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.
THEIA
By Lisa Weiss
Located in Tulsa, OK
Lisa Weiss’ work is about mark making, patterning, spontaneous movement, momentary awareness and paring down to essentials. She is continually looking for ways to detach from the pas...
Mixed Media
Unbounded I
By Marlies Hoevers
Located in Tulsa, OK
Year: 2022 "My concrete works, as they have evolved over the last 14 years, can be best described as 2-dimensional sculptures; Assemblages of concrete and various materials come tog...
Concrete
TEMPERANCE
By Lisa Weiss
Located in Tulsa, OK
Lisa Weiss’ work is about mark making, patterning, spontaneous movement, momentary awareness and paring down to essentials. She is continually looking for ways to detach from the pas...
Mixed Media
INSIGHT
By Lisa Weiss
Located in Tulsa, OK
Lisa Weiss’ work is about mark making, patterning, spontaneous movement, momentary awareness and paring down to essentials. She is continually looking for ways to detach from the pas...
Mixed Media
LUNA
By Lisa Weiss
Located in Tulsa, OK
Lisa Weiss’ work is about mark making, patterning, spontaneous movement, momentary awareness and paring down to essentials. She is continually looking for ways to detach from the pas...
Mixed Media
MODULAR 6
By Kathleen Hope
Located in Tulsa, OK
Kathleen Hope MODULAR 6 cement, pigment, plaster 8.00 X 8.00 in $250.00
Plaster, Mixed Media, Pigment
Untitled (Collage, mixed media)
By Benjamin Spark
Located in Oostende, BE
Benjamin SPaRK is a Franco-Belgian artist born in 1969, who lives and works in Brussels. The painting was made as a gift for a friend, as it says on the back 'to my friend Alick'
Canvas
Liberté II
Located in London, GB
Zavier Ellis Liberté II, 2021 Oil, acrylic, emulsion, collage on paper 59.4 x 42 cm 23.4 x 16.5 inches Zavier Ellis combines the use of text with painterly, collage, assemblage and ...
Mixed Media
Too Far II
Located in San Francisco, CA
This artwork titled "Too Far II" 2004 is an original mixed media (color monotype and pencil drawing) by noted Swiss artist Francois Burland b.1958. It is hand signed, dated, numbered 1/1 and dedicated in pencil by the artist. The subject size is 7.75 x 10.5, including the pencil drawing is 10.75 x 13 inches, sheet size is 13 x 19.75 inches, framed size is 21 x 28 inches. Custom framed in a wooden black frame, with white matting. It is in excellent condition. About the artist: François Burland (1958) was born in Lausanne (Switzerland). He began drawing in self-taught fashion at the end of his adolescence. He undertook a first trip to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula at the age of twenty. A few years later, he encountered the Tuaregs in the Sahara Desert. Enthused by their nomadic lifestyle, he began returning to the region regularly over some thirty years. During his long stays with the Tuaregs, he shared their daily life, including their dromedaries and witchcraft, but also their 4x4s, mobiles and kalachnikovs. This creator has produced an abundant and varied oeuvre. Depending on each series and on his inspiration of the day, he avails himself of a number of techniques and materials. For his drawings, he prefers to use wrapping paper as a support: he applies pastels, colored pencil and white chalk to very large surfaces. His creations bring to mind shamanic art...
Mixed Media, Monotype
You've Got a Lot to Like
By Robert Mars
Located in Napa, CA
Mixed Media, Panel, UV Resin Robert Mars uses art to express nostalgia for a time before he was born. An artistic descendent of Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, he explores Amer...
Resin, Mixed Media, Panel
Exploration
By Tony Dagradi
Located in New Orleans, LA
medium: hardcover book, acrylic varnish My decades-long career in contemporary jazz directly informs my work as a visual artist. Music, for me, has always had a visual component, with the diverse elements of music suggesting colors, shapes, and textures. The juxtaposition of abstract shapes which come together as I work on a book, is very much how I perceive the interplay of melody, harmony, and rhythm. Improvisation is also key to my approach in both genres. Within a jazz ensemble...
Paper, Varnish
Untitled V
Located in Toronto, ON
Original - Mixed Media on Canvas Hand Signed by Rachel Isadora
Mixed Media
