Artist Glenn Barr uses cartoons, noir cool and mythology in new show

Michael H. Hodges / Detroit News Arts Writer

You could hardly blame the characters in Glenn Barr's pop-surrealist universe if they feel a little forsaken.

The skinny vixens, floating torpedoes, ugly cupids and Tinkerbells-gone-wrong that have long crowded the Detroit artist's cartoon canvases have new competition.

Suddenly, their man -- who worked on Nickelodeon's "Ren and Stimpy Show" in the mid-1990s -- has been hanging out with the sorts of noir-realist guys and dolls you see on the covers of pulp fiction.

What's a good-looking girl-sphinx with an ample bustline to make of all this?

See for yourself at Royal Oak's 323East gallery, where Barr -- one of two artists from Detroit's 1990s underground to make it big -- has his first local solo show in seven years. Both sides of the artist's creative id, surrealist and noir, are on full display through Nov. 27 with a mix of original paintings and prints.

Whichever one of Barr's two highly distinct styles he's employing at the moment -- cartooning or noir realism -- the College for Creative Studies grad says he wants "viewers to lose themselves in voyeurism," to be sucked into the painting's open-ended narrative.

"When I started out, my work was irreverent, campy, erotic, alluring and somewhat dangerous in theme," Barr says, as if that's all safely in the past. But even a cursory look at his new stuff suggests the continuing vitality of those themes.

And beautiful women, as always, dominate the stage.

Take, for example, "Samone," where Barr's outfitted an enormous spider with the realistically rendered head of a woman who stares out at the world with angry, apprehensive eyes. All the same, this is a spider with a knack for accessorizing. Around her neck is a large Elizabethan-ruffed collar.

Or check out "Elsewhere," in which four gorgeous young women in black slips hang around a stairwell, stylized bubbles and black rain drops falling about them. No cartoon vamps, here.

Barr's pop-surrealist cartoon canvasses -- and there are plenty of those in the 323East show, as well -- tend to be stuffed full of disturbing allusions: here a giant unblinking eye, there a buxom sphinx with the head of a beautiful woman.

Indeed, given the artist's interest in images that pack a punch, it comes as little surprise to see a well-worn copy of Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" on a table at his studio in Detroit's Russell Industrial Center.

By contrast, Barr's recent, realistic works spring from the mythic realm of vintage advertisements and noir paperbacks -- and more recently the folk art decorating the sides of Detroit beauty salons.

It's this move into realism that tickles Tom Thewes, who carried Barr's work at Detroit's late C-Pop Gallery until it closed earlier this year. In particular, Thewes points to "Evening," a tension-filled work in which a well-dressed man helps a woman into her fur coat.

"It's beautiful and in the vein of an old 1950s illustration," Thewes says, noting that Barr collects old illustrations by the masters. "There was a whole story there that didn't need all kinds of crazy weird creatures. I loved it."

That said, it's not like Barr's renounced the weird creatures from his pop-surrealist past. Indeed, the artist seems to jump back and forth, depending on his mood.

Consider "Afternoon 2" (on the cover), one of Barr's cartoon works that features his classic trademark super-skinny, hard-living gal in spike heels who looks like she's done more than her share of booze and recreational drugs. Blank-eyed, sharp-faced and rendered in a blue wash, this underfed vixen slouches on a motorized scooter equipped with an amusing superabundance of right-view mirrors. A little thundercloud -- another Barr constant -- hangs just above the handlebars.

Like much of Barr's work, it's unsettling and oddly humorous at the same time.

"One thing I won't say is that Glenn's work is 'fun,' " says fellow underground-art success Niagara, who confesses to being a fan, "because that word makes him shudder.

"But it is hysterical," she says. "What's going on with those cartoon-kooky things flying around in the air? Glenn sure isn't going to tell us."

Indeed, Barr's dark cartoon landscapes often have been mobbed with floating torpedoes, hard-luck Tinkerbells and ugly-boy faces with wings, like angelic cupids lifted from some Renaissance paintings.

Given that comic books and 1960s Saturday-morning TV cartoons loom so large in Barr's past, it's hard to believe that he'll ever abandon the post-apocalyptic landscape, oddball creatures and all, that made him famous.

Indeed, San Francisco artist and printmaker Tracy Cox -- a native Detroiter who admired Barr's work when they were both at CCS -- argues that the seemingly juvenile nature of some of the cartoonish works may help render them more subversive.

"Glenn is known for mixing this comic sensibility with a pulp sensibility," Cox says. "Using cartoon imagery is a good way of getting at dark themes without being a super-downer."

The PR material for a show Barr currently has up in Antwerp, Belgium, nails it on the head.

His work, it says, is "the visual equivalent of a David Lynch film," an artistic vision that succeeds in "merging fine art with Detroit cool."

Just ask one of his skinny vixens or noir babes. They'll tell you.

mhodges@detnews.com (313) 222-6021