Regal beagle Family Guy's eloquent canine is portrayed by artist Luke Chueh.

Photograph: Courtesy of Fox Licensing & Merchandising

Though Fox Television is hardly a leading voice in contemporary art, the Paley Center is currently hosting an exhibit of paintings commissioned by studio execs to celebrate the network’s animated sitcom Family Guy. “It’s a Freakin’ Art Show: A Collection of Interpretive Work Inspired by Family Guy*,” which premiered in Los Angeles two years ago, presents 22 renderings in which artists of the so-called lowbrow (or Pop Surrealist) style riff off the show’s eccentric personalities.

Like the cartoon itself (which Fox canceled twice, but revived due to popular demand and stellar DVD sales), the exhibit offers a disparate blend of cultural allusions: Featured tableaux include Brandt Peters’s Don’t Threaten Me with a Good Time, a lampoon of a famous Coppertone print ad from the 1960s that sees Brian (the talking dog) pulling down the bathing suit of Lois (the titular character’s wife); Alex Ruiz’s Bandaged Baby ’n Bear, a Van Gogh homage; and Luke Chueh’s Luke Chueh Versus The Family Guy–Brian Griffin, which Paley Center curator Allen Glover sees as a spoof of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. “While the show itself is broad in its humor, the art is more subtle and explores the idiosyncrasies and complexities of the different characters,” says Glover. For example, the aforementioned Chueh piece, which depicts a hollow-eyed Brian sitting alone at a bar, is somber in tone, rather than playing the martini-swilling canine’s alcoholism for an easy laugh.

Painterly references aside, Glover says there aren’t any illusions that the show’s combination of lowbrow humor and highbrow satire is high art. “Family Guy is a commentary on television ,” he observes, noting the program’s endless homages to sitcoms past. “And we hope the exhibit will encourage the audience to wonder, Is it really just a half hour of crude jokes, or is it saying something deeper about our viewing habits?”*Its original title, “What the Deuce Are You Staring At!?!,” was changed right before press time, so don’t be confused by page 53.

“It’s a Freakin’ Art Show: A Collection of Interpretive Work Inspired by Family Guy” is on view at the Paley Center.