Apocalyptic Worship of the Antichrist Photograph of an Unknown Painting

Apocalyptic Worship of the Antichrist Photograph of an Unknown Painting.  This is an original photograph circa 1920 (?) of a work I haven't identified.  We'll have to rely on the frightening notes from the reverse.  Tribulation Worship of the Antichrist, Rider of the white horse also dark horse of the famine, gray horse of Death, the lambs book of life.  Is your name written there? 

Original photograph, no date collection Jim Linderman

Liz Renay Bizarre Outsider Artist and Mob Gun Moll

Any artist admired by John Waters is at the very least interesting, he being an informed, if unconventional collector.  This HAS to be especially true if the painter happens to be a former gun moll, showgirl and self-admitted lover of 2,000 men. Her autobiography was titled My First 2,000 Men and while I haven't read it, I believe her. She had two week long marriage at age 15. It set the pattern, but she survived.

Ms. Renay lived a rich life.  She knew and consorted with Mobster Mickey Cohen, and she loved him, I guess.  At least, she loved him enough to help him launder some money which came up during the investigation of the murder of mobster Albert Anastasia.  That is not a small time gangster. That is a gangster when they were bigger than General Motors.  Anastasia was said to have been done in by Crazy Joe Gallo.
 
Liz passed away on January 22, 2007.
One of the best ways to remember Pearl Elizabeth Dobbins, her real name, would be to appreciate the fabulously goofy outsider art paintings she created. There aren't enough paintings by showgirls.
 
Unlike most self-taught naives, Liz eventually went from obscure to big time, finally achieving a major show at adventurous and prestigious art gallery Deitch Projects in New York.  Art snobs like to say an artist's background doesn't have anything to do with their artistic esthetics, painterly qualities and such, but I think Deitch knew a good story when he saw one.

The magnificent exhibition of paintings was put together by the Burlesque Hall of Fame and Deitch. Not only are they huge in scale and scope, they are bizarre and that's great.  That whole "Low-Brow" art movement owes her a debt. The installation was a few years ago, but let's help it keep making some news. It is said she painted 150 works.

View the show HERE, which was installed with numerous objects from her career.  Her work, which sold for a few grand in the 1960s is holding firm...see one for sale at 15 grand HERE

Deitch Projects is HERE. Burlesque Hall of Fame is HERE, and the images are theirs.  A nice slide show also appears HERE on artnet.
My First 2,000 Men is HERE.   

Artists and their Models. Painters paint Vintage Sleaze Paperbacks

Representations of painters on paperbacks from the 1950s and 1960s. The most recognized artist in America was Norman Rockwell at the time.  These ain't him.

19th Century Folk Art Painting of ripe grapes

19th Century Folk Art watercolor of ripe grapes.
Anonymous Collection Jim Linderman
(See also the book Eccentric Folk Art Drawing of the 19th and 20th Centuries)

Folk Art Drawing Nerves of the Telephone System c. 1955 High Schoolgirl Artist

Folk Art Drawing Nerves of the Telephone System c. 1955 by High School Artist Jackie Davis  Watercolor paint on writing paper from her "Health Emotions" scrapbook.  

Collection Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Sugar Ray Robinson and the Great Boxers in Watercolor

Sugar Ray Robinson was good.  He entered professional boxing with an 85 - 0 record as an amateur.  Nearly half of those 85 fights ended with a knockout in the first round. Credit where due, I guess...is that he invented the posse.  The entourage.  Everybody wanted to be in Sugar Ray's camp.  I am sure all the fighters painted here have similar stories.  I always hated Leroy Neiman and his garish sports paintings, but these are great.  A young, aspiring illustrator named "J. Gallagher" did them around 1950, but that's all I know about him.

Watercolor Paintings of the Greatest Boxers by J. Gallagher, circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Woman with One Eye Oil Painting

Woman with One Eye Oil Painting (detail) Collection Jim Linderman, with thanks to S. Higgins)

THE American Painter Justin McCarthy Annual I am not at the Outsider Art Fair Paris 2016 post

 

Justin McCarthy untitled Collection Jim Linderman

Justin McCarthy Nude circa 1965 Collection Jim Linderman

 

Justin McCarthy "The Last Supper" private collection Slotin Folk Art Auction

 

Justin McCarthy "Yankees Stadium" Private Collection

Justin McCarthy "Goodyear Blimp" Private Collection

"He didn't know he was painting quirky.  He thought he was painting straight."  So said Justin McCarthy's major benefactor the painter Sterling Strauser.  "People often found it difficult to believe that he was a self-taught naïve, because…some of his things look like Emil Nolde, some look like Milton Avery – people that he was not aware of at all. They look like Ernst Kirchner. Some of his watercolors look like Demuth. This is all purely accidental.”  Nancy Green Karlins (who wrote her PHD dissertation on McCarthy) writes: “McCarthy’s intense line, non-naturalistic color and exaggerated drawing are more characteristic of German Expressionism than of most eighteenth-and nineteenth-century American folk art…"

Art scholars have to explain the work of Justin McCarthy by placing him in context with other better known (and better trained) artists.  How else to discuss him?  There IS no appropriate context.  A little of this, a little of that, but really all one of a kind.  Once you have seen a few of his works, you will recognize them but you might not understand them.  Sterling Strauser (actually his wife Dorothy) saw them first sprawled on the grass in a Pennsylvania Town Square.  He recalled thinking how much he would like to see one of them in a frame.  They were priced high, as McCarthy knew he wasn't going to sell any, so why not?   He was a completely self-taught naive recluse who lived most of his long life in a depreciating mansion in Weatherly, PA. 

