THE LONESOME CROWDED WEST

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Robert Mars
THE LONESOME CROWDED WEST

About the Item

This Robert Mars, 'THE LONESOME CROWDED WEST' is a brow, black and tan contemporary figurative pop-art piece that measures 50 x 40 and is priced at $15,000. Robert Mars’ artwork chronicles an evolving fascination with the Golden Age of American popular culture and celebrates the icons of the 1950’s and 1960’s. His paintings evoke a vintage quality of design and pay homage to the idealized age of growth and hopefulness that was prevalent in the USA at the end of the Depression. At a time before the internet and mobile technology, where information was not instantly available to millions and there was no such thing as instant internet celebrities, Mars pays tribute to the people who lived as myths with unique, untouchable and unforgettable personalities. Robert Mars’ artwork chronicles an evolving fascination with the Golden Age of American popular culture and celebrates the icons of the 1950’s and 60’s by taking inspiration from this culture long past. Through the application of a rich color palette and tongue-in-cheek attitude, Mars’ paintings evoke a vintage quality of design and pay homage to the idealized age of growth and hopefulness that was prevalent in the USA at the end of the Depression. A time before the internet and mobile technology, where information was not instantly available to millions and there was no such thing as instant internet celebrities, and instead people lived with the myth of the unique, untouchable and unforgettable personalities of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, Audrey Hepburn and Elvis Presley. By merging his own concept of personal idols with those of mainstream culture, Mars is able to focus his work on a deeper analysis of the Golden Age of American personalities. As an artist, he has always been fascinated with 1950’s and 60’s culture, and his early work reflects many of the architectural and mechanical icons from this era. Muscle cars, motels, logos and hulking monuments to the “modern” feeling of the time permeate his early canvases. More recently however, Mars’ artwork has shifted toward the culture of celebrity and he is amazingly attuned to the fact that these instantly recognizable and larger-than-life personalities continue to resonate with contemporary American culture. A graduate of Parsons School of Design in New York, Mars begins the creative process by preparing his surface with multiple layers of brown paper in order to define the edges and delineate the background planes of color. He then alternates layers of paint and vintage paper ephemera, sanding away portions of the layers as he works, revealing the desired portions of under painting with the overall intention to provide the viewer with a muted window into America’s past. Chronicling this fascination with 1950’s and 60’s iconography, Mars has produced a body of artwork from his studio in New York that celebrates the commonplace objects and icons of an America long past, in a thoroughly modern and exquisitely constructed manner. His eye for a distinct facet of American history is impeccable and his ability to manipulate the color and wordplay of vintage printed material has earned him reference with the likes of Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Richard Diebenkorn among other masters from the School of Pop. Robert Mars’ artwork is exhibited worldwide including museum collections in Munich, Tokyo, Amsterdam, London, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, Paris, Aspen and Naples. His artwork was selected for the Absolut Vodka Blank campaign alongside DamienHirst, and his largest sized piece to date was acquired by Philip Morris/Altria for their corporate headquarters in Virginia. In 2015 Mars was chosen for the cover of Neiman Marcus’ May Book, while CocaCola purchased several existing works and ordered commissions for a world tour celebrating the 100 year anniversary of their trademark bottle shape, in which his artwork was spotlighted. 2016 will see Mars as a featured artist for a custom high end wallpaper and tile series with Kari Whitman Interiors. He will have a solo exhibition at the Evansville Museum of Art in Indiana, where he will also be an artist in residence and guest lecturer. EDUCATION Parsons School of Design, New York, NY SOLO EXHIBITIONS May 2016 “Days were golden” Evansville Museum, Evansville, IN September 2015 “Boys are back in town” JoAnne Artman Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA October 2014 “A Love supreme” The Harvey B Gantt Center, Charlotte, NC September 2014 “Mars Attacks” JoAnne Artman Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA May 2014 “A Love supreme” DTR Modern Gallery, New York, NY March 2014 “A love affair” DTR Modern Gallery, Georgetown, Washington, DC December 2012 “Captivated” Coral Springs Museum of Art, Coral Springs, FL April 2012 “Stars and starlets” DTR Modern, New York, NY October 2011 “American Idols” Galerie Bartoux, Honfleur, France March 2011 “American Art” Museum Gallery of Modern Art, Sofia, Bulgaria November 2010 “Lost and found” Gallery Brown, Los Angeles, CA March 2010 “Chronicles of America” DTR Modern, Boston, MA October 2009 “Ruins and relics” Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA September 2009 “Notes from the road” Hubert Gallery, New York, NY April 2009 “Diamonds and rust” Art Department Gallery, Atlanta, GA July 2008 “Beauty in hindsight” Guestroom Gallery, Portland, OR April 2008 “Fading trails” Hubert Gallery, New York, NY February 2008 “Viva Lost Vegas” Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA March 2007 “Gas, Food, Lodging” Kidder Smith Gallery, Boston, MA ART FAIRS December 2014 Context Art Basel, Miami, FL Represented by Samuel Owen Gallery, Greenwich, CT June 2013 Scope Basel, Basel, Switzerland Represented by Vertes Modern, Zurich, Switzerland June 2013 Scope Basel, Basel, Switzerland December 2011 Art Basel, Miami FL October 2009 Art London, London, England October 2008 Affordable Art Fair, Amsterdam, Netherlands SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS May 2016 “Effervescence” Coca-Cola Museum, Atlanta, GA September 2015 “Mars and Devine” DTR Modern, Boston, MA September 2014 “The art of cinema” DTR Modern, Boston, MA April 2013 “Ted x PDX” Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR April 2012 “Year of the dragon” Compound Gallery, Portland, OR March 2006 BraveArt 06, Vancouver, B.C. July 2005 “Commons” Basefield Projects, Melbourne, Australia April 2005 24Fifty Gallery, San Francisco, CA February 2004 Modart, Munich, Germany September 2003 “From the ground up” New Bedford Art Museum, New Bedford, MA August 2003 “What is Compound” Rocket Gallery, Tokyo, Japan July 2003 “Into the void” Compound Gallery, Portland, OR February 2003 Modart, Munich, Germany CORPORATE AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS Coca-Cola, Neiman Marcus, Philip Morris/ Altria, Coral Springs Museum Of Art, Monopol Hotel St Moritz, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Absolut Vodka, Oceania Cruise Lines, Microsoft, adidas, International Museum of Collage, Assemblage, and Construction, PRPS, Jeff Schaller, Jane Maxwell, Maria Contomina, ESPN X Games Division, Nike Communications, New Bedford Art Museum, Wade Ehrlich Design, Cherner Auto Group, United Legwear, Edward Belbruno, Elyse Walker, Jim Albaugh, New York Mets, Joshua Greenberg.

