“A Passionate Eye,” The Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection of outsider art at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, which Roberta touted here, is coming down in a couple of days. If you haven’t seen it, rush on over. It’s a little gem, or, as Roberta said, perfect.
Among my favorites, Howard Finster’s “Uncle Sam” (shown), in which the artist and two others are in a car stuck in traffic because Uncle Sam is blocking the road, burdened with the welfare of the nation on his back. Finster also painted a vision of heaven, “Wonders Without Numbers #1000 & 146,” with fanciful onion domes and steeples scattered about a green landscape and reaching to the clouds. For this painting, he painted a backdrop and then added two more layers by painting on the back and front of the glass, thereby giving added depth. Both these paintings have hand-decorated, patterned frames that add to the pleasure.
Elijah Pierce’s”Angel” and “Martin Luther King (Love),” two simple carved relief panels, painted with enamel, reminded me of Alex Queral‘s carved relief phonebook portraits. King, especially, was a knockout, his suit and tie slouching with the body in the chair (right, Pierce’s “Angel,” 1948).
