From the outside, it looks like any other house in the neighborhood: well-landscaped grounds, two-car garage, yes, a nice little suburban sanctuary. You imagine matching carpets and drapes inside, maybe a couple of Little League trophies, portraits of the kids, and ceramic kittens.

You are wrong. Inside this particular San Fernando Valley home, you'll find a different vibe indeed. An old barber's chair sits inexplicably in the living room, which is peppered with vintage car parts and painting supplies. No Little League trophies-the dominant motif here is skulls. Lots of them. In every room. Except the back bedroom/office, which houses a truly daunting collection of authentic Imperial German war helmets.

This home does not belong to the Joneses. Welcome to the lair of Robert Williams.

"He's not the way he draws. I've always questioned him on that-I say, 'You draw all this crazy stuff, but you live such a sedate life. Why is that?' I never could get a decent answer out of him."- Ed "Big Daddy" Roth on Robert Williams

"If you have a hot rod that does 10 seconds in the quarter-mile, then it does 10 seconds in the quarter-mile indisputably," says painter Robert Williams, reclining on his sofa with a glass of root beer.

"But in the art world, you're not working with definites. You're working with peoples' tastes, no matter what the critics claim. You could get a dog turd on a stick, and this guy could write a whole thesis on it-about the artist that did it and its significance to how preposterous it is in the face of all this other art. That is called 'art-speak.'"

Don't get him started on critics. The slick-haired 57-year-old is doubtless one of the greatest hot rod artists of all time, and ranks among the most influential painters to emerge from the '60s counterculture. And if you ask the right people, you'll hear a good deal more-that Williams is one of the best representational imagists this century, period. In pop terms, a Williams piece is a bit like Norman Rockwell meeting Salvador Dali for a Molotov cocktail at a Slayer gig, and it has a way of distancing the prudes-as well as the critics. In Williams' world, puppies lay impaled on machine-gun barrels, pirate galleons are attacked by giant-brained space monsters, and nude female forms are confused with all manner of food items. Put diplomatically, the fine arts realm has thus far been somewhat reluctant to share in Williams' vision. But it goes beyond the subject matter.

First, there was Williams' involvement during the '60s with Zap Comix, an anarchic tome of twisted humor, socially relevant vitriol, and blunt offensiveness for its own sake that featured the work of fellow malcontents R. Crumb and Rick Griffin. Comic books, hot rods, monsters? Amusing perhaps, not art. Another reason for the high-brow chagrin: Williams is a representational painter-that is, you can tell what it is you're looking at. A horse is painted as a horse, not an amorphous black ink blob or, say, a set of right angles colored orange and called Stallion/Stilts. A Williams painting like Two Bull Dykes Fighting for the Privilege of Buying a Prostitute a Banana Daiquiri is a fair chunk to chew for the Chablis-and-brie art crowd, weaned as they were on minimalist, conceptualist, and abstract expressionist art. Which brings up the third point: Williams' work is a direct challenge to the viewer; a painting like Ranch of Disease is not designed to sit quietly in the background at an upper-crust social or in a posh bank lobby, which is part of the point. And a growing number of young artists who draw inspiration from Williams agree.