Most of you know the artist Josh Agle, a.k.a. "Shag". He's really hot right now.

He dredges the collective memories of Baby Boomers and prints their infantile imageries, using period fashions, hairstyles, colors, products, art. His works, more nuanced and sophisticated than they initially appear, always blend the charming with the grotesque, the knowing with the naive, the slightly ugly with the beautiful.

Here's one of his latest. I peg this scene at exactly 1964. What say you? ["Welcome To Our Glorious Lifestyle"] Kind of the colors of "Swee-Tarts" candies, maybe? I'd say the Hispanic maid, the Black bassist and the alcoholic butler are the "caged birds" alluded to?


1960's cereals is also a new theme of his, for some reason. ["Froot Loops"] The weird lime color of the background.... Doesn't it remind you of KOOL-AID's "Lemon-Lime" flavor?



Strange resonances that no Baby Boomer will fail to feel viscerally, and sometimes some stunning color schemes. this one makes me shiver, it's so weirdly beautiful: ["The Black Egg"]

Not a babyboomer but I like those!

"Welcome to our Glorious Lifestyle" is literally taken from a scene from the 1968 Peter Sellers/Claudine Longet classic movie The Party. The painting is an exact recreation of the Clutterbuck's living room, complete with the cute little maid, the combo playing the music, the short-haired blonde dancing in a mini skirt, and the stuck-up lady wearing a tiara in her hair. I'll see if I can find a pic of it to post here.

Anyhoo, I luuuuuv The Party, so naturally, I would luuuuv to have the painting!

Wow, nubs, I am stunned and pleased by your erudition here. I've been studying this painting all morning long... and the more I'd look at it, the less it would seem cheerful to me and the more it would seem as though the painter were making a bitter statement...

To understand that it comes from a comedy makes me see it differently now... (unless the comedy were also a bitter one... not impossible at all, given Sellers participation).

I need to re-watch that movie.... thanks for your expert eye, nubsy.

This boomer adores SHAG's stuff! I have several compilation books of his work, and they are really fun to look at.

Rasputin, am I missing something? I don't see anything bitter about any of these.

I AM the first of the boom. Does NOTHING for me. I think I remember something looking like these though.

I love this guy.

"Welcome to our glorious lifestyle" seems an homage to the superficial illusion of the sixties. I see a vapidity, not bitter but snorting behind the hand revealing.
The sixties were all about defined roles where men were suave and women were air heads.
The chalk white of the little boy pissing in the pool is a premonition of things to come.

Two Tikis and a Tucan! Too funny.

Barbi and Ken do Breakfast (my title). Barbi is wearing the "smashing daytime sheath" which came with matching bag and shawl (I am dead serious). Ken is cool in his "beatnik dicky" and glasses.

Absolutely, positively, "The Party!"

General Clutterbuck: "Get her jewelry"

Love "The Party." The painting is a copy from a scene in it.

There were definitely some good films made in the 1960s, especially David Lean movies and some made abroad. The best part of the 1960s were the early years, before the Kennedy assassination, when people were optimistic. I don't particularly like Shag's work as much as I like the art work he ripped off. I'll have to ask DH what was the name of the 1950's-60's artist from whom Shag lifted his style.

DH says if you like Shag, check out 1950-60s artist Jim Flora:

http://www.jimflora.com/

Mort, love that Jim Flora site, thanks for the link!

All of SHAG's stuff looks snarky and slightly sinister to me...some more than others of course.

Yes, yes, yes... all of you are correct, of course. SHAG's work is simultaneously innocent.... and "knowing", shall we say.


He's ripping off a whole slew of sources, highbrow art, respectable magazine-style graphic art.... 60's furniture/housing design, and thoroughly disposable commercial art such as KOOL-AID art and travel agent's posters of the 60's. One could do a whole thesis on all the stuff he's riffing on....

Yesterday, I saw THE PARTY for the first time, thanks to our dear nubs who nailed this allusion. I'd never seen it before... it was I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS which I'd seen before.... another late-60's number with Peter Sellers. In this latter film, Sellers plays a boring American milquetoast whose little world is blown open when he attends a hippie party and everyone trips on LSD... chaos ensues, natch.

It may be indeed that I'm reading too much subtext into WELCOME TO OUR GLORIOUS LIFESTYLE. All I can say is, after perusing SHAG's for five or six years now, I've noticed that he DOES, I'm convinced, tend to embed little fillips in many of his pieces. His pieces will have some little subliminal "something" that you're supposed to "get" in each one... a sort of WHERE'S WALDO? for grownups...

Where SHAG is almost always charming, another Baby Boomer contemporary of his, Mark Ryden, can be downright creepy, also drawing from the collective imageries of boomers...

I'm not crazy about Shag's work but I don't hate it and it doesn't creep me out. I get that light-hearted 50's feel when I look at it. He is recreating an era of art for a new audience.

Morticia, thanks for the link to Jim Flora's art. I do love his style; would you say he originated that type of art? If so, he had many imitators back in that era. That style kind of defines the late 50's-early 60's to me.

(Trivia - being from Ohio, I know that Bellefontaine is pronounced "Bell-fountain.")

The MOTOROLA company published some famous ads for their TV's and stereos in magazines of the 1960's, and there can be little doubt that SHAG is familiar with them... I personally love these ads... get a kick out of 'em... Just why did none of us ever get this promised supersonic Jetsons reality?

Oh Ras thank you! My friend Judy lived in a house very much like the first. I loved it. It represents my inner child's notion of
prosperity and all that is modern. That pull is still within me. I LOVE these. All of them.

My pleasure, LMG!

The art of the generically called "UPA Period" (of which Jim Flora was part) often had its unique colors... SHAG's color schemes owe something, I believe, to pieces like those done in 1959 by artist Bobe Cannon.

Oh dear, what an unfortunate nickname for somebody.

If this was a UK forum, the name Shag would be replaced by symbols..LOL!

Does the word have the same meaning over there in the USA as it does over here? Very Austin Powers.

Barry

I've never been a big fan of this design aesthetic but I think it's because I've never seen it done well except for in pictures like these.

Not really. I think some people are aware of that meaning of the word over in the UK but it's not really used that way in the US.

Here, a shag is a haircut which has been around since the 70's at least. This one on Lisa Rinna is just one of many current versions.
I suppose if you went into a beauty shop in the UK and said, "Gimme a shag", you'd get your face slapped!

The Shag is a 6 beat swing style dance coming out of South Carolina:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npcIMzEWuxQ...feature=related