Ulysses: Andrew Schoultz

Let's face it, there are a lot of Andrew Schoultz imitators out there these days. And while Andrew Schoultz may be the original Andrew Schoultz, his legacy is still damaged by the plethora of similar young visual artists, both legitimate and otherwise. The imagery he uses and, more importantly, his detailed line work style and mural techniques have almost become a common language nowadays. It takes a solid document like Ulysses: Departures, Journey, & Returns. The Artwork of Andrew Schoultz to clarify that we are, indeed, witnessing a master.

The book itself is impressive. It is 10.5 inches tall and 180 pages deep, full color, hard cover, and even has a double gatefold (where the pages are twice as large and can be unfolded. It has got everything you could want in an art book: large works, details, installations, murals, drawings, gallery exhibitions, collaborations, sketches, and photographs. It gets even better; there are no less than four essays about the work and the artists. All for only $30! I'd say my only complaints are that a few of the photos are slightly off-focus (one printed as a two-page spread), and the hardcover is white and can get grungy pretty quickly if you manhandle your books like I (and our customers) do.

Schoultz's work draws from a lexicon of images and icons that are used and reimagined in endless combinations. Pirate ships, tree stumps and branches, birdhouses, elephants, pyramids, eyeballs, Trojan horses, telephone poles, birds, bottles, and shacks are rendered in stylized textures of wood, brick, magma, ocean waves, clouds, and cyclones. The overall effect on some larger pieces can be visual overwhelming in its crowds of details, but the scope of the work is often breathtaking beyond the impressiveness of the massively repetitive detail renderings.

The book covers the past 10 years of Schoultz's artistic output, not including his graffiti persona, which he keeps completely separate from this work. While the large murals and seriously epic artworks are great, I find some of smaller, simpler works (that are often parts of larger installations) the most appealing and approachable. There is plenty of details to pour over, and many pages of black and white sketches which show even further exploration into the imagery. As cohesive as this large body of work is, the murals and the gallery installations and the works on paper and the sketches do stand apart from one another.

Alas, Schoultz's work does not often lend itself easily to 10x7" reproductions. I really don't think a better job could have been done trying to encapsulate works of this scale in a document like this, but the scope and size of some of the art simply does not come across as loud as it would in person. Still, without a book like this, how many of us would have seen his murals in Indonesia.

All in all, Ulysses is one fantastic art book. Andrew Schoultz's art is really fun to look at and the quality of the publication is just phenomenal. It was published in 2006 by Paper Museum Press in San Francisco. It is currently distributed by Ginko and Last Gasp, so it should be available at most quality artist's bookstores. Only 3000 copies of the 1st edition were printed so, for only $30, you would be a fool to not get yourself a copy.


Ulysses: Departures, Journeys, & Returns. The Artwork of Andrew Schoultz is available right now in the Rowan Morrison online fine art bookstore. Priority shipping with tracking is only $5.50 in the US.


Links:

Andrew Schoultz website - Andrew Schoultz interview