Llyn Foulkes. The Lost Frontier, 1997–2005; mixed media; 87 x 96 x 8 in. Courtesy of the Artist and the New Museum.

Llyn Foulkes ranks among that rare cadre of artists for whom fame is an optional extra. Over the course of his fifty-year career, the Los Angeles–based multimedia artist and musician has experienced periods of success—for his monumental Pop-influenced paintings of rocks and, decades later, for his zany, large-scale narrative tableaux. But much of his work has been met with silence from critics and buyers, allowing Foulkes an enduring reputation as an underappreciated art-world outsider. The artist’s retrospective at the New Museum, a traveling exhibition organized by the curators of Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum, positions him squarely in the canon of acclaimed American artists. Yet Foulkes, now seventy-eight, remains stubbornly opposed to the pitfalls and pretensions of the gallery and museum circuit. He is a product of the midcentury American West—a cynical, eccentric figure intent on skewering our national pop culture, political institutions, and military might in equal measure.

Read the full article here.

Llyn Foulkes. The Lost Frontier, 1997–2005; mixed media; 87 x 96 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist and The New Museum

The retrospective, which features over one hundred works, is organized chronologically. Starting with the earth-toned, textural paintings he made in the 1950s, after serving two years with the army in postwar Germany, the exhibition charts each step in Foulkes’s artistic evolution. One room is devoted to his brief flirtation with Pop Art, another to his disturbingly blood-soaked portraits from the 1970s and ’80s, several more to the vibrant mixed-media tableaux for which he is best known. Critics are quick to label Foulkes’s work as erratic and impossible to categorize, yet his sensibility and iconography remain strikingly similar throughout his career. This irreverence and consistent visual vocabulary allow Foulkes to transcend any given media; his drawings, paintings, and installation pieces all feel distinctly like him.

As it turns out, I unknowingly went through the exhibition backward—a happy accident that helped me see the commonalities among Foulkes’s works. His art is heavily influenced by the years he spent in the army and in Los Angeles, and, above all, by that paradigmatic symbol of American culture, Mickey Mouse. The artist himself is the centerpiece of many of his strongest pieces. Using the narrow lens of himself and his family, Foulkes creates bizarre, textural, eye-catching works that speak to the violent hypocrisies of American history.

His work persistently satirizes pop culture icons, particularly Mickey Mouse, the Lone Ranger, and Superman. In 1995’s The Western Viewpoint, Mickey perches on a fence amid a landscape of rolling hills, gazing quizzically at a group of Native Americans seated around a campfire. Mickey’s palpable interest in this seemingly unoccupied territory,  along with the U.S. flag stuck in the ground, reference the ugly cultural imperialism that spurred the adherents of Manifest Destiny across the Great Plains. Mickey resurfaces in But I Thought Art Was Special (Mickey and Me) (1995), one of the more sinister pieces in the exhibition. We see the artist in profile, a gaping toothless hole where his mouth should be; a cutaway of his head reveals the famous mouse picking through the remnants of his brain. Like many of Foulkes’s works, the portrait is particularly unnerving because the layered materials break through the picture plane, forcing a physical connection with the viewer.

Llyn Foulkes. The Corporate Kiss, 2001; oil, acrylic and mixed mediums; 31 1/2 x 26 1/4 x 2 in. Courtesy of the artist and The New Museum

Foulkes first became interested in Walt Disney when he started dating (eventually marrying) the daughter of Ward Kimball, one of the company’s chief animators. His then father-in-law’s gift of a copy of the Mickey Mouse Club handbook sparked a decades-long fascination with the underbelly of commercial advertising, especially campaigns that target children. Disney, with its theme parks, coloring books, cartoons, songs, animated films, and toys, was, in Foulkes’s eyes, a propaganda machine, intent on brainwashing American children into complicit, patriotic citizens.

Mickey was not his only target, however. In 1991’s Where Did I Go Wrong? a dejected Clark Kent—his Superman outfit peeking out under his suit jacket—sits reading a newspaper whose headline announces the outbreak of the Persian Gulf war. In a thought bubble, Superman asks himself the question that serves as the work’s title. When Foulkes crosses the line between biting social commentary and ham-fisted rebuke, as he does here, the straightforwardness can come across like a blunt instrument. The artist is at his best when he fully embraces his weirdness, injecting a personal angle into his social critiques.

