How Juxtapoz Magazine Changed the World

Greg Beato has a new article up at Reason about the upcoming 100th issue of Juxtapoz, the magazine that ushered in the Lowbrow Art movement. This led to an egalitarianization trend in the art world:

They evoked movie posters, tattoos, comic books, and pulp novels, and while they contained plenty of surrealist ambiguity, they didn't require an aesthetic translator from Artforum to decode them. Fine art, Juxtapoz insisted, could speak to more than just curators, collectors, gallery owners, and critics. It could speak to a much wider audience, and not just from the tastefully generic walls of the nation's most corporate-sponsored museums. A Zippo lighter, a skateboard, a pair of sneakers—they were all potential canvases.

I wrote about this subject previously here. Beato notes that Juxtapoz currently has a higher circulation than any other art magazine in America, including more highbrow fare. Art is for everyone, regardless of artificial social distinctions. Juxtapoz is helping to erode those barriers.