It’s been some time since I’ve stumbled across anything as nice as these fashion drawings in an antique store, mostly because I don’t spend much time in them any more.
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 perspective. But several of the more than half-dozen essays felt like heft more than light.
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 a matter of luck, it can go either way. Witness Bill Traylor, an artist on par with Ramirez in importance and depth, but a test case for a different treatment, a genre that might be labeled “speculative biography.”
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:
This angle on It's A Wonderful Life is old news at Interesting Ideas
Book Review: The Air Loom and Other Dangerous Influencing Machines, by Thomas Röske, Bettina Brand-Claussen and others. Catalog by the Prinzhorn Collection, 256 pages, 92 illustrations, 2006. ISBN: 3-88423-237-1.
This book, also a catalog for an exhibit at the Prinzhorn Collection, is even more focused on psychiatric issues than the Collecting Madness volume.
In an earlier time that could have been problematic, but the success of Dubuffet and his followers in liberating the art from its psychiatric context actually makes it easier to appreciate the insights. Although there is still plenty to debate relating to terminology and the significance of biography, the specifically medical terrain no longer feels like an impediment to aesthetic value.
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Bureaucracy is the most practical cure for irreconcilable differences.
Having last tasted root beers in 1995, we recently did an abbreviated update. The best: Chicago’s own Berghoff. The biggest surprise: Improved performance by A&W.
For buildings and cities, poverty and neglect can be better preservatives than loving care.
If someone insists on picking up the check, let them. Do not argue.
Even prompt people arrive late if they value their own time.
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