Artist Robert Williams (aka “Mr. Bitchin'”) is a cartoonist at heart, with the ambitions of a history professor, a poet, a philosopher and more. He’s the guy who founded the top-selling art magazine in America (as of 2009), Juxtapoz. He used to ride unicycles with his wife through their hometown. Of Los Angeles. On acid. No joke.

He likes to combine colors and imagery less to delight the senses than to challenge them. His paintings range from a rendering of Oscar Wilde’s 1882 visit to the rough and rowdy mining town of Leadville, Colorado (above) to pictorial explanations of the nonlinear nature of time and space to the heartache of a hopeless romantic. He’s part Norman Rockwell, part Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and part Salvador Dali. In short, the guy’s a friggin’ genius. And seems like a genuinely cheerful, good-hearted fellow. I love that in an artist.

I saw him do Q&A last week after a screening of a documentary about him, Robert Williams: Mr. Bitchin’. I learned that he gets up at 4:30 a.m. to start painting, motivated (at least in the past) “more out of jealousy than anything else.” He once said “I’m not accepted as a blue chip artist. And there’s every indication I never will be.” Eh. I’m not sure when he said that, but he was invited to (and showed in) the 2010 Whitney Biennial, so come on. He’s getting his due.

His small(ish) and deeply loyal following keeps him in paint, that’s for sure. But you have to spend time with his paintings, so in the age of the 2-second attention span a lot of people aren’t going to “get” his work. Their loss. Each painting has a complex story to tell or concept to explain. They honestly do remind me of Norman Rockwells. More twisted, sure, and more complicated, but a story is there if you take the time to be with it. And I dig that in an artist.

The movie opens with him explaining his painting about Piltdown Man to the people behind the camera. He then walks us through the painting, a whimsical but historically accurate representation of one of the great hoaxes of 20th century archaeology. Calling bullshit is something he likes to do. He also likes to paint zee sexy womens (like a good hotrod/underground cartoonist should), and though he “can’t stand big tits,” uses them as shorthand to depict sex/sexiness. Which earns him the ire of the politically correct, of course. Especially when said women are draped sensuously atop various food items. Drives people wild. Eh. People.

Other interesting things Williams said at the Q&A:

(oh, and you have to read these with the high-pitched, insistent Jimmy Stewart voice in your head. This is how Williams addressed the crowd, sounding just like Stewart during the “Building and Loan meltdown” scene in It’s a Wonderful Life.)

• On Pop Art finally dethroning Abstract Expressionism: “When it first came out, I was like ‘WOW! Yeah! We’re doing representational art again!’ But they weren’t SAYIN’ anything!”
• On Abstract Expressionism, for that matter: “A lotta people say that whole movement was encouraged and funded by the Rockefellers and alla those guys. Well, it got rid o’ that COMMIE ART [the class-conscious social realism in art of the ’30s and ’40s] real fast, didnit??”
• On riding a unicycle on the streets of Los Angeles on acid: “It was a BLAST, man!”

Williams is an institution now. His Lowbrow Art movement is well-rooted and fruitful. He’s in the Whitney. One critic in the flick said that when people look back on 2oth century art, they’ll talk about “the lines of Picasso, the colors of Matisse, and the thoughts of Robert Williams.” Maybe. Who knows? Sounds good to me. I’m talking about his thoughts right now, aren’t I?