Bob & Bob

In 1974, two young students met in a class called Painting Attitudes at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. Their instructor was the satirical and fierce critic of American consumerist culture, Llyn Foulkes; his position at the school being no small irony given the fact that ArtCenter was famously known for teaching automobile design. Their engagement with Foulkes was liberating and they were eager to detour from the track of traditional commercial success to one of rebellion. Not only was the fine art world too conceptual and disconnected most people’s lives, it was humorless and took itself too seriously.

Thus, the artistic duo of Bob & Bob was born, their name chosen for its “everyman” common identity, and their irreverent performances, music, films and visual art focused on mocking the very art establishment in which they thrived. Absurdist jokes intended to turn the world upside down recalled the strategies of nonsense and ridicule employed by the Dadaists, but their work was chronologically parallel to Punk Rock, sharing this movement’s sense of upheaval and disruption. Bob & Bob, however, were not mohawked, leathered and chained, but took their stylistic cues from the zany antics and comedic barbs of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. They rented office space in Beverly Hills, wearing suits and ties, getting themselves into trouble, and making paintings of gruesome bankers that recall George Grosz. As Linda Frye Burnham wrote, Beverly Hills “teamed with everything that puzzled, frightened, confused, amused and angered them. Here they felt they could keep watch over shifting values, consumer waste, the high price of sex appeal and the idylls of the famous.” In an act of playful defiance, they lounged on webbed lawn chairs wearing swim trunks and sunglasses in a performance titled Rodeo Beach.

CV