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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American Portraits: Midwest Mundane Vernacular Photography of Michigan

Another picture from American Portraits: Midwest Mundane, larger cover image, link to site for the book HERE

Preview or Order the book HERE

Link to Jim Linderman Biographical Material, Press and Articles, Testimonials and other Books HERE

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American Portraits: Midwest Mundane by Jim Linderman Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books #5

Jim Linderman American Portraits: Midwest Mundane.
80 Pages 2010 published by Blurb.com

Not celebration, but documentation of a people, place and time which existed briefly in captured snaps of Central Michigan during and immediately after the Second World War. In Middle America on the cusp of the 1950s, a family fights isolation with few choices, missing sons, distant neighbors and a seemingly bleak, unfortunate reality. Black and white portraits by an anonymous photographer, these are the images he left behind. Preview at right or HERE
Additional photogaphs from the book HERE
Original Photographs Anonymous, circa 1943-1948 Collection Jim Linderman

Stardust? Nope....Sand. In His LUNGS!

Ahh, the Stardust. The glory days of the Strip when you actually had to pull a lever to place a slot bet. Today, the rubes can hardly be bothered to push a button. But they do, and despite the economy, the casino up north has glamorous folks a plenty maneuvering their scooters to the changer's booth and back to the machine for button pushing just like a monkey addicted to tobacco. For the record, the legally fixed return ranges from 75% to 83% or so depending on your state. Gee...GOOD ODDS!

The Stardust history is rife with questionable dealings primarily due to Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, who ran the show. Even his wiki page is full of, I quote "weasel words" which seems appropriate. I don't have the time or patience to summarize Tony's life, but you can "bet" if Joe Pesci plays you in a movie...you have a colorful story. I can tell you, however, that when he was found buried in a cornfield along with his brother "the autopsy performed on the recovered bodies allegedly found sand in the brothers' lungs, leading examiners to speculate that they had been buried alive" Later testimony disproved this. I'm no doctor, but I attribute it to some windy days in the early days on the strip.

Anonymous Vernacular Snapshot Collection Jim Linderman

The Paintings of Camera Club Girls by Rudolph Rossi

So a few folks have received their copies of Camera Club Girls, and two wrote to say "They're PAINTINGS" and I'm like, yup. Do you think I would do a book of plain ol' PHOTOGRAPHS of naked women? Indeed, Rudolph Rossi took all these black and white nude photographs around 1950, blew each up himself to 8 x 10 (or larger) and HAND-PAINTED them all. That was sorta the point. They are tinted like many photographs throughout history, but Rossi took it to the extreme.

Group of Rudolph Rossi Photograph Details, circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
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Herbert Freeman Orlando Artist

I used to be quite involved and enamored of what was once known as outsider art and is now known as who knows what. I can only do so much, so have drifted to other things. I don't know what to call it, but I have always felt the untaught are God's chosen artists, and no artist with art training, no matter how good, important or profound, has any advantage at all over one who creates without the training. I'll even go as far as to say those without training are even MORE exceptional for the most part, as it comes from an innate, still not understood but certainly no less difficult and no less important place. When created under less than ideal circumstances, as this appears, it is also certainly a far greater accomplishment. I have no idea who or what Herbert Freeman is, but this is exceptional work. More information is at The Freeman Project.

Bro' Tom Skinner Lays a Love Bag of Skin on you (the Thrilla in Manila Paper)

I present Tom Skinner and his "Up from Harlem" to steer you the right way. Preacher Tom lays his Jesus bag on heavy in this great, great Al Hartley penned "Spire Christian Comics" to correct your behavior.  Skinner sorta invented the "Jesus Freaks" back in the hippie days.   

Spire Christian Comics specialized in taking regular comic book figures, such as Archie, Dennis the Menace and other normal (but sinning) characters and giving them a solid dose of good ol' faith. (They also had the nerve to charge 39 cents each)  Comic books for the kids at Bible Vacation Camp. 

Righteous Al was able to line up Archie and others for the series because he worked for Archie Comics. This one doesn't have the red-head in Riverdale going up to Harlem for a score, unfortunately.  "Jughead...DRIVE!"

I've been on the corner indicated in the top picture many, many times. It ain't like that, Bro.Skinner passed away, but donated his papers to the Billy Graham Center Archives in Wheaton, Illinois. A most valuable resource, and one which will be increasingly important as research is done on right-on, high five alive messengers such at Tom (lay me some skin) Skinner.Tom Skinner Up From Harlem Spire Christian Comic 1975 Collection Jim Linderman

The Mechanix of Folk Art

All Cribbed from early 1930s issues of Home Mechanix.

Greil Marcus Writes Again. Van Morrison's voice.

I have always taken Van Morrison for granted. Even during last years recent touring reconstruction of the masterful album Astral Weeks, (The masterpiece he painted twice, Moondance being the second) his voice has always just seemed part of the world. Just as he always wanted and repeatedly sang, his work popped up from the radios not as a surprise at all, but as a pleasing sensation everyone was familiar with (and always, ALWAYS turned up as directed and sung along to) but never thought much about. Like the late Alex Chilton, he has always been a comfortable presence like plant shoots in spring, a rusted chain link fence around the lake, a limb slowly wavering in the wind, but never troubling and never in the way.

