Robert Williams (b. 1943) Bastardizing the Autonomy of Person, Place, and Thing (Garage Surrealism), 2000 Oil on canvas 30 x 36 inches (76.2 x 91.4 cm) Signed and dated lower right: Robt. Wms / '00 PROVENANCE: Collection of Doug Fieger, Los Angeles; By descent to the present owner. EXHIBITED: Tony Shafrazi Gallery and elsewhere "Robert Williams, Best Intentions," 2000- 2001; Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art + Design, Los Angeles, "Robert Williams: Through Prehensile Eyes", May 14- July 30, 2005. LITERATURE: Through Prehensile Eyes: Seeing the Art of Robert Williams, San Francisco, 2005. Doug Fieger was the lead singer of The Knack, best known for their debut single, My Sharona. Robert Williams emerged from the distinctive visual culture of Southern California, where hot rods, underground comics, psychedelia, and popular entertainment shaped his artistic vocabulary. After studying at Los Angeles City College and the Chouinard Art Institute, Williams worked at Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's legendary custom-car shop and became part of the original Zap Comix circle. In 1979, he coined the term "lowbrow" to describe the alternative art culture from which his own work emerged, although he has long preferred "Conceptual Realism." In 1994, he co-founded Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine, helping establish a platform for artists working outside the established art world. His influence also reached popular music: his painting Appetite for Destruction became the title and original artwork for Guns N' Roses' 1987 debut album. Bastardizing the Autonomy of Person, Place, and Thing (Garage Surrealism) was formerly in the collection of Doug Fieger, lead singer of The Knack, best known for the 1979 hit "My Sharona." Williams brought the visual language of these subcultures into highly accomplished oil painting, combining traditional draftsmanship with exaggerated forms and irreverent imagery. The Whitney Museum has described his work as applying classical fine-art techniques to the visual language of underground comix and custom cars. For Williams, technical skill was a central part of the work, a quality he felt had been increasingly undervalued in contemporary art. His highly controlled surfaces and intricate compositions give even the most fantastical imagery a convincing physical presence. He has been known to work with a one-hair paintbrush to achieve the extraordinary level of detail characteristic of his paintings. In Riding a Dead Horse in a Dream Within a Dream, Williams turns to the mythology of the American West. A collapsed horse and a strange cowboy-like figure occupy a theatrical landscape of curtains, circular openings, clouds, and mountains. The title suggests several levels of reality, while the fallen horse subverts the traditional Western image of the horse as a symbol of freedom and movement. Williams transforms the familiar cowboy narrative into something closer to a stage set or dream sequence, where conventional relationships no longer hold. In Bastardizing the Autonomy of Person, Place, and Thing (Garage Surrealism), Williams turns to the Southern California garage and custom-car culture that informed his early career. A fantastical creature appears assembled from eyes, mouths, limbs, clothing, tools, and other disparate forms, while a garage anchors the scene. Cartoon imagery, mechanical forms, and fantasy converge in a composition that deliberately collapses the distinctions between person, object, and place. The title itself announces this disruption. Although the paintings were created three years apart and originally shown in different exhibitions, both were subsequently included in Robert Williams: Through Prehensile Eyes at the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art + Design, Los Angeles, in 2005. Together, the paintings reveal two important sources of Williams's imagination: the mythology of the American West and the countercultural world of Southern California. Yet it is Williams's extraordinary command of painting that holds these disparate elements together. His canvases function like comic-book narratives, but their complexity is sustained by rigorous drawing, careful modeling, and an exacting attention to detail. HID12401132022 © 2026 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved www.HA.com/TexasAuctioneerLicenseNotice

Tony Shafrazi Gallery and elsewhere "Robert Williams, Best Intentions," 2000- 2001; Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art + Design, Los Angeles, "Robert Williams: Through Prehensile Eyes", May 14- July 30, 2005.

Collection of Doug Fieger, Los Angeles; Thence by descent to the present owner.

Unlined. Presents well overall.
Under UV: Modern pigments fluoresce as expected. Surface exhibits intentional uneven varnish application, areas with applied varnish fluoresce green strongly. A few dashes of retouching to shadow below open garage door.
Framed Dimensions 39.375 X 45.375 Inches