Stu Mead

Stu Mead's (born 1955) paintings approach the art world at a tangent; though the artist received a formal art education, his cartoon-inspired style and predilection for painting prepubescent, female objects of desire has placed him somewhere outside the mainstream, but with a firm cult following. This monograph compiles many of Mead's paintings--fantastical, surreal and erotic--in a handsome hardcover. Inspired by the paintings and drawings of Hans Bellmer and Balthus, Mead works at the intersection of high and low art, unabashedly depicting taboo topics and scenarios. A student of Andrea Dworkin's in the 1980s, Mead comes out of the radical feminist movement, and his graphic painting style investigates identity, gender and social emancipation. Straddling the line between fairytale illustration and comic-book humor, Berlin-based Mead's controversial work is published as a retrospective for the first time.