the writing. Lowbrow art was made to be
experienced on cars at a racetrack or on a
motorcycle at a clubhouse, not just written
about in a magazine with the circulation
smaller than the Weekly 5 and Dime
Newspaper your grandma reads.
Von Dutch is a namesake in not only the
world of fashion, but in lowbrow art as well.
More than just creator of a collection of cool
t-shirts, he was the nascent father of lowbrow
art through his construction of innovative
automobiles, as well as his creation of
unique art that broke the mold. Though Von
Dutch never attained the fame notoriety of
a certain student of his, the influence of
his work is felt to this day. The legendary
artist, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth was mentored by
Dutch, and no discussion of lowbrow art can
be complete without him.
Ed Roth was into cars as much as any kid
living in car-centric California in the ‘50s. As
he was building interesting mobile works
of art, first for fun and speed and later for
futuristic design, he also put his painting and
drawing skills to use to protest the “mickey
mouse-ization” of culture and the new
Disneyland theme park that rose in Anaheim.
Rather than a squeaky clean “acceptable”
image, Ed wanted something that was
slightly disturbing, satirical, funny, and cool.
The little character of Rat Fink (a popular
slang word for someone underhanded or
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dishonest at the time) was born. Complete
with flies and the idea of bad odor, Rat Fink
was the ultimate anti-Mickey Mouse. Don’t
like the squeaky clean Disney images of
Mickey and friends? You can enjoy Rat Fink
and his monster friends in their monster cars.
Emblazoned on t-shirts and in car windows,
they represented a culture worth being
apart of rather than the dead, pre-packaged
mainstream popular stuff that was being fed
to the masses. The confluence of monsters
and cars made Ed’s characters accessible
and fun, a refreshing take on mainstream
Disney.
Although the cultural influence of Rat Fink is
still being felt (look around at your next street
art show attached to a car club meetup),
Ed Roth’s major contributions to lowbrow
art and culture in general was in automotive
works of art. His first truly custom car had
an aptly appropriate name, Outlaw. Now a
museum queen in Pasadena, it was first a
legendary custom car that used fiberglass
as a principle material and then a buildable
model for kids on which built Ed a brand
and a fortune with the popular children’s
toy company, Revell. There have also been
various clones of the car made from the
original and clone molds that were created
for collectors. The popularity of Ed’s models
and his odd characters in their even crazier
cars manifested itself in children’s cartoons
like Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races and the
unique car that was created for the TV show,
The Munsters. Custom cars and Kustom
Kulture was having their moment and Ed
Roth took advantage of the opportunities
and money his success afforded him and
made some quite spectacular contributions
in design through his cars and their
fascinating names like Mysterion, Tweedy
Pie, the Surfite, and Road Agent. Ed Roth is
to blame for action figures, merchandise of
almost everything, underground comic books
like Zap and their modern offspring, the
p opularity of custom cars with a generation
of children, and the still popular Rat Fink
reunions where people come together, show
off their cars, and indulge in merchandise of
the iconic underground character.
Hot Rod Culture
Although racing was popular in the 1920s
and sowed the seeds for NASCAR, the
movement was cut short by the Great
Depression and further shortened by World
War II, this left young guys coming back from
the war in 1945 and 1946 with a desire to
be free of the military structure and exercise
the freedom of survival. Detroit was just
beginning to roll cars off the assembly line
again in early 1946 but these cars were
dominated by pre-war designs and design
concepts. Used cars were hard to come by
as well. Many older cars had been melted
down for the war effort and that meant that if
you wanted a car and you wanted it cheap,
the newest automobile factory in town just
opened in your garage. These guys would
go the junk yards, find what parts were left
and start constructing. That might mean you
ended up with an Oldsmobile body, a Ford
engine, a Chevy radiator, and some Kaiser
seats. Nothing a little grinding, welding, and
bolting couldn’t solve. These original road
warriors were truly custom, as the guy driving
it had probably bolted together that collection
of various parts himself with some help
with his buddies. This DIY attitude was also
present in the motorcycle world. A Harley
might not be the most reliable road warrior
but you can bet that if it was a chopper and
custom, the man riding it had built it and kept
the necessary tools on him to fix whatever
happened to him on the side of the road. In
the days after WWII, there were no crotchrockets to buy anyway, so if you wanted to
ride a motorcycle you had to want it enough
to start building something yourself. This
created not only a culture of customization
that eventually would lead to sculpted,
drivable works of art and an entire business
(West Coast Customs of the popular TV
show) but also would lead to a kind of selfreliant, swaggering masculinity that is at the
beating heart of America.
