“More than anything, I think my work is about vernacular culture. It is concerned with ordinary domestic and functional objects or themes….I seem to be concerned with expressing a generally American and specifically Southern California voice. As for the Californian – the elements are the weather, car culture, surf culture, and the general lack of historical reference.”
Robert Townsend
April, 2011
Poprealist Robert Townsend's paintings present exhilarating exploded-view renderings, in oil and watercolor, of an impossible nostalgia; recollection of a past without first-hand experience. Displaying a sweet tooth for Classic Californiana and a gently cynical wink toward childish things which perhaps ought not be put away for good, the works ably discuss the intersection of memory and imagination through well-considered distillation and playfully deceptive use of scale.
Because of their rigorously precise photorealism, the works have an evidentiary quality and transform into coy discoveries found from sock-drawer excavation; a magnified scatter of weathered matchbooks are now philumenist artifacts recovered from the ruins of the Bowl-O-Drome. Enlarged to poster-size, a gift-shop postcard becomes a deltiological relic found at the site of the Yucca Motel. Proof of a mythological Golden State.
“Candy Apple Red” illustrates the selective memory at work: do we choose to recall the desolate black & white of the empty fair just as it leaves town? Or is it the sweetness of the day, shown in the titular subject filling the foreground frame, giant-sized and living color which we prefer to carry with us?
Distillation of the field forces attention upon the thing itself alone. As in “Blue Impala with Sprinkles”; there are no tumbleweeds blowing past the rusted-out the sedan. There is only the sedan-exactly how we remember it. And maybe a giant floating doughnut-exactly how we imagine it.
In surveying the work, one must recognize Townsend's tributes to his West-Coast antecedents: Thiebaud's blue-tinted shadows, the quoting of Ruscha's own quotes, and in the incidental sedans of Bechtle brought to their chronological ends.
Neil Wax
April 2011
Robert Townsend Poprealism Cake
1 cup Robert Bechtle
1 cup Wayne Thiebaud
1 cup Ed Ruscha
1 cup Andy Warhol
½ cup commonplace
¾ cup lowbrow
1 tsp. negative space
1 cup car culture
½ cup mid century design
1 tsp. California culture
1 cup coconut
1 cherry
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9” layer pans. Sift Robert Bechtle, Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol, and Ed Ruscha into bowl. Add commonplace and lowbrow. Beat 2 minutes, medium speed on mixer. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl constantly. Add negative space; beat 2 more minutes, scraping bowl constantly. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, or until cake springs back when touched lightly in center. Frost (recipe below).
Frosting: Empty package contents of Robert Townsend Pop Realism Frosting Mix into small mixing bowl. Add car culture, mid century design, and California culture. Mix as directed on package. Frost cake and top generously with coconut and a cherry. Enjoy!
Robert Townsend
2010