Robert Yarber

Who is Robert Yarber?

Robert Yarber is an American painter and Distinguished Professor of Art at Pennsylvania State University. He received a BFA from Cooper Union in 1971, and an MFA from Louisiana State University in 1973.

Yarber gained international attention when his work was included in "Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained: American Visions of the New Decade", an exhibit organized by the New Museum for display in the American Pavilion at the 41st Venice Biennale in 1984. At the Venice Biennale, he was one of twenty-four artists represented in the United States pavilion. Yarber gained further prominence with his inclusion in the Whitney Biennial in 1985. In 1990, Yarber, along with artists Janet Woolley, Jenny Holzer and the illustrators Lou Brooks and Marvin Mattelson, participated in a MTV advertising campaign in Rolling Stone magazine that allowed them the freedom to create an illustration without specific requirements.

Yarber has been credited with influencing the Terry Gilliam film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,. According to cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, the look of the film was influenced by Yarber's paintings that are "Very hallucinatory: the paintings use all kinds of neon colors, and the light sources don't necessarily make sense." According to Gilliam, they used him as a guide "While mixing our palette of deeply disturbing fluorescent colors."