{"product_id":"robert-williams-visual-addiction-last-gasp-1989","title":"Robert Williams — Visual Addiction: The Art of Robert Williams, Last Gasp, 1989","description":"\u003cp\u003eSoftcover artist monograph, 20.96 × 27.94 cm, 96 pages. Introduction by Lydia Lunch. Good vintage condition: light rubbing and shelf wear to covers, clean interior, presents well.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublished in 1989 at the height of America’s culture wars, \u003cem\u003eVisual Addiction\u003c\/em\u003e captures Robert Williams before the art world fully absorbed the visual language he helped create. Part underground cartoonist, part virtuoso painter, part cultural saboteur, Williams occupied a territory between hot-rod culture, pulp illustration, biker mythology, surrealism, pornography, advertising, and fine art.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe book was issued by Last Gasp, the legendary California publisher responsible for distributing underground comix and countercultural print culture throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Its appearance marks a moment when Williams remained closer to the worlds of garages, comics, tattoo parlours, punk clubs, and independent publishing than to museums and auction houses.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInside are some of his most recognisable paintings: meticulously rendered hallucinations populated by cowgirls, carnivals, grotesques, fetish figures, anthropomorphic objects, exploding eyeballs, and collapsing American dreams. Technically precise yet culturally disreputable, the works helped establish the visual foundation for what would later become known as Lowbrow or Pop Surrealism.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Lydia Lunch introduction situates the work squarely within the moral and political tensions of the late Reagan era, making the publication feel as much like a cultural document as an art book. Together they form a snapshot of a period when underground image culture still operated largely outside institutional approval.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn increasingly desirable early Robert Williams monograph from the period before \u003cem\u003eJuxtapoz\u003c\/em\u003e and museum recognition transformed him from cult figure into historical reference point. A document from the moment when alternative American visual culture was still being built from the margins.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShipping and handling included in the listed price.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Last Gasp","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53772429427026,"sku":"WILLIAMS-LASTGASP-CAT-1989","price":65.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0991\/5636\/1554\/files\/Williams_-Robert.-Visual-Addiction-The-Art-of-Robert-Williams-2cover.jpg?v=1781682088","url":"https:\/\/thenewrare.com\/products\/robert-williams-visual-addiction-last-gasp-1989","provider":"The New Rare","version":"1.0","type":"link"}