His painting has become synonymous with retro cool. His stylized images and sardonic quirkiness have made him a leading light in the Lowbrow art world. His work appears on objects and merchandise from cocktail napkins and gift wrap to cigarette lighters and skateboards. But there has never been a major monograph of the artwork of Josh Agle-more commonly known as Shag-until now.

Gathered together in these pages are over 180 wry and colorful scenes of modish decadence: tiki bars and ski lodges filled with wasp-waisted women in Capri pants and men in turtlenecks and eye patches, smoking-jacketed bulls and cranky wolves, blase Adams and Eves sipping highballs. The allure of Shag's work stems from its light-hearted mix of its engaging nostalgic visual vocabulary and its narrative allusiveness. A Shag painting often depicts the middle of a story whose conclusion could be hilarious, catastrophic-or both.

Shag's world is one of skull heads, blowfish, and beehive hairdos, of A-frame houses, circular telephones, and egg-shaped chairs-a fantasy world of crisp lines, sharp acid colors, and endless hinted narratives. Not just the epitome of hip, Shag's paintings are today's pop artriotous off-kilter objects of desire.

Shag-O-Rama

Of Commibmenb,Commerce, and Cocktails

Interiors

Music

Obher Worlds

Bobbles

Tiki

Jeb-Setting

Mythology

Adam & Eve

Asbnology

Women