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Todd Schorr's artistic journey is one that hardly conforms to the time-honored stereotype of Bohemian artist. It is rather a post-war tale bracketed by an America infatuated with the limitless potential of consumerism. His formative years were spent in a world surrounded by the atomic and space ages, by Saturday morning cartoons and racks of comic books at the local drug store, a land populated by Revell models, Mad Magazine, Testors glue, Mickey Mouse and Rat Fink. Further fueling his developing image bank were the seemingly endless icons from television's early years: Robbie the Robot, Mighty Joe Young and reel upon reel of animated toons from the likes of Tex Avery, George Pal and Max Fleischer The compulsion to replicate these characters led to a formal art education and exposure to a new set of influences drawn from the world of advertising and commercial art.
Born January 9, 1954 in New York City, Todd began drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil. Here is a drwing done at
age seven of Davy Crockett.
The flowering of pop art in the 60's and the rediscovery of commercial artists from the first half of the 20th century made an indelible impression on Schorr's teen years. The inferior label that illustrators endured from the fine art world limited their exposure and popularity with the exception of a few notables such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, and J.C. Leyendecker. For Schorr the many nameless masters of the advertising arts were just as qualified as their 57th Street counterparts. Seeking out the more obscure illustrators, Schorr came in contact with a world filled with amazing images. Among them were the 1940's and 50's cover art for Time magazine executed by Boris Artzybasheff who blended highly developed rendering skills with a twist of surrealism. George Petty and Alberto Vargas' pin-ups in the pages of Esquire showed him stylized and hyper-idealized women in a flawless painting style. Calendar artist for Brown and Bigelow, English born Lawson Wood created an absurd menagerie of anthropomorphic monkeys and cartoon cavemen that would mutate and reappear in Schorr's mind down the road.
Inspired by the stop motion animation films of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen, a teenage Schorr is seen here in the family basement filming his own 8 mm film masterpiece
"The Nautipus" in 1968

The tail end of the 60's was a psychedelic eye-feast which blended car culture, rock and roll and drugs. Unearthed in this youth revolution were more sources for Schorr's inspiration. San Francisco artists such as Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, and Victor Moscoso dipped into and celebrated mind bending cerebral visions for dance posters. A new movement of underground comix was formed in this same time frame and several artists such as R. Crumb and Robert Williams paid tribute to the irreverent as well as those earlier masters of the comic tradition. All of this was closely watched by an ever-observant Schorr and as these and other images multiplied with each foray into the land of forgotten art they were stored, slowly fermenting for future use.

With a formal education at the Philadelphia College of Art came the next installment of Schorr's visual education. The net product of those initial gathering years, by choices or by casual assimilation, began to work themselves out as his natural skills were challenged by the academic rigors of art school. But it was no sweat. The challenge was quickly met and college gave him further exposure to the techniques and content of the masters Vermeer, Da Vinci, and Bosch and academic painters Jean Leon Gerome and Alma Tadema.
Drawing in earnest on the streets of Philadelphia circa 1972.

With a degree in hand Schorr quickly commandeered the illustrators market. Putting his schooling and talent to work he made the move to New York producing volumes of published work in all the venues accessible to him. The need to express his mother-lode of ideas, however, always nagged at him and as commissions became less inspired, agency halls would be replaced by gallery walls. Sensing further change was needed, Schorr left the city and made the move to rural Connecticut replacing the grime and hustle of Manhattan for road kill and isolation. It was here the transition from commercial to self-expressed art took place. With a new environment and a stack of blank canvasses in his studio the years of image storing began to ooze out of the scattered tubes of paint. In time the distillation process wrought slobbering aliens, drug hazed beatniks, sea harpies, mermaids and bosomy playmates elbowing their way for attention in a log jam of images straight outta hell's back door. The cork was unplugged and an art blitzkrieg was unleashed.

Schorr's work was and is the culmination of these investigations. His art expresses the pure joy of the pop experience- the collusion of Las Vegas neon, screaming carny barkers, pulp Svengalis, backyard BBQ hi-jinks and Shriners drunk on their own stupidity. It is the synthesis and calculating selection of these images that separates him from no thought image brokers with limp brushes. His technique is impeccable and flawless and this in turn has bought him a premium slot among collectors.
Not only did Schorr paint this cover for the January 18, 1982 issue of Time Magazine but he used himself for the model as well. Thus realizing his ambition to be "on" the cover of Time before his 30th birthday.
 
     But beyond this initial pop agenda there is another realization. Here one can draw conclusions about the ineptness of commercialization and the endless bombardment of the merchandising and marketing hefted on the American public in a futile cycle of hidden agendas. True, the canvasses are a delight to the eye and celebrate Schorr's own passions, but there is more than the rapid fire imagery one encounters. Concealed beneath the painted surface is an acute observation of a society infused with sarcasm and irony- a glut of things that scream their self importance. There is a not too subtle message about America at the turn of the century, a point which is easily lost by seeing only the wacky visions of a spin art inspired palette.

With Robert Williams and Last Gasp publisher Ron Turner at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery
in 1997.
 

 As with any artistic movement Todd Schorr's art reflects his time and place. The expression of his many influences on canvas is a tough one for many critics to swallow and it is a slam at what formalized art is supposed to represent. The images, though familiar, aren't within the accepted vocabulary of the mainstream art world and thus exclusion is a foregone conclusion. But for those force-fed fifty years of consumerism- they know. And those that know understand.

- Jim Heimann

* Todd and his artist-wife Kathy currently reside in Los Angeles where their artistic journey continues.

  
Todd unveiling his Spectre of Monster Appeal painting to
its new owner, Leonardo DiCaprio in July 2000.
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COPYRIGHTS © TODD SCHORR 2002