David Bates Painter of Paintings Retrospective Glorious Southern American Painting Regional Blurt

Today's "book review from the past" is in fact an artist review and it isn't from the past, as David Bates is doing quite well. The first time I saw a David Bates painting was at the Whitney Biennial in 1987 where it stuck out from the conceptual art like a big red mistake-smashed thumb. I don't remember what it was called, but it depicted a HUGE square-jawed Goober in a red flannel shirt, a logger I think, or a fisherman, with giant gobs of oil paint slopped on actual canvas. He was holding a fish in each hand which looked like they came out of a radioactive pond, and Gomer seemed proud, curious, ashamed and, well...real all at the same time. I remember it making the whole place smell of paint. It was like painting had returned somehow to an art museum. In my mind still it sits between Marsden Hartley and Red Grooms and they are both looking up at it grinning. I show it here from a catalog I own, when I bailed out of my three-story walk-up, I wasn't feeling too well and left many of the books behind. But I did box up all my David Bates catalogs.

So among the new-wave and Guerrilla Girls and theorists and critics and Eurocentric noses hung this bigass chunk of solid Southern American Regional blurt. And I loved it.

I have followed his work ever since. I briefly owned a print he made from his early days in Texas, it was a splendid 6 color lithograph of his fishing guide or friend titled "Blue Heaven" and I wish I hadn't sold it two decades ago to meet a month's rent during the summer I was drying out. But things come and go.

David Bates is a long way from that show, but he hasn't changed much. There is a consistent body of goofy glorious work. He'll move from painting to wood to iron then back to canvas and they'll all look the same. He's done a ton of beautiful southern plants, each dripping sweet and fresh...his ham fists make an iris look clumsy and beautiful all at once. Who says painting should be delicate? His is honest, direct and bold as a fat loud neighbor but far from simple.

I have never figured out the relationship Bates has with folk art or primitives. The work is 100% sincere and faux nothing. While frontal and direct, it seems to come more from the type of person he is portraying than any strategy, technique or trick. Honest work by honest folks. And despite the often "over-friendly" simple things he paints, there is no satire or irony. Real is good, and for 25 years David Bates has painted real good.

It is a curious thing to stop one moment and realize you have had a "favorite artist" for two decades. It is also nice to have a small, tiny forum in which to share it. I once realized there were about only three things I have kept from my drunk days...Dylan, George Jones and David Bates. A back-handed compliment, but it is the truth. The gentleman above with the perfect guitar is a bonus, Johnny Shines, a blues singer who crooned and quivered like a bird. A few years ago I was able to go to an opening of his work and meet Bates briefly... he had moved uptown since I used to see his shows at Charles Cowles Gallery in Soho. He was kind and a gentleman but nervous in a suit. I think he would be more comfortable in a flannel shirt.
Jim Linderman
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William Bixler The World's Most Redundant Painter! 5,000 Old Swimming Hole Works

Artists often "find themselves" and repeat. Having a recognizable style is important to the career of any artist. After all, what's the use of spending money on a painting if when company comes, they don't recognize the work? "Oh THAT? That's just my VLAMINCK." A good example is Susan Rothenberg. By now she's probably done enough horses to fill Ted Turner's stable, which the last time I checked was about 1/3 of Colorado. I always admired Jasper Johns, because anytime he needed a house, he could paint an American Flag. Not to begrudge them...if you do something well, you should keep doing it.

The King of repeated work is certainly one William Allen Bixler. You've never walked into a room and seen a Bixler? Well, maybe you have but don't know it. His most prolific period was his "old swimming hole" period. Between 1912 and 1918 he painted it 5,000 times. Each was 20" x 30" That's right, 3 million square inches of it. The same painting. Over and Over and Over like a wild animal stuck in a cage too small.

Bixler was a poet and liked poetry. So when he read the James Whitcomb Riley poem "The Old Swimming Hole" he went to the spot which inspired it and painted it up. It was one of his first paintings. Why, i'm not sure, as one line in the poem reads "Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot and I stray down the banks whare the treese ust to be--" Well, you get it, but something struck a nerve in our prolific artist. A friend printed up a picture of the painting and sent it to the poet, who liked it enough to mail back a gift of his collected works to the painter.

Several years later, folks in Indiana decided to raise money to erect a statue of the Hoosier Bard but how to pay for the tribute? School children collected pennies, and for each school which raised a few dollars, Bixler came and painted the Old Swimming Hole in their school. The painting is adequate. You would NOT confuse it with the Eakins swimming hole. A stump in a pond. For each $12.50 raised, a school would receive a painting and a small bust of Riley. More than a million kids contributed.

When the depression hit, kid's pennies were now worth a meal. Bixley went on to publish several books and commenced a career as a speed-painter of sorts...a Chalk Talker! He would bring his easel anyplace which would put him and his wife up for the night. He gave lectures on the Lord and illustrated them with chalk drawings made on the spot with lightning speed. The book shown here, one of my favorite books of all time, was first published in his home state of Indiana in 1932.

Chalk Talk Made Easy by William Allen Bixler, 1932 (later edition 1948) Collection Jim Linderman