Four decades • 300+ comix • 250+ books • A Who’s Who of Lowbrow Art

Last Gasp turns 40 this year and to celebrate, we are throwing a party and art show at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco.

The Last Gasp 40th Anniversary Art Show assembles a top-drawer lineup of artists – the haut monde of lowbrow. Over the past four decades, Last Gasp has published hundreds of artists in the underground comix, kustom kulture, pop surrealism and street art movements.

Artists in the show include:

Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Glenn Barr, Mark and Vaughn Bode, Robert Crumb, Richard Corben, Rob and Christian Clayton, Guy Colwell, Ron English, Tony Fitzpatrick, Christopher Felver, Camille Rose Garcia, Justin Green, Charles Gatewood, Bill Griffith, Rick Griffin, Ed Hardy, Jay Kinney, Frank Kozik, Joe Ledbetter, Carol Lay, Adrian Lee, Michael Manning, Chris Mars, Mats,  Paul Mavrides, Scott Musgrove, Albert Morse, Junko Mizuno, Liz McGrath, Laurenn McCubbin, Mitch O’Connell, Annie Owens, The Pizz, Mark Ryden, Michael Rosen, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, Dori Seda, Winston Smith, Stanislav Szukalski, Larry Todd, Eric White, Robert Williams, Basil Wolverton, Attaboy, Aye Jay, and many more to be announced.

Writers, including San Francisco Poet Laureate Diane DiPrima will do a reading.

Design radicals GAMA-GO will produce a limited edition tee shirt for the event.

21 + over; Free and open to the public

When: April 1, 2010, 6pm until late
Where: 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 974-1719   www.111minnagallery.com   Contact: Jay Howell

About Last Gasp
Last Gasp is one of the largest and oldest publishers and purveyors of underground books & comics in the world, as well as being a distributor of all sorts of weird ‘n’ wonderful subversive literature, graphic novels, tattoo and art books.

Last Gasp was founded in 1970 by Ron Turner. Last Gasp’s first publication, Slow Death Funnies #1 came out on the first “Earth Day,” April 15, 1970. Subsequent comics included the all-women’s comic It Ain’t Me Babe, and Skull Comics. Over the years they have published, and in some cases brought to light, some of the most respected and talented artists working today, including such luminaries as R. Crumb, Mark Ryden, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Frank Kozik, Todd Schorr, Winston Smith, Spain Rodriguez, and Robert Williams to name but a few.

Ron Turner’s enthusiasm for underground comics, and in particular their autobiographical aspect, has been the driving force behind many groundbreaking publications. Last Gasp published Justin Green’s highly acclaimed confessional Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary in 1972, a book that became an inspiration to many artists now working in the autobiographical style. “Art Spiegelman, who won the only Pulitzer Prize for cartooning, has said he would never have started to do the autobiographical story of his family (in the graphic novel Maus) unless Justin had done it first. And Robert Crumb said the same thing,” said Turner.

Today, Last Gasp publishes 12-20 new titles per year, focusing on Lowbrow and Pop Surrealist artists, as well as graphic novels. The company has 18 full and part-time employees and is based in San Francisco. In addition to publishing, Last Gasp distributes for large and small publishers worldwide, providing a steady countercultural stream of books and other printed matter that spreads over six continents.

Last Gasp books have been glowingly reviewed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, School Library Journal, Juxtapoz magazine, The Guardian (UK), Hi-Fructose magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Austin Chronicle, American Book Review, and The Los Angeles Times.

Co-publishing partners include La Luz de Jesus / Billy Shire Fine Arts, Porterhouse Fine Art Editions, San Jose Museum of Art, Grand Central Art Center, Smokemuse, JaPress, Moulinsart, Presspop Gallery, Ignition Publishing, NewSkool/Analog, Laguna Art Museum, and many more.

The readers of the San Francisco Bay Guardian named Last Gasp the Best Local Publisher in 2009.

First publications: Slow Death, 1970 (comic); Breather’s Guide to Invisible Air Polution (book) 1970

Come meet the makers, writers & featured artists of Plastic Antinomy, listen to DJ DBitS spinning Rock n’ Roll vinyl, and buy a raffle ticket for your chance to win:
- — a digital camera from Adolph Gasser
- — art books from Last Gasp
- — original art by local artists
- — and more!

At last, the one and only visual arts magazine about the Bay Area, Plastic Antinomy, is releasing its 3rd issue, the BLUE/GREEN Issue with a party at Varnish Fine Art.

A limited number of copies will be on hand, so come early and be one of the first to get your hands on Plastic Antinomy #3.

This issue takes a look at local artists/venues whose work is tied to the environment/water such as the painters Josh Keyes & Alexis Amann, sculptor Ron Garrigues, local paper goods boutique Little Otsu, Mollusk Surf Shop (and art space) and much much more.

www.plasticantinomy.com

Varnish Fine Art
77 Natoma St. @ 2nd
SF CA 94105
(this is a 21+ venue)

Gary Baseman, a painter and illustrator who created the animated series and feature film “Teacher’s Pet” and a successful line of collectible vinyl toys, is descended from the Wacky Pack generation. Like Panter’s work, his playfully dark renderings of libidinous skeletons, snarky devils, hunky snowmen and erotic bunnies, among other characters, have been hung in galleries and published in The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. His basic style is consistent with both “high” and “low” art worlds.

But in DYING OF THIRST: New Paintings by Gary Baseman (Last Gasp, $24.95), his obsession for Kewpie-esque nymphs is displayed as never before, in living color and in a large format. The imagery includes a collection of nudist “art” photographs overpainted with troll-like creatures in Pepto Bismol pink and Hershey’s brown. But most of the book features his signature nymphs cavorting with bears, bugs and other disquietingly cute characters. “Cute plus Sex, you might say,” Holly Myers writes in her introduction, “equals Creepy.” And while for some this would be an accurate description, also present in Baseman’s work is a cultivated naïveté, a style that is designed to lull and shock, but not excessively. Unlike Panter’s art, which displays a virtually childlike fascination with similar material, Baseman’s work in this book feels calculated to cater to today’s art fashions — ones that he has helped to create.

Dying of Thirst: New Paintings by Gary Baseman