From the 1970s onward, portraiture—particularly self-portraiture—becomes a central element of Foulkes’s practice. As in But I Thought Art Was Special, the artist’s most compelling works offer glimpses into his anxiety about aging, his art, his two failed marriages, and his deep mistrust of powerful institutions. He also garnered critical attention for his Bloody Head series, a collection of disfigured portraits that he has produced on and off for over thirty years. The series provides the artist’s sharpest critique of our fractured, violent society and the human costs of war. The Golden Ruler (1985) features a perfectly coiffed Ronald Reagan with a six-inch ruler covering his eyes and blood streaming from his concealed eye sockets; in Military Business an army recruiter sits at a desk, his face similarly obscured and smeared with bright red blood.

Llyn Foulkes. Who’s on Third?, 1971–73; oil on board; 48 x 39 in. Courtesy of the artist and The New Museum

Though his Bloody Head portraits are set against monochrome backgrounds, Foulkes typically incorporates western landscapes as the settings for his works—the backdrop for all this chaos. His vision of the West—and specifically of California—changes little over the course of his career: a lawless, dusty territory of tumbleweeds, ghost towns, and fiercely blue skies. This terrain is, for Foulkes, the locus of American contradiction—simultaneously a site of centuries-old human settlements and of virgin land ripe for the taking, a place known both for its parched deserts and for the glitz of Hollywood, a mecca for pioneers and for pimps.

The exhibition is capped with just such a desertscape: The Lost Frontier, a monumental narrative tableau that serves as an allegory for the moral and physical decay of Los Angeles. But the real masterwork is the other large-scale tableau piece, Pop (1985–90). By layering materials and playing with light and shadow, Foulkes creates a startling illusion of depth in these pieces, and each is set apart in its own darkened room to further heighten the sensory experience of viewing them. In Pop, we see an anxious-looking father (the artist, wearing a Superman costume beneath his ratty clothes) sitting in an armchair watching TV, his two children standing beside him. The scene is set inside a middle-class American home, complete with blaring television set and wood-paneled walls. Scrawled in his son’s notebook are the words: “I will be a square shooter in my home, at school, on the playground. I will be a good American.”

Llyn Foulkes. Pop, 1985–90; mixed media with soundtrack; 84 x 123 x 3 in. Source: http://llynfoulkes.com

The abject horror on the father’s face is a response to the realization that his own children have been indoctrinated into the American cultural propaganda machine; the words on the notebook are the final lines of the Mickey Mouse Club’s creed. A jaunty song  emits from the television’s speakers, reinforcing the father’s psychological distress (the song permeates the entire exhibit, providing an eerie soundtrack). Resembling a cross between Al Yankovic, Pete Stampfel, and the theme from Animaniacs, the frantic tune is actually an original song about Mickey Mouse written by Foulkes and performed by him and his children. Simultaneously amusing and unsettling, fueled by the artist’s own insecurities and rejection of the frightening conformity of middle-class culture, Pop, like Foulkes himself, is an American original.

Llyn Foulkes will be on view at the New Museum, in New York, through September 1, 2013.

I have recently been the lucky recipient of an unprecedented amount of small, but not insubstantial, payments. Some are for arts writing and editing, others are one-time grants, art sales, and various art-world related odd jobs. All have been issued through W-9s and will show up come tax time as 1099-MISC income. None have been taxed. I do have a regular 9-5 job that gives me a more stable income and provides for my room and board. This new, supplemental income will mostly go toward studio rent and art supplies. I understand I should set aside a portion of these funds for the state and feds, but where do I start?

First, congratulations! Nice job on your grants and sales, and good hustle on the art-related income. Second, I can’t believe you came to me for advice that involves numbers. All I can recall about Algebra 1 was that my teacher had a glass eye, and there is honestly a question in my mind as to whether I ever once attended Algebra 2. My strongest memory related to arithmetic doesn’t even have to do with numbers: one summer in college I took a remedial math class and the guy who sat next to me wore a Stone Temple Pilots shirt every day.

Now that I’m wiser and more mature, I shove art-related receipts into an envelope and then hand the whole thing off to an accountant while hyperventilating.