That is, when he wasn't in a mental institution. Sterling Strauser once told me "McCarthy cured himself through painting." Certainly he had the persistence and gumption to do it.  Evidence of his earliest work here shows it.

The earliest dates to 1915, while he was confined.  A primitive form only, in crayon, from a rudimentary sketchbook he created by gluing individual pages of drawings onto those already in a printed book.  "A Gibson Girl" is a purple shadow showing little or none of his promise.  It wasn't long until he progressed to the formal "Miss Moran" shown following from Galerie Bonheur.

Justin McCarthy "A Gibson Girl from the Follies" circa 1915 - 1920 Collection Jim Linderman

Justin McCarthy "Miss Moran" circa 1920 Galerie Bonheur

 

Justin McCarthy Private Collection

McCarthy came a wealthy family, but one with tragedy.  His father and brother died early and the young man's breakdown followed.  He tried to follow in his father's footsteps.  He tried law school but failed. There was some work over the years, including some time in the Pennsylvania Steel yards which resulted in a spectacular painting full of heat and smoke. 

Justin McCarthy Bethlehem Steel Private Collection

His brother was favored growing up and young Justin was shy. One pleasant and persistent memory had to have been the visit he had to the Louvre in Paris.  Only the wealthy could afford a trip to Paris at that time, and they went.  He was apparently left alone in the museum, and it stuck.

As his early, primitive institutionalized drawings developed he signed them with pseudonyms but often didn't sign them at all.  
After some five years, he was allowed back home to the mansion his father had owned and remained there most of his life.  During this time(though no one but his mother had seen the work) he filled the house with astounding vibrant quick explosions of color. He was a prolific and fearless artist. The Great American artist. Nothing escaped his eye and he would paint anything. Eventually even the unused stove and the bathtub were filled with paintings.  Strauser describes piles of work in every room.

Justin McCarthy Private Collection

Justin McCarthy Private Collection

Justin McCarthy Private Collection

Justin McCarthy Private Collection

They are both absurd and beautiful. Sports figures drawn while watching television and filled with color later. Some from life but imbued with his own.The pages of National Geographic Magazine. Some remembered from the early motion picture projector his wealthy father had at the mansion.  Gallerist and curator Randall Morris once described McCarthy as having a "cinematic style" which may have developed as he was a young boy watching flickering images.  His quick "wet on wet" working technique may have been an attempt to capture them. It was a practice he continued his entire artistic life. I believe he succeeded. 

A range of works drawn from the web give some indication to his unusual style and complete mastery of color.  The artist created work from 1915 up to his death in 1977.
 
See Also:   
Gene Epstein "What Kind of Art is This?" Folk Art Magazine Winter 1992 Pages 51

American Folk Art Museum McCarthy collection
 
Nancy Green Karlins "Justin McCarthy" 1891-1977 The Making of a 20th Century Self Taught Painter Dissertation Ph. D. New York University 1986

Randall Morris "The Cinematic "I" : Justin McCarthy 1984 Noyes Museum

Early sketchbooks and memories of Sterling Strauser are in the collection of the Archives of American Art Smithsonian Museum of Art 

See also two books on Folk art Outsider art by the writer Jim Linderman HERE and HERE.
A few other posts in my unstructured and informal Outsider Art series are shown HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE   More or less.  Additional works by Basil Merrett are HERE.

Mid-Century Modern Paintings 1952 by Adele Manson Art Exercises in Color

Mid-Century Modern Paintings 1952 by Adele Manson Art Exercises in Color.  Poster paint on board Collection Jim Linderman.  Thanks to Box Lot on Facebook.

Hand-painted Wedding Watercolor

Painted by Hand wedding watercolor with applied felt hat, picture frame and wedding veil.  No date. Collection Jim Linderman

July 4th 1939 Lou Gehrig Day The Luckiest... Anonymous Painting of 1939

Yes, it is July 4th, Independence day, but it is also Lou Gehrig Day.  July 4, 1939, one of our greatest baseball players took to the field and Yankee Stadium to acknowledge the crowds.  Movietone was there to record it, and it obviously moved the young artist here.

The…The…The   
Luckiest…Luckiest…Luckiest… 
Man…Man…Man.  
Lou was sick when he stood before the microphone.  No one had even heard of hockey then, and basketball was still a joke.  We had one sport and Lou was the epitome of it.  Of all his accomplishments, the greatest was that he played 2,130 games in a row.   From 1925 to 1939.  Have YOU ever called in sick?  Lou didn't.  Not once.  And all they had back then was aspirin.

The anonymous painting here, too large for my scanner, was found folded in a "one dollar" basket at the end of a table at a garage sale.  Who would throw this out?
 
Anonymous Child's Painting of Lou Gehrig Day.  Date, possible, 1939  Collection Jim Linderman
 

 Preview and purchase Art and Photography books (paper or $5.99 ebook) by Jim Linderman HERE.