Herbert L. Brown: Artist

"Sauber und Schmutz"
—Herb Brown



“At the present time, when graffiti is scribbled on virtually every available public surface, the idea of scrawling a child's face over a poster or an ad page from a popular magazine might seem obvious. But that was not the case in the early Sixties when Herb Brown began the practice with a vengeance.

Legitimately and by stealth, he acquired stacks of advertising pages and subway posters and used them as the grounds for his paintings. He allowed bits of lettering and illustration to show through, as if the basic issue was the juxtaposition of his hot, personal, calligraphic smear on top and the cool, inert neatness of advertising art underneath… a group of erotic paintings so blatant and ferocious that they may give pause to D. H. Lawrence or, to that matter to Henry Miller, a direct source of Brown's inspiration.”

—Budd Hopkins, 1994