If that’s not enough to scare you away, read on, because I’ve unearthed information that will help us both.* To start, I contacted a friend who is an accountant in a museum, and she backed me up about hiring an accountant: “The best advice I can give you is to seek the counsel of a professional tax accountant who specializes in artists and freelancers. He/she will be able to really analyze your situation and give you advice that is current to state and federal tax law.” It may seem like a cop-out to point you to a professional, but the U.S. tax code gets changed every year; so depending on the specifics of your situation, it may be better to hire an expert who can captain your little financial tugboat through the choppy waters of deductions, exemptions, withholdings, etc.

Llyn Foulkes, Who’s on Third?, 1971-73. Oil on canvas, 48 x 39 inches

My friend sends you some more advice: “The quick and dirty is this: reduce your exemptions at your day job and save your receipts on all expenses related to your practice. Review the W-4 you submitted to your employer and resubmit it with fewer exemptions. Many people I know who freelance and have day jobs take zero exemptions on their W-4.  A Certified Public Accountant can help you determine the best exemption rate for your situation so that you neither owe nor get a refund, which is the best possible outcome. You want that money in your pocket, as you earn it.”

She also pointed me to the book Legal Guide for the Visual Artist, by Tad Crawford. Chapter 20 deals with taxes on income and expenses, and though I glazed over somewhat in a tax-vernacular-inspired stupor, I actually learned a few things that we can both bear in mind:

First, “[t]he artist realizes ordinary income from all income-producing activities of the artist’s profession” [italics mine]. Ordinary income (what you’re earning with your many jobs) is taxed at a higher rate than capital gains income (when you sell stocks or real estate), up to 35%. This tidbit is important for two reasons: one, you can estimate your own tax and set that money aside so that you don’t get caught short when April 15, 2014 rolls around (since you file W9s and claim all your income as a good citizen should, the IRS will tax you on all of it). Two, if you lump all your art-related income together, you’re less likely to claim a loss after you subtract your deductions (see below), which means you’re also less likely to have to prove to the IRS that what you do is a profession and not a hobby.**

Llyn Foulkes, Dali and Me, 2006. Mixed media, 33 x 26 inches

Bear in mind that grants can be tax-tricky but are generally only be excluded from your net income if you’re enrolled in a school (“degree candidates”) and using it for tuition and so on. Prizes and awards are also included in taxable income, so again, expect to pay around 35% of their value to the government. You might end up paying a lower percentage, but it’s worth it to assume the worst and put the money aside.

You probably already know that you can offset your taxable income by claiming deductions: for example, the art supplies and materials you use; the rent and expenses on your workspace if it’s outside your home; some professional equipment; and “meals, lodging, and transportation…incurred in pursuit of professional activities.” Again, this is where it might pay to hire a professional who specifically helps artists. My first accountant—a very conservative man with a deep suspicion of the visual arts—never let me deduct anything and seemed to live in terror that I would get audited. My new accountant makes sure my deductions are fair and appears to believe that I am in legitimate pursuit of a profit, even when my art revenue falls short of my art expenses. Much better!

Llyn Foulkes, Deliverance, 2004-2007. Mixed media, 72 x 84 inches

The book has a sample 1040 Schedule C (which you can also get here). Look it over. If it makes you frown so hard that your eyebrows fuse together, that might be a sign that you don’t have what it takes to tackle this kind of thing on your own. Conversely, you might think, is this all? and feel confident that you’re able to take it on. Perusing the form as well as the materials I have mentioned above will help you decide if your financial life is truly simple enough for you to handle a 1040 solo, or if it’s more complicated and could use the help of a dedicated professional. Whichever you choose, good luck!

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*I’m not an accountant. If I had a lawyer, I bet she would make me write some kind of disclaimer here about how the counsel I provide is for informational purposes only. You should consult a tax professional, and you shouldn’t sue me if you get audited or whatever.

**It’s complicated, but the gist is: if you’re a professional you can take deductions; if you’re a hobbyist, you cannot. See Legal Guide for the Visual Artist Chapter 22, “Taxes: The Hobby Loss Challenge” for more information on the difference between the two and the nine factors that determine “profit motive.”