Brooke Davis Anderson describes the moment as a "curator's dream come true." In 2007 a collection of more than 130 works on paper by Martín Ramírez surfaced, all created in the early 1960s, just before his death in 1963. Until this discovery, Ramírez's known oeuvre consisted of about 300 drawings and collages. These "last works" shine new light on an artist now revered as one of the self-taught masters of the twentieth century.
 Martín Ramírez (1895-1963) immigrated to the United States from his native Mexico at the age of thirty. Diagnosed with mental illness soon after, Ramírez would spend the second half of his life in mental institutions. It was at DeWitt State Hospital in Northern California that Ramírez began exhibiting a remarkable drive for artistic expression, creating drawings with any material he could find, including paper bags, wooden matchsticks, and a paste he made from saliva and mashed potatoes. Ramírez's work illuminates the struggle of an artist trapped between two worlds, blending memories of Mexico with the experience of poverty and alienation in America. As Anderson writes, "each drawing became a beguiling act of documenting and, ultimately, sharing a life lived."
 Martín Ramírez: The Last Works invites viewers to witness Ramírez's artistic development through his bold lines, meticulous repetition, and creative variations of idiosyncratic themes. With essays by Brooke Davis Anderson, Richard Rodriguez, and Wayne Thiebaud and a foreword by the family of Martín Ramírez, this book celebrates the genius of a once-dismissed yet truly extraordinary artist.

Martín Ramírez: The Last Works

Arts & Photography

Brooke Davis Anderson

Richard Rodríguez

Wayne Thiebaud

Individual Artists

Pomegranate

Presents a catalog of the works of Henry Darger found at the American Folk Art Museum.

Darger: The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Art Museum

Michel Thevoz

History & Criticism

Harry N. Abrams

Gordon Brinckle (1915-2007) seemed like an ordinary mana modest and reserved husband and father living in an ordinary 1950s-era home in Middletown, Delaware. Known around town as the night projectionist at the local movie theater, it was the unusual way he spent his days that eventually brought him attention. In his free time, Brinckle meticulously constructed a miniature version of a grand movie palace in his basement. The Shalimar, as he called it, was not only fully functional (with nine authentic movie seats, a projection booth with a 16-mm projector, numerous speakers, and a working organ) but was also lushly designed and decorated with an obsessive attention todetail. Brinckle's "picture palace of renown," as he referred to it, adapted various theater styles of the twentieth century, boasting a marquee that distinctly recalls the 1960s; an auditorium decorated in the "semi-atmospheric" style of the 1930s, bringing the outdoors in through the use of fake foliage and wildlife; and three opulent working curtains. When filmmaker and photographer Kendall Messick, who used to live across the street from the Brinckle family as a boy, became reacquaintedwith his former neighbor during a visit home in 2001, he knew he had to document the theater and its one-of-a-kind creator. In The Projectionist, Messick captures every detail of Brinckle's colorful fantasy world, including Brinckle's original artwork, architectural plans, drawings, and linoleum prints of imaginary movie theaters, ticket stubs, and usher uniform designs. An essay by curator Brooke Davis Anderson of the American Folk ArtMuseum looks at Gordon's work in the context of outsider art, and a foreword by artist, curator, and author Mark Sloandiscusses Messick's photographic work.

The Projectionist

Kendall Messick

Photography & Video

Princeton Architectural Press

American artist Robyn O'Neil makes drawings that assemble detail drawn from photography, Italian Renaissance altarpieces, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, literary classics and cinema into grand narratives of our times. This volume surveys O'Neil's recently completed seven-year series of snowy landscapes.

Robyn O'Neil: The World has Won. A Final Bow Was Taken.

Patricia Hickson

Des Moines Art Center

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Books by Brooke Davis Anderson