like on facebook
follow on twitter
connect on google+
invite on linked in
view on flickr
watch on qik
on foursquare
watch on youtube
follow on yelp
Max Grundy – Fear is the New Beauty
You may be at the Grand National Roadster Show, a Mooneyes event, or even Tiki Highway. One thing that you will most likely see is the bold and determined “propaganda” style artwork of the incomparable Max Grundy.
Coming from a long line of car guys he struggled with the hot rod genre while getting his masters degree at BYU in Provo. That struggle paid off with a more rounded sense of design and art that catapults his work out of the academics negative connotations of low brow art. With Grundy, low-brow is high.
And high is what I get when I view his work. A sense of relief, heroism, optimism and strength.
A recent discussion with Max found his definition of success. It doesn’t matter how broke you are or how hard the work is, if it moves people then that is success. He has been very fortunate to have people come up to his booth (usually accompanied by his lovely wife and child) and tell him how much a particular piece means to them. For me it’s like music. There might be one song while I’m cruising through the foothills on my Harley (Turn the Page, by Bob Seger) or slamming the pedal on my ’56 Fairlane (Sandman by Metallica) that gets me going. The same rings true with Grundy’s work. Right now, I dig the older piece 3-D B. The dialog of the fascination we have with the screen, that we don’t see the world around us. Yet then again, when I’m remembering that cruise with my buddies in The Mercifuls car club it’s the pair: Streamline 49 and Streamline 50 that conjure up the goodies in my mind.
Max has taught design and art and reflects in his own admission a no brainer comment that art should have a dramatic point. If you study his compositions you will find areas of rest and then with a loud shout the dramatic point. Probably spoken best in Escape From LA or Green Agenda. Even the seemingly static portraits such as the Streamline series have the drama unfold in the slow-cruise nature of the subjects. As the artist puts it best; “I wanted to create the sense of riding a bar of soap down a slippery highway.”
Don’t ask me what my favorite piece is. I like all the ones I present here for you. Even the commercial pieces like the Flatheads Forever logo for H&H, the Bottrop Poster, or the work he did for Walden Speed Shop and the Dice cover (not shown) are all faves.
View more at www.MaxGrundy.com and be prepared to be propagandized!
