Millar was the star of the Pasadena Museum of California Art’s Tales from the Strip: The Hot Rod Comics and Drag Racing Cartoons of Pete Millar in 2008, five years after his death. Pete Millar, Ed Roth’s fellow Weirdo Shirt designer, conceived and began producing CARtoons in 1959. And even further back, in 1966, it featured the “revolting, pornographic, and blasphemous” déclassé chassis of a ‘36 Dodge created by that other Ed, junk sculptor Kienholz, which simultaneously scandalized the County’s Board of Supervisors and steered carloads of gallery-goers to opening day, where a non-avant guard would open the passenger door only to adults, so that under-18s couldn’t sneak a peek at this teen-age body constructed of chicken wire, crammed in the back seat and fornicating! on top of a body in stockings, this one totally plastered, while Glenn Miller’s String of Pearls and other period pop tunes ejaculate from yet another dashboard radio, tuned in to KFI.Ĭomparatively, the LACMA CARtoons cartoons are mild and innocent. After all, it’s the institution that, back in the ‘80s, started a string of shows with the city’s own Pope of Pop Art Ed Ruscha, his Standard Stations of the crosstown traffic traveling eternally from here to oh-so-pretty Oklahoma City and back while a man comes on the dashboard radio telling him moe and moe ‘bout some useless, unwanted retrospective. This particular museum’s auto-‘tooned infestation was, of course, inevitable. © Monte Wolverton, courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art And, yes: several other worthy ink-and grease-stained ‘toon wretches. And here and there, remarkably fun, hip, and sassy Jack Davis-flavored brush renderings from the unfairly under-recognized Shawn Kerri, straight outta Covina, before she became punk poster designer for the Germs and the Circle Jerks.
There’s a Harvey Kurtzman-inspired “History of the Car” spoof strip from bootleg record album cover designer William Stout! And hey, look: a couple of suitable-for-decal-ing crazy cars by Mad mag’s Monte Wolverton, spawn of Mad comics’s Basil W. Here’s an outer space cyclers painting by DC Comics art legend Alex Niño!, most outstanding among the 1980s Phillipine illustrator invasion. And another by lowbrow’s High Priest Robert Williams, who acquired his early art chops by hacking out ads and graphics for Roth, and who later became Juxtapoz’s founder, Helter Skelter’s comics feller, and San Fernando Valley’s one-man Northridge earthquake.Īnd all over the walls were… originals!, produced in all their vintage mid-century commercial art supply store acquired glory. Because there in the vitrines were vintage, browning objets d’pulp, like a magazine spread by Palos Verdes-bred, Murph the Surfing, pre-psychedelic poster and Zap comix contributor Rick Griffin. “The only humor magazine in the world for the lovers and owners of cars“ was filled with funnies about drag-racing and off-roading, about Chevys, Mercs, ‘Vettes, and lubed-up fantasy vehicles inconceivable anywhere else. © Errol McCarthy, courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art And “toons” as in the mostly 1960s and ‘70s insider laff-riots back in the day, maybe not so much now, but still… bitchin art!!!!
That’s CAR, as in the show’s Art of America’s Car Culture subtitle. What hath Ed “Big Daddy” Roth wrought? In August the Rat Fink aesthetic of Southern California’s Custom Car Movement King-immortalized over a half-century ago by the Wolfe in white clothing as “the Salvador Dali of the movement”-gnawed its way into the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.Īcross from LACMA’s blockbuster magic-and-monsters main feature starring Hellboy’s and Pan’s Labyrinth’s Guillermo del Toro, and up through a rodent’s maze into a side-room, you’d gaze upon printed covers and pages and actual artwork from L.A.-based CARtoons magazine, conceived back in the midcentury of hot rods, tail fins, and drive-ins.
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