If boring stuff like a pond of water lilies, some girl
wearing pearl earrings, and Jesus having dinner can inspire great works of art,
then who’s to say that awesome stuff like Rock
‘n’ Roll High School, Pee Wee’s Big
Adventure, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk
with Me can’t do the same? Not me, brothers and sisters. In fact, some of
the most eye-bursting contemporary art you’ll see is compiled in Crazy4Cult: Cult Movie Art 2, Gallery
1988’s follow-up to their first installment published in 2011. Snobs expecting
to see a bunch of sub-tattoo-parlor smudges will be knocked out by the breadth
and technique on display in this collection, with pieces owing to the expected
comic book and graphic arts, but also splashing into photorealism, surrealism,
pop art, and Soviet art, as well as three-dimensional mixed-media, sculpted,
and plush works. The quality is as (for the most part) consistent as the styles and subject matter
are diverse. As Seth Rogen points out in his foreword, this is an art book for
people who usually don’t care too much about art. What he doesn’t note is that
it is also an art book for people who care deeply about art, and at this point
in history, anyone close-minded enough to not accept Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Shining, or even Scott Pilgrim vs. The World—a lousy movie that still inspired some very
good pieces scattered across the six-page spread that concludes Crazy4Cult: Cult Movie Art 2— as viable
art topics has no business judging art in the first place.
