Art Sculpture Wheel by Robert Loughlin ‘1949 – 2011’

In life, Mr. Loughlin was a furniture picker who sold Paul Evans tables to New York’s swankiest midcentury furniture shops. In death, he has gained a measure of immortality for his Dadaesque series of paintings, “The Brute,” which depicts a kind of Cro-Magnon James Dean with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
He is the misanthropic muse whose sole pleasures in life, aside from nicotine consumption, are plaid shirts, sex and a stiff drink.
Ostensibly, the Brute was inspired by Gary Carlson, a strapping Vietnam War veteran.

In September 2011, while in the middle of a bender, Mr. Loughlin, 62, was hit by a car as he crossed the highway near the Airstream trailer he shared with Mr. Carlson in North Bergen, N.J.. He died instantly, leaving behind a trove of his works, which he painted not just on canvas but on skateboards, wooden tabletops and Louis XIV chairs.
Since then, Brutes have been popping up in seemingly every design magazine in the world.