm digressing a little bit here, but to see how we have endangered the oceans, please check out the documentary ACID TEST online. And, since I'm writing here about my work and ideas, I'd like to mention that in addition to writing about the arts and creating my own art of various kinds, I've done a lot of journalism and some of it has been what one might call environmental advocacy writing.... I love the oceans and the planet... I also love food and have written about food... I've written about people and places and film and pop culture.... art, writers... all fascinating to me.
I'm glad Amazon has this page.... thank you, Amazon... it helps people enjoy books, art.. film ! life... !
cheers,
Matt
