SHAG'S WORLD
Where bottomless cocktails and hedonic cool are
served up with mid-century style and optimism

From the pages of the CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

Pretend you're the new owner of a lovely mid-century modern home -- post-and-beam, open plan, walls of glass, sleek and stylish, and devoid of furnishings.

Start shopping!

An Eames leather chair or two -- check. An amoeba-like Noguchi glass table? Natch. A George Nelson clock -- of course. So Space Age!

But how about those walls! A picture would look nice. Something sophisticated and svelte: a heavy-lidded blonde, say, in a skin-tight cocktail dress, reclining on a divan. Or a James Bond-like figure enjoying cocktails -- in a house that looks suspiciously like your own.

The artist to choose? Who else but Shag.

In Eichler homes throughout Northern California, in Alexanders in sunny Palm Springs, in modest Streng Bros. half-plexes in the Sacramento Valley, and even in luxurious modern masterpieces designed by Los Angeles architects John Lautner and Ray Kappe, paintings by Shag have become as integral to the decor as flat-screen TVs.

Shag -- the nom de brush for the artist known to friends as Josh Agle -- remembers going on a home tour of an Eichler neighborhood in the city of Orange. "At least 50 percent of the homes had my prints in them," he says.

"For some reason," he says of his artwork, "it does seem to look good in modern houses."

In fact, the reason is obvious. Nothing on canvas looks more '50s or early '60s -- or at least the early 21st century vision of the '50s and '60s -- than paintings by Shag -- not even stuff that really was painted back then.

Beatniks playing bongos, Tiki lovers sipping cocktails, jazz artists playing it cool, even a grizzly bear grabbing a trout from the swimming pool of a butterfly-roofed home -- Shag paints the era not as it was, but as a dream that may still come true.

And no artist has ridden the mid-century modern wave with more skill than Shag.

"My career as an artist came along with people's interest in mid-century modern architecture and furniture," Agle says, surrounded by Tikis, his own paintings, paintings by his friends, and artwork by some actual 1950s artists who influenced him, in the studio of his mid-century modern home near Santa Ana in Orange County. "As people's appreciation of it grew, their appreciation of my art grew along with it."

"When I first started painting, there weren't that many people who were into mid-century modern," he says.

Shag hit at the right time, says Billy Shire, who's considered one of the inventors of so-called 'lowbrow art,' through his Los Angeles gallery La Luz de Jesus, which gave Shag his first one-man show in 1996. It sold out.

"It was a time when the economy was right -- and the collector base that was forming, and that was desirous of the mid-'50s, was just coming into its own financially," Shire says. "And the Internet helped. A lot more people saw his work."

Not everyone whose mid-century modern home contains a Shag bought the painting to fit the house. "Some people bought mid-century modern houses because they liked my art," Agle says. And, he says, "Most of the people collecting my art don't even care about the '50s or '60s."

Today, although many artists work in styles rooted in the 1950s and early '60s (Shag estimates that six or seven are at it seriously, followed by "hundreds and hundreds of imitators"), few do it as successfully as Shag, Shire says.

"I was the first to stumble into this formula," Agle says.

He loved the work of such great 1950s illustrators and commercial artists as Gene Deitch and Jim Flora, both known for sophisticated, at times surrealistic cartoon-like album covers; and Charley Harper, known for highly stylized book illustration.

"I wanted to take that style and put it in a painting in a gallery, not just use it for commercial purposes," Agle says. "I had to do a few things for this. I decided, almost everything I painted would be telling a story. There would be several unexpected elements in the artwork, and there would be an ironic humor that you wouldn't find in the commercial art of the 1950s."

Shag's version of '50s art won fans quickly.

"It was his use of color," Shire says, "besides his amalgamation, combination, and adaptation of past influences and styles that he brought together. Josh did it in such a way as to be original and to make it seem new. He had the history and the language from the past, but he could put it all together. Most people have the influences, but they don't put it all together. And he has a very wry sense of humor."

"Most people call it 'Shag style,'" Agle says of the current vogue for neo-'50s art, "which is flattering to me. It's not so flattering to the other artists when people tell them, 'Oh, you're doing that Shag style.' I wanted to make sure I owned that style. I didn't want people to say, 'Your paintings reminds me of that other artist.'"

Shag has become so successful -- his paintings sell at galleries for $10,000 and up, his prints in the hundreds of dollars, and he does not do commissions, thank you -- that a wary observer might accuse the artist of cynically pandering to the mid-century masses.

As Shire noted in the book, 'Shag: the Art of Josh Agle,' "He has become arguably the most merchandised artist since Peter Max."

Could a Shag painting be seen as the equivalent of a Thomas Kinkade cottage but with a butterfly roof?

Not hardly. Nobody who spends any time with Agle could doubt his sincerity. The guy -- despite his orange-tinged hair -- is just too darned straightforward, and so obviously in love with what he draws. "I just paint the stuff I like and the stuff I'm interested in," he says.

And Shag's art, far from being treacly and sweet, is sharp and colorful, cartoony -- yet mysterious.

It also helps that Shag has his own vision of the era. "There was an optimism," he says. "When you bought a mid-century modern house and you filled it with modern furniture, you were looking forward, and I appreciate that optimism.

"And also to me, sophistication. Obviously most of the houses built in the 1950s weren't mid-century modern, but the people who were building them were more sophisticated, more artistic -- and that's what appeals to me as well. And it also to me implies hedonism -- the great cocktail parties, the smoking and the drinking. 'Playboy' magazine from the '50s and early '60s embodies that. It was okay to be a hedonist."

