It's astounding that, for the most part, the art world still maintains a steadfast refusal to accept cartooning as a legitimate form. That bigoted stance seems to have little to do with intent, content, quality and everything to do with means of delivery, i.e. if it's in a pamphlet it's not art, if it's in a frame hanging on a wall it is. The continued popularity of that pop artist and rotten plagiarist Lichtenstein says it all.

Nice, then, to see one-time underground comix creator, the legendary self-styled 'Lowbrow' Robert Williams was last year honoured with a solo exhibition at New York's Tony Shafrazi Gallery, where the old outlaw's work was hung on walls previously occupied by, variously, Picasso, Bacon and Basquiat. The exhibition, which featured 25 new paintings by Williams, was titled Conceptual Realism: In the Service of the Hypothetical and this book bears the same name because it is the catalogue to that show.

Alongside the new paintings, this coffee table book (or perhaps more appropriately vinyl album sleeve-sized paperback given the author's origins in hot rod weirdo art) published by cartooning champion Fantagraphics also includes preliminary drawings and essays on each piece by the artist as well as designs for, and photographs of, a 2008 commission to create four sculptures or 3D variations of his work. Lastly, the book opens with a statement of intent and an explanation of what inspired the work, also written by Williams.

It's a handsome package. But is the art in it any good? And what exactly is conceptual realism. The latter, according to Williams, is applying craftsmanship to conceptual art. That notion is total anathema to most of the art world, which is why so much conceptual art is all idea and no execution, or to put it another way: crap. Williams attempts to redress that imbalance with a series of meticulously rendered oil, jute and watercolour paintings. In one fine example, 'The Persuasion of Right Angles' the artist looks at geometry as metaphor with a vertigo-inducing picture of a woman standing on the edge of a landscape that spirals away from her in a dizzying series of 90 degree turns, like a world made from a enormous corkscrewing picture frame.

In the flesh - or paint - that picture measures six foot by five foot six inches. You could end up feeling like Alice on the verge of tumbling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, standing in front of that. The effect is, of course, lost reduced to the size of a record cover. The effect these reproductions do produce, however, is making you want to see the exhibition, and so the pleasure of looking at these images in this otherwise marvellous book is, inevitably, tinged with disappointment.
Miles Fielder