Robert Williams, “Fearless Depictions”

by Liz Goldner

Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California

Continuing through May 31, 2026

Robert Williams, “Heralding the Entry of King Infinitus,” 2021, oil on canvas, 30 x 36”. All images courtesy of the artist.

The obsessively creative Robert Williams, now age 83, has spent a lifetime exercising a sensibility that embraces the apocalyptic, the grotesque, and the caustic. Much of Williams’ imagery springs from his dreams and memories of a difficult childhood spent mostly in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where as a teen he was a juvenile delinquent who was expelled from high school, inherited his father’s interest in cars and hot rods, and discovered his unique talent for depicting chrome.

The foundations of Williams’ style, long termed “lowbrow art,” blend an old master style of figuration combined with dystopian imagery, psychedelia, and popular illustration. Its roots lie in his youthful apprenticeship with car detailing master Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and the underground comics movement of the late 1960s, in particular “Zap Comix.” The nearly 60 works in “Fearless Depictions,” spanning the last twenty-five years of the artist’s output, come at you in a delirium of mad, relentless monsters.

Robert Williams, “Auditory Sadism,” 2013, oil on canvas, 16 x 12”.

Williams is also a prolific writer in a cockeyed existential manner. His essays describing his paintings are an integral part of the show, going well past the usual wall labels. His open-ended descriptions leave us free to interpret the paintings’ equally elaborate messages. Here are some of my favorite paintings from the show, from which I’m guessing you will come away with your own greatest hits.

At the entrance to the show, “Heralding the Entry of King Infinitus” (2021) immediately accosts us with its repetitive interpretation of an unnamed, mad blonde-haired king (unnamed and by no means a portrait, but who might that allude to?), clad in royal purple, as courtiers and sycophants announce his presence. The magic of this piece is that the king is not a singular figure, but a relentless succession of identical monarchs dominating the canvas well into the distance. Among Williams’ nearly incomprehensible descriptions of the king, he writes, “King Infinitus lives in the Kingdom of Astroperpetuity. But for our purposes, the king exists in an impure space-time setting.”

Robert Williams, “Death by Exasperation,” 2010, oil on canvas, 36 x 30”.

“Auditory Sadism” (2013) centers on a young man lying in a field with his hands covering his ears, blocking out the relentless sounds coming from seven open jaws with red, snake-like tongues, all yelling at him. The distraught figure is a stand-in for anyone who feels bombarded by constantly changing media messages, from podcasters and pundits who compete for our attention, and from anyone who launches into seemingly endless verbal onslaughts. Williams writes, “In this picture, the graphic noise is so silently earsplitting that the viewer can hardly see over the incessant tirade.”

“Death by Exasperation” (2010) is a parody of the Lewis Carroll nonsense poem, “Jabberwocky,” from “Through the Looking Glass.” Williams’ painting features a purple Jabberwock collapsed on the ground and under the care of a modern medical team, as an enormous red Non Sequitur dominates the scene. A stern doctor stands calmly before the composite creature, as a nurse attending the fallen Jabberwock glares at him in the midst of the commotion. The artist brings the Victorian-era nonsense poem into a whole new realm of the absurd. The poor Jabberwock is appropriated to become a part of Williams’ own menagerie of fantastic illusionistic creatures.

Robert Williams, “Justifiable Concern,” 2020, oil on canvas, 30 x 36”.

“Justifiable Concern” (2020) could be a little league baseball player’s — and his mother’s — worst nightmare. The boy in his baseball outfit and his well-dressed 1950s-style mom are shopping in a sporting goods store, where they are confronted by “a bloated red devil feigning insufferable agony. His swollen, distended belly is erupting in several places, violently expelling its writhing contents,” as Williams writes. The devil is expelling a variety of miserable cartoon characters, including pirates, devils, clowns and an Indian, while the mom covers her son’s anguished face with her hands. The surreal apparition reads as a product of both mom’s and son’s imaginations, as though it reflects a disagreement, one that continues to preoccupy them.

“The Intruder,” 2023 continues the devil in the sporting goods store story, as it explodes the myth of the picture-perfect family preparing to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner together in their well-appointed dining room. The mother, father, son, daughter, grandmother and grandfather are confronted by a cartoonish interloper made of piping and studs with a long nose and tongue. It gleefully comes through the front door even as it lifts the home off of its foundation. If the family appears to be one from out of a storybook, the invading creature exposes deep secrets and fears.

Robert Williams, “The Intruder,” 2023, oil on canvas, 30 x 36”.

Throughout the show Williams appeals to our fascination with imaginative details and the blended pleasures of comedy and horror. Sixty years on, so much has changed for this paragon of everything lowbrow who enhances our understanding of the underbelly of our world, which has become as dystopian as it was during the counterculture movement that first brought Williams to public attention.

Liz Goldner is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009. 

Liz Goldner’s Website.