"I see the '50s as being mostly square, with little pockets of hipness," he says, "and it's those little pockets of hipness that really interest me."

"He just creates," says Lee Joseph, a record producer and deejay who knew Agle before he became Shag (the name blends 'Josh' and 'Agle'). "The market found him."

Joseph remembers when Agle would charge all of $175 for designing a band's entire look, its LP and CD covers plus posters. And Agle never sent a bill. "Josh," Joseph would say, "I really appreciate this, but you have to start charging me."

Agle himself got into modern design in a typically Southern California 1980s kind of way, by imbibing the Tiki ethos along with tropical drinks at his favorite Tiki bars, while picking up '50s and '60s LPs, chosen for their covers, at thrift stores in Santa Ana and Long Beach. Soon Agle was furnishing his apartment with mid-century furniture he found alongside the records.

One of nine children in a Mormon family that lived in Sierra Madre, in the mountains above Pasadena, Agle, who intended to follow his father's profession of accounting, did commercial art to pay for his studies -- then switched his major to art.

Meanwhile, Lee Joseph recalls, "The surf-lounge-exotica-garage genres were peaking, in kind of a cult sense," and Agle designed covers and posters in a variety of styles for such bands as Witchdoctors A Go-Go, Del Noah and the Mt. Ararat Finks, and the Brian Setzer Orchestra. Agle also worked as a record company art director, designing albums for Big Sandy, among others.

Agle also played lead guitar and sang with the Swamp Zombies ("a little bit rockabilly, some folk influence, a little punk," he says) and ran his own label, Mai Tai. He quit music in 2000. "Creatively," he says, "I was spreading myself too thin."

Agle focused on commercial art "because I knew that way I could make a living. I had friends in art school who wanted to be fine artists and ended up working at Aaron Brothers selling frames."

He was as surprised as anyone when his solo show at La Luz sold out. "I thought, 'Wow, this is amazing! I'm successful!'"

Although Agle continued doing commercial art for several years, today, with rare exceptions, he sticks to fine art. "With commercial art," he says, "you are usually directed in what you do. But with fine art, I can do whatever I want."

Shag has also cut back on his merchandising -- cups, T-shirts, and the like. At first, he says, "any company that wanted to license, I said yes." Today, any new Shag product will be a limited edition -- and high-end. Look for some $120 Hawaiian shirts.

"Licensing the images served its purpose," he says, "it got my artwork out there for people to see."

He may not be a Peter Max, but Agle does attend to marketing, using both a licensing and a commercial agent. He directs overall strategy.

Chief among his strategic decisions is: Agle does all the artwork himself. With assistants, he says, "There could be questions. Is it really an original?" He also sells through galleries, not on his own. "People were saying the gallery system is dead, you should sell on your Web site. But having a gallery adds legitimacy," he says.

In real life, Shag is unlike the characters that populate his paintings -- though he does enjoy a cocktail; and he and his wife, Glen Way-Agle, like fondue. He does not smoke. These days he's listening to Weezer and the Kills, along with organ jazz. Since Zoey, 10, and Zach, 6, came along, Agle rarely makes the scene. But at his art openings, Shag does make a splash, driving up in a classic car and sashaying through in a vintage suit.

But he's too nice a guy, too soft-spoken and well mannered to really play the star. At one opening, Shire remembers, Agle got waylaid in the parking lot by 40 or 50 autograph seekers. He only made it inside after Shire told the crowd, "This has got to stop."

"He can't say no," Shire says.

The Agle home, built in 1962 by an unknown designer, has a touch of Japan and a fair bit of Tiki -- at the entrance and in the studio, and with the 380-plus Tiki mugs displayed between the living and dining areas. There's a rail pole from the original Don the Beachcomber Tiki restaurant and one from Pongo Pongo in Arizona. The pool and waterfalls, however, are Tiki free.

Agle may be doing well -- but he's not quite where he wants to be. Being identified with lowbrow art doesn't bother him.

Lowbrow art tends to be more illustrational than what passes today for fine art -- more attuned to hot rods, Bettie Page, and grinning devils. "It's become a little bit more proletariat" than fine art, Shire says, less enslaved to the "arts establishment saying what is good and what people should like." He adds: "These people now are buying it [lowbrow art] because they like it."

"I don't have a problem with the term lowbrow," Agle says. "Most of the artists do have a problem with that. They think it's demeaning."

Besides showing in galleries in many cities -- including Los Angeles and Palm Springs, New York, Seattle, and Tokyo -- he has had a one-man exhibit at the Laguna Art Museum.

Still, it is annoying that not everyone takes what Agle does seriously.

Some of his newer work is growing larger in size and theme, with more figures, and more going on. "They're a little more surreal and decadent than I've been in the past," he says.

"Real fine artists with blue-chip galleries, that's where every artist wants to be. Every artist wants to hear that his painting has sold for $5 million at Sotheby's," Agle says.

But for now, he says, "I love painting. I love being a painter. And that's what I want to do."

Photos: John Eng, Adriene Biondo; and courtesy Lee Joseph (of Dionysus Records) and Josh Agle

All Shag paintings courtesy Josh Agle

• To find a gallery carrying Shag paintings, check his website, shag.com. For prints, go to shagmart.com. Shag's next book of art, 'Autumn's Come Undone' (Baby Tattoo Press), is due out in September 2009. It features a series of large-scale paintings that, says Shag, "will be darker and more personal than anything I've done in the past." Also don't miss 'Shag: the Art of Josh Agle' (Chronicle Books).

• Shag has designed a print to benefit the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House in Los Angeles. It is available from the Ennis House Foundation: ennishouse.org

SHAG SHOWCASE