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Brett Anderson: Bad Omens in Bright Colors
This exhibit is on display in the Visual Arts Center's Gallery C from April 28, 2006, through August 20, 2006.
Brett Anderson is a master craftsman and is widely acclaimed for his highly elaborate, multi-color relief prints. Inspired by a long tradition of satirical and allegorical woodcuts dating to the German printmakers of the early Renaissance, his prints also reflect contemporary influences, including Chicago’s fanciful Pop Art movement as well as underground comic book artists of the 1960s and 70s.
Anderson sees parallels between his aesthetic vision and a cultural paradigm of false facades. Mirages of splendor, such as Las Vegas, use glitz and glamour to conceal decadent decay. Many people who encounter Anderson's artwork are initially attracted to its playful, vibrant colors. Upon closer examination, the works captivate via their uniquely bizarre imagery and the underlying allusions.
Anderson taught printmaking as a Visiting Professor at South Dakota State University in Brookings during the 2004-2005 academic year. Anderson received a master of fine arts degree from the University of South Dakota. He is a former student of Lloyd Menard and attended several Frogman’s Print and Paper Workshops. Anderson presently lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Artist Statement
What I find myself most entranced with is the folly of human endeavor, our frailty and vice. We are all Sisyphus, forcing a boulder of our human strivings and moral justifications up a mountain, doomed to ultimate failure by the laws of nature and the will of the gods. I don’t view this fixation on our shortcomings as some sort of pessimistic, nihilistic indulgence; it is really an affirmation of humanity. I think our self-image and didactic inclinations are defined as much by our indiscretions and overindulgences as they are by prudence and acts of good will, maybe more so. Without our follies we would be without a sense of morality, or more importantly, without a sense of humor or empathy.
A lot of the sentiments driving my work parallel the popular fiction I enjoy. Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski, Albert Camus, Umberto Eco, and Chuck Palahniuk influence the content and visual impact I want from my work as much as canonized and contemporary visual satirists who have specialized in the entropy inherent in culture like Peter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch, Jose Posada, Francesco Goya, Peter Saul, Jim Nutt, Robert Crumb, Kara Walker and Barry McGee. Like the works of these artists, my work is created in the context of a narrative structure. I do not mean to say they involve a plot structure of conflict, climax, and resolution, but the success of the image hinges on a misconception or irony which must be dealt with by the viewer.
I find parallels between my aesthetic vision and the paradigm of American vacation destinations, like Las Vegas, with elaborate and wonderful facades often concealing foul and pestilent underbellies. It is important to me that when people first encounter my work, they often describe it as “colorful” or “pretty.” With the grotesque and bizarre subjects portrayed I am simultaneously trying to subvert that appeal. Often, after viewers have looked at my work beyond the initial perusal, my sanity is often called into question.
Inventing my own dialogue of allegorical characters to live in my world seems appropriate in the context of the influential, superficial, fantasy guises popular culture and the media have clothed us in and how we view ourselves in comparison to those artificial standards. That these bodies aggrandize the grotesque and primal aspects of our nature speaks of an alchemical-like desire to discover something elemental and refined about our existence. Drawing figures in such a whimsical manner also allows for veiled satirical humor centered on making a mockery about what is absent from these personalities.
Image: Brett Anderson, Sinister Grip, relief, 2003
This exhibit is on display in the Visual Arts Center's Gallery C from April 28, 2006, through August 20, 2006.Brett Anderson is a master craftsman and is widely acclaimed for his highly elaborate, multi-color relief prints. Inspired by a long tradition of satirical and allegorical woodcuts dating to the German printmakers of the early Renaissance, his prints also reflect contemporary influences, including Chicago’s fanciful Pop Art movement as well as underground comic book artists of the 1960s and 70s.
Anderson sees parallels between his aesthetic vision and a cultural paradigm of false facades. Mirages of splendor, such as Las Vegas, use glitz and glamour to conceal decadent decay. Many people who encounter Anderson's artwork are initially attracted to its playful, vibrant colors. Upon closer examination, the works captivate via their uniquely bizarre imagery and the underlying allusions.
Anderson taught printmaking as a Visiting Professor at South Dakota State University in Brookings during the 2004-2005 academic year. Anderson received a master of fine arts degree from the University of South Dakota. He is a former student of Lloyd Menard and attended several Frogman’s Print and Paper Workshops. Anderson presently lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Artist Statement
What I find myself most entranced with is the folly of human endeavor, our frailty and vice. We are all Sisyphus, forcing a boulder of our human strivings and moral justifications up a mountain, doomed to ultimate failure by the laws of nature and the will of the gods. I don’t view this fixation on our shortcomings as some sort of pessimistic, nihilistic indulgence; it is really an affirmation of humanity. I think our self-image and didactic inclinations are defined as much by our indiscretions and overindulgences as they are by prudence and acts of good will, maybe more so. Without our follies we would be without a sense of morality, or more importantly, without a sense of humor or empathy.
A lot of the sentiments driving my work parallel the popular fiction I enjoy. Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski, Albert Camus, Umberto Eco, and Chuck Palahniuk influence the content and visual impact I want from my work as much as canonized and contemporary visual satirists who have specialized in the entropy inherent in culture like Peter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch, Jose Posada, Francesco Goya, Peter Saul, Jim Nutt, Robert Crumb, Kara Walker and Barry McGee. Like the works of these artists, my work is created in the context of a narrative structure. I do not mean to say they involve a plot structure of conflict, climax, and resolution, but the success of the image hinges on a misconception or irony which must be dealt with by the viewer.
“A romance,” Saint-Savin explained to him, “must always have at its base a misconception – of a person, action, time, circumstance – and from that fundamental misconception episodic misconceptions must arise, developments, digressions, and finally unexpected and pleasant recognitions.
--Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before
I find parallels between my aesthetic vision and the paradigm of American vacation destinations, like Las Vegas, with elaborate and wonderful facades often concealing foul and pestilent underbellies. It is important to me that when people first encounter my work, they often describe it as “colorful” or “pretty.” With the grotesque and bizarre subjects portrayed I am simultaneously trying to subvert that appeal. Often, after viewers have looked at my work beyond the initial perusal, my sanity is often called into question.
Plato said: “He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.
--Chuck Palahniuk, Dairy
Inventing my own dialogue of allegorical characters to live in my world seems appropriate in the context of the influential, superficial, fantasy guises popular culture and the media have clothed us in and how we view ourselves in comparison to those artificial standards. That these bodies aggrandize the grotesque and primal aspects of our nature speaks of an alchemical-like desire to discover something elemental and refined about our existence. Drawing figures in such a whimsical manner also allows for veiled satirical humor centered on making a mockery about what is absent from these personalities.
Image: Brett Anderson, Sinister Grip, relief, 2003
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