Guernica, Redux

As an art critic, I often hear questions like, "What happened to the idea of Artist as an outsider, as a mirror for who we are?" While you may not find them in the museums that have all too often become toys for their wealthy patrons, it is still possible to find works that speak to that which is savage and free.

1. Thomas Kincaid














We see in this image of "Cobblestone Mill" the classic Kincaid style; brooding yet oddly garish. A sense of dread hangs over the landscape, and we gaze at the cottage as we would an impending disaster, certain of the horror to come, yet unable to look away.

2. Margaret Keane




















Clearly patterned after Dorothea Lange's Depression-era photographic studies, Margaret Keane's "Peek A Boo-quet" captures the loneliness and existential hunger of a declining West. A chilling portrait of tomorrow's lost youth.

3. Sam Butcher
























Few sculptors today can match Sam Butcher for realism and bare-knuckled emotion. In this example, titled "Follow Your Heart," Butcher lays bare the deceit and corruption of organized religion and its handmaiden industrialists. Small wonder that his work has been appropriated by the European anarchist movement.

American artists, throwing themselves into the gears of the machine that is our dying nation, using the tears of their anguish to salve our wounds. Too late, but not in vain.

UPDATE:




















Jennifer notes the glaring omission of Stefano Casali, whose Piss Love shocked the art world. Here we see the continuation of that daring tradition.