Overspray: Riding High with the Kings of California Airbrush Art

by Dan Nadel

Overspray is the conclusive account of the rise of airbrush art, and of the equally bright and glossy Los Angeles culture alongside which it came to prominence in the 1970s. Inspired by surf graphics, psychadelia and the slick shine of Hollywood, a generation of young artists began to make every lip and palm tree glisten, and every record cover shine. Fueled by a combination of intense demand, sleepless nights and brutal competition, the four men at the center of L.A.'s airbrush art market--Charles E. White III, Peter Palombi, Dave Willardson and Peter Lloyd--embarked on careers encompassing work for Playboy , Levi's, the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart and major studio films including American Graffiti and Tron. Together, their work came to define the look of illustrative graphics for a generation of viewers. This book tells the story of these four artists for the first time through hundreds of images of the artists' best and best-known work, unseen production roughs, documentary photographs and other ephemera. Viewed now, their surreal, funny and utterly slick imagery seems all the more fantastic--combining technical precision with wild flights of imagination that bring to mind the work of some of today's top artists, from Takashi Murakami to Matthew Barney. Essay by Mike Salisbury, acclaimed designer of everything from Disney logos to Jurassic Park ad campaigns to Sassy magazine.

Genres: Art

226 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

Dan Nadel is the owner of PictureBox, Inc. (http://www.pictureboxinc.com), a Grammy Award-winning publishing company.

Dan has authored books including Art Out of Time: Unknown Visionary Cartoonists, 1900-1969 and Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980. He has edited books including Gary Panter, We All Die Alone, and Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes.
He has also co-edited Comics Comics and is currently the co-editor of The Comics Journal.

He has curated exhibitions in Tokyo, Paris, L.A. and NYC, including the first major Jack Kirby retrospective, The House that Jack Built (Lucerne, 2010) and Karl Wirsum: Drawings 1967-1970 at Derek Eller Gallery.

He lives in Brooklyn with his beloved Rachel, their dog, Mr. Fatty Pants and their boy Henry.