Original Grin: The Art of Ron English
Through his highly subversive art Ron English (b. 1959) has bombed the global landscape with striking and often unsettling imagery. He coined the term “POPaganda” to describe his signature and darkly satirical renderings of corporate branding icons. Ranging from superhero mythology to pillars of art history, his work is populated with a vast and constantly growing arsenal of original characters such as MC Supersized, the obese fast-food mascot featured in the hit movie Supersize Me; and Abraham Obama, which fused America’s 16th and 44th Presidents, an image that was posited by the media as having directly impacted the 2008 election. His cameo on The Simpsons secured his position as America’s premier pop iconoclast.
This book is the first complete retrospective of English’s work, compiling his paintings, illustrations, toys, sculpture, street art, and “agit-pop.” Additionally, it contains a lengthy and comprehensive interview with the artist conducted exclusively for this publication.
Ron English is a prolific and skilled oil painter known as “The Godfather of Street Art.” He has bombarded the global landscape with unforgettable images on the street, in museums, movies, books, and television. He is considered by many to be one of the more skilled renderers of his generation.
Joseph Bravo is an independent curator and arts writer. After initially working in the Classical and Egyptian antiquities, Bravo now focuses his attention on issues in contemporary art, particularly those relating to the dynamics of the creation of the art canon and the inclusion of marginalized aesthetic optics.