Futurelics: Robert Mars Past is Present

Futurelics: Past is Present is the first publication of the work of contemporary artist Robert Mars that earned comparisons with Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Diebenkorn, James Rosenquist, and other Pop Art masters. Taking inspiration from the golden age of American popular culture and the iconography of the 1950s and 60s, Mars employs a rich colour palette in collage art. Often tongue-in-cheek, his signature neon Futurelics Popforms pay homage to the power of iconic branding, gripping beauty, and whimsical imagery cultivated by the urgent pressures that evolved from post-WWII to the present. Mars' optimism recalls a time when instant digital celebrity was inconceivable - when people lived with the myth of uniquely untouchable icons - the Futurelics - Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, Audrey Hepburn, Elvis Presley, and many others. Futurelics are what have lasting impact - what births a legacy, larger than life, larger than lifestyle. That is Futurelics.

Ted Vassilev is the president and founder of DTR Modern Galleries, with locations in Boston, New York, Palm Beach, and Washington, DC. Eleanor Heartney is an art critic based in New York City. Author of over 20 art books, including Postmodernism: Movements in Modern Art, she is a contributing editor to Art in America and Artpress and has written extensively on contemporary art issues for publications such as Artnews, Art and Auction, The New Art Examiner, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Bruce Helander is an art critic, former Editor-in-Chief of The Art Economist and contributor to the art and style section of the Huffington Post. As a collage and assemblage artist, his work is in over fifty museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Smithsonian, Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. His work has been the subject of 100 reviews and articles in numerous publications, including Art in America, ARTnews, and The Washington Post. Donald Kuspit is an emeritus professor of art history and philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook. He is a contributing editor at Artforum and Percontra, and the author of dozens of books on art, including his most recent, A Critical History of Modern Art.