Creator:
Robert Mars (1969, American)
Dimensions:
Height: 50 in (127 cm)Width: 40 in (101.6 cm)
Medium:
Mixed Media,Panel
Movement & Style:
Pop Art
Period:
21st Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Tulsa, OK
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU27121831363

Shop All Robert Mars

Robert Mars

Juxtaposing the faces of iconic celebrities with patterns reminiscent of quilting and folk art, Robert Mars (b. 1969) considers the many facets of American popular culture through the lens of advertising.

In Mars’s mixed-media works, brand names are collaged beneath the visages of mid-century stars such as Elvis, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, with neon lighting and shiny coats of resin on wood panels lending each piece the allure of a covetable consumer object.

Born in New Jersey, Mars studied at the Parsons School of Design and worked for a time as a graphic designer. His cultural mash-ups draw on imagery from his collection of vintage magazines. Combining enlarged Xerox transfers and boldly painted colors in several built-up layers, his works recall the messy remixing of everyday objects by Robert Rauschenberg as well as the explorations of mass reproduction and fame by Andy Warhol. The shape of a Chanel No. 5 bottle, a Louis Vuitton logo and a photograph of Audrey Hepburn are all plucked from mass media as relics of Americana and the obsession with luxury. Distressing the surfaces of the pieces, Mars gives them a timeworn texture, like an old advertisement that might be found on the wall of a roadside gas station, but with a surreal quality in their recontextualized subjects.

The stars and mass-media material in Mars’s work mostly have origins in the 1950s and ’60s, an age that saw the rise of celebrity endorsements during a postwar economic boom in which there were plenty of novel new products to promote. An image of Jackie Kennedy is overlaid with ad copy for Dior; a photograph of a victorious Muhammad Ali is joined with Champion Spark Plugs typography. The nostalgia here is for commerce as much as it is for people who became a brand. In the artist’s dynamic collages, the lines between what, or who, is being packaged and sold are blurred.

Mars has produced commissions for Coca-Cola, was a featured artist for a project with Kari Whitman Interiors and was chosen in 2015 for the cover of Neiman Marcus’s May Book. He has exhibited at the Evansville Museum of Art, Coral Springs Museum of Art and elsewhere.

Find Robert Mars mixed-media works, paintings and other art on 1stDibs.