Todd Schorr (b. 1954) is an American artist and one of the most prominent members of the ‘Lowbrow’ art movement or pop surrealism. His work combines a cartoon visual vocabulary with painting methods of the Old Masters with large canvases (+80″), and is darkly satirical.
His piece, ‘Clash of Holidays,’ aroused controversy when it was exhibited in 2002. It depicts Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny locked in mortal combat. Santa’s wielding an axe, and the rabbit has a knife. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Baby Jesus, who’s munching on an ear from a chocolate rabbit, stand by. Schorr was accused of blasphemy by civic leaders in South Florida. ‘It was just a joke, really, like lot of my paintings that poke fun at things,’ comments Schorr, who completed the piece in 2000, then sold it to Courteney Cox.
In 1976, he moved to New York City where he produced work for projects including album covers for AC/DC, movie posters for George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, and covers for Time magazine that now reside in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
By 1985 Schorr began making a concentrated effort to break away from illustration and focus on fine art painting. The so-called ‘Lowbrow’ art movement that he and his contemporaries helped form almost 25 years ago is now a global phenomenon.
The Daily Omnivore 
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