The only time I saw Van Morrison perform was the early 1980s and he was short and round like a giant freckled toad. When he took out his saxophone and raised it to his lips, the instrument rested nearly horizontal on his belly and the horn pointed directly at his face, but I knew the stage held greatness.

Marcus has created a slight book for him, far less smart than "Invisible Republic" (which was a better title than "That Old Weird America") but no less essential. Three chapters in, I was pulling out the old bootleg of the Moondance demos, Just Van the Man and a few tentative musicians. Mine come from the wonderful Scorpion Three CD bootleg which is all of his music I need. There are certain times when hearing that voice, the only Irish red-headed voice I know, tinker and capture "Domino" in every manner, (a "harmony" version, a "rap" version, a "flute" version...) is so soothing it just makes all seem well. He eventually nails it, and "Caravan" and "Everyone" (you don't recognize the titles, but you've sung along) are a revelation with just his voice, and it makes me long for the days when vocal imperfections and mistakes could be spun into gold by a true artist.

Half of the musicians who mattered moved to Woodstock before the big concert, before it was tie-die heaven, because Dylan and the Band were there. They all wanted to be in the Band. Dr. John, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Bobby Charles, even George Harrison came calling and many stayed. They all went to Woodstock when Dylan lived there and the Band was figuring out what came after Little Richard, drunken sock-hops and the whirlwind Manchester. Soon it was mostly booze and drugs, but for a time it was Laurel Canyon in the Catskills. Marcus caught on early. He reviewed the original releases 40 years ago for Rolling Stone. I realize this book review is hardly that...one should always wait until you finish the book and turn the music off. But the book has already given me an appreciation which was always there and needed goosing. To me that means, already, Good Book.

Jim Linderman Camera Club Girls: Bettie Page and her Friends: The Work of Rudolph Rossi

For over 50 years, the extraordinary Hand-Painted Original Photographs of Bettie Page and nude models of the 1950s taken by Rudolph Rossi lay hidden. Now, for the first time, over 100 have been published in Camera Club Girls by Jim Linderman. 114 pages, 35 pages of text and 180 pictures, the book tells the story of the informal groups of early camera enthusiasts in New York City who paid ten dollars each to photograph naked women, including Bettie Page, in dingy studios and outdoor excursions. As much the history of early erotic photography and Times Square smut as it is the story of the exceptional personal vision of an artist, master photographer and painter which has not been told until now. The photographic find of the decade, and an amazing story which combines passion, painting, photography and early porno in a tale never told. Preview 15 pages of the book at right and order.

Draw Like Daisy Mager

One of the most prolific children's illustrators in history was Daisy Mager, but you wouldn't know it by searching Google. Sometimes I fear nothing began before Al Gore invented the internet. I've seen Mager's work all my life, but try to find her biography. Even finding a first name took some time. These were published by Saalfield, a company which operated in Akron, Ohio and did primarily children's instruction books, toys and paper dolls. They lasted nearly 100 years, but had the bad fortune to go out of business just before the internet came along, so Daisy will ever remain a nobody. Saalfield's library and archives were purchased by Kent State University the year they went under. I'm sure more information on the prolific and perpetually positive Mager is to be found there, as the artwork alone held by the school is 89 oversize boxes...but it is midnight, this is only a blog post, and Daisy Mager only taught me to draw and connect the dots, not look stuff up.

8 children's activity books illustrated by Doris Mager 1953 (from a set of 20) Collection Jim Linderman

Spring 2010 at Dull Tool Dim Bulb

It is spring indeed, flowers are popping. Progress too! DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS will announce the FOURTH BOOK in the series of limited edition Art and Photography books very soon. Stay Tuned.

Child's paper weave Flower, circa 1890 Collection Jim Linderman

Jim Linderman Foam International Photography Magazine

(Click to Enlarge)

I am pleased to have a brief article and profile in the Spring 2010 issue of Foam: International Photography Magazine. As Foam is likely the most beautiful (and interesting) photography magazine published, this is quite an honor. Please follow the links to Foam and consider ordering a subscription or purchasing some of the back issues. Advertisers? This is a splendid publication to reach the worldwide art market, photography or otherwise, as the coverage of the booming European creative fine art photography scene is exceptional. The Spring 2010 issue alone is over 200 outstanding large pages.

At the Circus in Black and White (Japan style) #18

Number 18 of "At the Circus in Black and White" provides proof the circus knows no borders.

Group of early Japanese Circus Postcards, date unknown.

Luc Sante on Real Photo Postcards: The New School Lecture

I might be a little slow on the draw here, but The Parson's Department of Photography at the New School has loaded Luc Sante's lecture on Real Photo Postcards given in conjunction with publication of his book Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard. The link here is a rare opportunity to watch and hear an entire lecture by an important scholar (and see plenty of the images from his book) Link and text following is provided by Exposures, the Aperture blog. The video is presented in two parts.

As part of the Parsons Department of Photography at The New School Lecture Series, writer and critic Luc Sante gave a talk at Aperture Gallery last November on his new book, Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard, 1905–1930, which was recently excerpted in Aperture magazine, Issue 196. The full version of this talk is now available to view on our multimedia page divided in two parts.

This clip below is an excerpt from the event where Luc Sante explains how he started collecting postcards thirty years ago. He then reads the introduction to his book going through the development of photo postcards with the dissemination of pocket cameras in the first half of the 20th century and the particular style of this non-academic American vernacular art.

To watch the full version, click on these links below:

Part 1, Part 2