It’s a sunny day on a picture-perfect street in Palm Springs’ Vista Las Palmas neighborhood. Classic cars line the driveways of midcentury modern homes: an Avanti outside an A-frame, a 1966 Pontiac GTO convertible at a house with a butterfly roof, a Porsche 356 Cabriolet below a folded-plate roofline, an E-Type in front of an asymmetrical modern home, and a Mercedes-Benz 300SL roadster in the drive of another butterfly roof ready for flight.
This is the scene of a spirited Shag original titled “35 Wheels,” a print that embodies the SoCal artist’s dedication to the minute details of automotive and architectural design. (If you’re counting, those five cars have only 20 wheels. The other 15 appear on six bikes, a dog cart, and a unicycle, underscoring Shag’s penchant for whimsy.)
“Villa Verticale” is one of Shag’s newest prints.
ART BY SHAG, COURTESY THE SHAG STORE
The art of Shag — née Josh Agle, where Sh + Ag = Shag — has become synonymous with the “look” of Palm Springs, imagined or otherwise. Fans revere the world portrayed in Shag’s oeuvre, one of sleek neo Rat Packers grooving at free-floating cocktail parties in an idealized and all-encompassing midcentury modern universe. His renderings are an industry unto themselves. In the Uptown Design District, The Shag Store, run by Jay Nailor and MiShell Modern, draws legions of collectors for monthly print launch events; the art extends to books, barware, clocks, lamps, and other giftables. He even designed a house that officially debuted to the public during Modernism Week 2024, envisioned to give the experience of immersing in a life-size Shag print.
There’s another MCM signifier seen in many of his works: cars. Shag’s are more than idealized 1950s and ’60s cruisers with gratuitous tailfins and juke box grilles. His automotive set dressing pinpoints specific makes and even model years, a function of his knowledge of automotive history and his observation of the many vintage vehicles that cruise Palm Springs streets today.
“My original paintings were aspirational,” Agle says. “I was painting houses I wanted to be in, parties I wanted to be at, and cars I wanted to own. That’s why I was painting real houses and real cars.” While he doesn’t own any vintage cars currently, he harbors fond memories of his ’64 Thunderbird, the first real car he put into a painting. It was a self-portrait of sorts, featuring Josh and his wife, Glen, among a procession of cars rolling past the Rainbow, Roxy, and Whiskey a Go Go on Sunset Boulevard. Titled “Live on the Strip,” the piece also features a Porsche 911, VW Beetle, and Jaguar E-Type.
Shag is especially attuned to the role the Studebaker Avanti played in Palm Springs automotive history. “To me, the Avanti is the most ‘Palm Springs’ car of all time,” he says. “Raymond Loewy imported a team of auto designers and rented a space so they could design the car in Palm Springs. I love the story of the Avanti; it was supposed to save Studebaker.”
A titan of industrial design, Loewy commissioned architect Albert Frey in 1947 to create a bachelor pad in Little Tuscany with a pool that extended beneath an exterior wall and into the living room. He brought designers Tom Kellogg, Bob Andrews, and John Ebstein to town in the spring of 1961 to conceptualize a sports car that aimed to be Studebaker’s “hail Mary.”
Shag’s “The Misstep” depicts Loewy and a team member inspecting a clay model Avanti; a sketch of the car hangs on the wall. A mustachioed Loewy is easily recognizable, wearing a stylish nipped-at-the waist sport coat with padded shoulders. Fellow sophisticates with drinks in hand gather around the pool. One merrymaker seems to have lost his footing and is shoulder deep in the water.
The artist has contemplated buying an Avanti, but his daughter was accepted to medical school, so practicality prevailed. Maybe that underpins much of his work: He paints a fantasy world of idealized modernism that is, for many, out of reach, however his prints and other products remain relatively attainable.
Agle’s personal saga reflects the collision of real and imagined worlds. He comes from a family of practicing Mormons, so crazy lampshade-on-the-head cocktail parties seemed only theoretical. At age 10, he saw Blake Edwards’ high-concept comedy feature The Party (1968), starring Peter Sellers, and thought, I want my life to look like that.
“35 Wheels” provides a glimpse into what you might see on any given sunny day in Palm Springs.
ART BY SHAG, COURTESY THE SHAG STORE
His childhood in Hawaii reveals itself in the Tiki trappings found in some of his artwork and in the E-Types that appear on occasion. A friend’s mother owned one. “I remember loving that car but thinking, This isn’t even big enough for one adult and two kids,” he says, laughing. Still, Agle was smitten with the aesthetic. One of his dad’s business associates drove a Porsche 911 Targa, which also left a lasting impression.
On the architecture front, he recalls watching the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever in the ’90s and falling for the Elrod House, John Lautner’s seminal design in Palm Springs’ Southridge enclave. It served as a villain’s lair in the film. This glimpse of modernism set Agle on the path to discovering the real Palm Springs and fully realizing his Shag persona.
One of his newest pieces, “Villa Verticale” depicts a swingin’ high rise with parties raging on various floors and a Porsche 356 parked in the carport. That wasn’t random but, rather, a product of his car “casting” process. He considers which vehicle will look best in a given circumstance and considers the fact that some cars may look better from certain angles. “I think the Jaguar E-Type looks better from the side than it does from the front, a Ferrari 365 looks best in a three-quarter rear view,” he says. The head-on view of the classic “bathtub” Porsche is a signifier: This is a place of consummate hipness, underscored by the fact that Shag himself stands in a loft studio painting away at his easel.
Shag’s enduring design aesthetic was born out of thrift and vintage music. “I love ’60s garage, surf, and rockabilly,” he shares. He frequented secondhand stores to search for LPs and often bought records for the cover art rather than the band. “You’d see bachelor-pad records with cool covers and exotica albums with beautiful women,” he says. He furnished his first apartment with thrift store stuff on a $200 budget, intentionally seeking out décor made before 1964. “The apartment looked like a magazine from the early ’60s,” he recalls. “People would come over, and their jaws would drop.”
Even today, Shag’s fascination with “oddball cars” continues. He hints that ’70s American Motors models like the Pacer and Gremlin may make their way into future works. In Shag’s world, even the quirkiest rides fit right in amid the glamour and whimsy of Palm Springs modernism.
