Category: Art

Book Review: Martin Ramirez: The Last Works

Martin Ramirez: The Last Works, by Brooke Davis Anderson, Richard Rodriguez and Wayne Thiebaud. Pomegranate, 160 pages, 136 illustrations, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7649-4695-0 The ratio of text to photos in this second major volume dedicated to Martin Ramirez is low, and that comes as a relief to someone who feels compelled to read books front to back, even when not reviewing them. The catalog published last year in conjunction with Ramirez’s epochal one-man at the American Folk Art Museum had many virtues. Contributions by Anderson and by Victor and Kristin Espinosa supplied essential (and in the Espinosas’ case ground-breaking) background and

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Book Review: Painting a Hidden Life: The Art of Bill Traylor

Painting a Hidden Life: The Art of Bill Traylor, by Mechal Sobel. LSU Press, 256 pages, 46 illustrations, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8071-3401-6 Pity the poor dead outsider artist. Odds are good you’ve been reduced to a collection of anecdotes gathered by an early collector or dealer then recycled, with declining fidelity, through biographical capsules, reviews and newspaper articles. Your life is a series of clichés attached to a stunning body of work. If you’re exceptionally lucky, like Martin Ramirez, you may eventually pique the interest of serious scholars and become the subject of actual biography. But when your life story is

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It’s a Pretty Grim Life, Actually

Back in 1978 or so I wrote a college term paper about the increasing level of despair apparent in Frank Capra’s movies, through It’s a Wonderful Life. I revised it a bit for this Web site in 1995 or so, taking into account the film’s rise to holiday classic status in the intervening years. It’s sort of gratifying to see many of my same points made in the New York Times, though without the film history elements. At least I don’t feel quite so lonely in my crankdom: New York Times’ It’s a Wonderful Life My It’s a Wonderful Life

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