Image Copyright by White Columns
Gallery Prophet Royal Robertson: NO PROUD BASTARDS
at White Columns
Oct. 21 - Nov. 19, 2011
Curated by Erik Parker and Scott Ogden Prophet Royal Robertson (1931-1997), originally a sign painter by trade, covered every inch of his Baldwin, Louisiana home and yard with apocalyptic hand-made signs and paintings. Visitors and passersby alike were greeted with large, weather-beaten signs warning, “All Crazy Persons Keep Off Lot” and “No Divorced Whores Allowed”. However once you got past these foreboding walls of language, an entirely different world opened up inside his small home. Shrines dedicated to his both beloved and despised ex-wife, Adell, were pushed up against walls that were lined floor to ceiling with poster board renderings of future cities, space autos, couples engaged in sex, weaponry, and calendars chronicling his daily woes and visions. Referencing sources as disparate as the Bible, science fiction magazines, pornography, and cheap tabloid newspapers, his work managed to graphically illustrate the daily concerns that occupied his mind, both real and imagined. More than a reclusive, self-proclaimed prophet, Royal believed himself to be a “Libra Artist, Mystic, Psychic, Lord, and Saint.” He lived in a world where daily visions blended seamlessly into a waking life spent obsessively documenting his otherworldly adventures. The resulting drawings and writings provide direct access into the mind of an evidently troubled, yet visionary individual who perhaps unintentionally created some of the most extraordinary ‘Pop’ art of the 20th Century.
Scott Ogden and Erik Parker Prophet Royal Robertson NO PROUD BASTARDS is curated by NY-based artists Scott Ogden and Erik Parker. In 1996 Odgen and Parker visited Royal Robertson in his Baldwin home whilst they were studying art at The University of Texas at Austin. This exhibition will be the first in-depth consideration of Royal Robertson’s work to be held in New York City.
White Coumns,
320 West 13th Street
(Enter on Horatio Street, between Hudson and 8th Avenue)
New York, NY 10014
212 924 4212
212 645 4764 Fax
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