Celebrated Pop Surrealist artist Mark Ryden’s newest body of work, presented in this book for the first time. Crowned "the high prince of Lowbrow," Mark Ryden has become a fixture of the contemporary alternative art movement. In his newest work, Mark Ryden: The Gay 90’s, the artist casts his skewed perspective toward the turn of the nineteenth century with such creepy yet beautiful works as a portrait of Abraham Lincoln dressed in foppish 1890s fashion and surrounded with a heavenly nimbus, Jesus Christ playing a pink piano for an audience of kewpie triplet girls, and a Gibson girl in a tight corset constructed entirely of meat. With masterful painting technique and disquieting content, Ryden’s newest paintings display his fascination with the earnest kitsch found in popular art of the end of the 1800s, yet reinforces how his paintings now more than ever are a skewering of both historical and current pop cultural touchstones. Ryden’s visual cues range from cryptic to cute, balancing his compositions between nostalgic cliché and disturbing archetype. This book showcases his talent for creating paintings that marry accessibility and technique with visceral resonance and sociocultural relevance, making it easy to see why he garners the ardent attention of museums, critics, and serious collectors alike.

Mark Ryden: The Gay '90s

Arts & Photography

Amanda Erlanson

Mark Ryden

History & Criticism

Rizzoli

Fuzzy bunnies, big-eyed girls, meat, magic and mystery Mark Ryden's carnival of kitsch. Blending themes of pop culture with techniques reminiscent of the old masters, Mark Ryden has created a singular style that blurs the traditional boundaries between high and low art. His work first garnered attention in the 1990s when he ushered in a new genre of painting, "Pop Surrealism", dragging a host of followers in his wake. Ryden has trumped the initial surrealist strategies by choosing subject matter loaded with cultural connotation. Ryden's vocabulary ranges from cryptic to cute, treading a fine line between nostalgic cliche and disturbing archetype. Seduced by his infinitely detailed and meticulously glazed surfaces, the viewer is confronted with the juxtaposition of the childhood innocence and the mysterious recesses of the soul. A subtle disquiet inhabits his paintings; the work is achingly beautiful as it hints at darker psychic stuff beneath the surface of cultural kitsch. In Ryden's

Mark Ryden: Pinxit

Individual Artists

Taschen America, LLC

Mark Ryden has us on edge. His vocabulary, at once cryptic and cute, refined and cliché blurs the boundaries between high and low art as much as it does between childish innocence and profound unease. 
Ryden first garnered attention in the 1990s when he ushered in a new genre of painting, “Pop Surrealism,” trumping the initial surrealist strategies by choosing subject matter loaded with cultural connotation.This cultural kitsch is rendered in infinitely detailed and meticulously glazed surfaces, the precision itself evoking a subtle disquiet as much as the constant suspicion of something slightly awry in all the sugar-sweet pastel shades, fairytale landscapes, fluffy creatures, and wide-eyed girl-childs.
In the major retrospective Pinxit, whose title refers to the Latin term “painted by,” we survey almost two decades of this strange, beautiful, unheimlich world. Through the themes of the artist’s major exhibitions, including The Meat Show, Bunnies &amp; Bees, The Tree Show, we present his most compelling canvases as well as expert essays by Yoshitomo Nara, Carlo McCormick, and Kristine McKenna.

Ryden, Mark

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Books by Amanda Erlanson