The new art of cars created a chance for
kids to show off without the dangers of street
racing. The big bodies and tail fins of the
50s lent themselves as art galleries to the
pinstriping, flames, and scalloping that would
create the unique style of Kustom Kulture
that makes a classic hot rod so timeless
here in 2015. Hot rod culture was particularly
popular in the car centric culture of southern
California. Cars represented freedom and
a social status that could only be attained
by having the hottest car in the high school
parking lot. This was popularized in movies
like Rebel Without a Cause and the many
cheaply made hot rod movies that Hollywood
studios churned out in the early ‘50s to get
in on the trend of fast cars and faster young
people. The artificial sexual tension on
screen would foreshadow the coming sexual
revolution, a revolution that would happen at
70 mph with large rear wheels.
If there was one thing people wanted
after the war, it was cars. Americans were
obsessed with cars and the freedom they
represented. By 1950, Detroit obliged with
millions of fresh new cars and new models
with clear windscreens (no center post as
on older models), curvy lines, white-walled
wheels and big chrome grills. However, those
cars were meant for the sedate squares who
lived in the plastic couched houses behind
white picket fences ensconced in the suburbs
and whose most pressing social obligation
was a dinner with the neighbors and fetching
the kids around. Most American production
cars didn’t even go over 70 mph until the
mid-1950s. Highway speeds were a pedantic
55 or lower. If you wanted to go fast, you
had to work for your speed and that meant
building something yourself and creating your
own mobile story.
“A car is a story.” - Ed Roth
In these post-war decades, the story of
America was changing in nearly every
corner. 2nd wave feminism was beginning
to breath its first breaths, the civil rights
movement in 1957 was off and running, the
stalemate of the Korean war was over, and
America was ready to settle into the luxury
civility and stability of peacetime. Exciting
new consumer goods were all over store
shelves and people were ready to live. As
the social upheaval of the 1960s took hold,
America had to live through the youth quake.
Millions of young people (and their hot rod
cars) were wearing new clothes made for
them, driving fast in their cars (which lead
to a crack down on hot rods due to a rash
of accidents and death), and listening to
exciting new rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll music.
Young people were fleeing the constraints
of home life and flexing their independent
muscles on the roadways of America and
in its malt shops, drive-in theatres, and
beaches (if they were on a coast). For a brief
moment from 1959 to 1975, there was a
chance for true freedom and it was built on
surf culture, new music, the spectacular cars
of Ed Roth, the Pinstriping of Von Dutch, and
the Japanese inspired tattoos of Sailor Jerry.
But what happens when the underground
becomes high art?
Robert Williams and High Art
Robert Williams (Mr. Badass) is best known
for taking the creativity that was evident
in the auto world of his former employer
and mentor Ed Roth and taking it to the
fine art canvas. While he was making
advertisements and t-shirt art for Ed, he
started his productive oil painting career.
Williams’ work tells a story through the use of
popular elements and cartoon exaggeration.
He also looks for ways to insert his own
counter-culture cartoon character, Cootchie
Cootie. Robert Williams is also well known
for his popular series of underground comics,
Zap and the purveyor of underground and
lowbrow art, Juxtapoz which still is at the
cutting edge of new and exciting forms of art
and expression.
At first glance, Williams’ art can seem busy,
complicated, and inaccessible. That is the
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