High Brow, 2024

JOHNNY ROMEO

High Brow, 2024

acrylic and oil on canvas

410 x 410 mm

One bird’s trash is another bird’s masterpiece in Johnny Romeo’s cocksure tribute to David Bowie, High Brow. A gleefully irreverent spin on the cover of Bowie’s iconic 1977 album ‘Low’, as referenced in the phrase ‘Low Brow’, the painting reimagines the Starman as a cultured Berlin rooster in a duffel coat. By jamming together one of modern music’s most revered critical darlings with absurd bird imagery, Romeo breaks down the barriers between ‘popular culture’ and ‘fine art’ and encourages us to think about what is considered highbrow and lowbrow. Romeo hilariously plays on the notion of highbrow culture through the rooster’s upraised brow, an expression implying the Bowie Bird’s readiness to rock the foundations of cultural elitism with his morning anthem.