By For years now, Gallery 1988 in Los Angles, California has been establishing itself as the go-to gallery for all art things related to pop culture. We at Flixist recently featured their exhibit with artist Olly Moss, that was pop culture saturated and quite brilliant, as well as some of their other pop-related past shows.
Starting in 2006, Gallery 1988 has been putting on a yearly show called Crazy 4 Cult, which I like to think of as a mashup of crazy artistic talent and skill with total movie fanboy (and girl) -ness. And now, for the first time, some of the most awesome pieces of art featured at the show are available for only about $25! In book form, that is! Thanks to Gallery 1988, I had the awesome opportunity to take a look at this book!
The book starts out with an introduction by Kevin Smith (Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob) where he tells the story of how he first heard about the idea for the Crazy 4 Cult art show that includes some hilarious NSFW revelations. Let’s just say, the intro ends with Smith saying, “F[*]ck all this chatter … LET’S GO TO THE MOVIES!”
And off the movies we go! The book is chock-full of cult movie references, some opaque, some so obscure I didn’t know what it was even after reading the descriptions. The book is also categorized by movie, as in all the Donnie Darko pages are together, all the Back to the Future pages are together, etc.
I really can’t even describe how much fun it is to sit and look at the whole thing cover to cover. The book playfully wanders you through delightfully exorbitant and exaggerated renditions of Freaks, The Goonies, Edward Scissorhands, Battle Royale, Serenity, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fight Club, True Romance and so, so many more.
Part of the fun of the book is trying to recognize or guess which movie(s) the piece of art is referencing without reading its caption, because – as we can all agree – cult movies are cool, and people who know about them are even cooler.
I think the most fun part of the book though is just seeing all the interesting iterations and reinterpretations that artists have come up with about their favorite movies and being able to flip through the pages of the book and think about how your shared love for these pieces of culture makes you a part of the same strange little cults.
Crazy 4 Cult: Cult Movie Art is an awesome coffee table book for any cult movie cinephile or pop culture art enthusiast. And at an Amazon price of roughly $25, it’s a heck of a deal! If you’d like any more information about the book or the artists in it let me know! All photographs taken by Kyle Wolff.
P.S. My cat Hobbes endorses this book.
