Paintings
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Was Robin Williams' Art Collection a Window on His Troubled Mind?
By Ben Marks — On August 12, 2014, I interviewed cycling legend Gary Fisher for an article I was writing about the origins of mountain biking in Marin County, California. It was the day after Robin Williams committed suicide, which was all anybody could talk about. Indeed, my conversation with Fisher began with an unprompted recollection on his part of his old high-school chum. “I went to Redwood High School, class of 1968,” Fisher told me that day over the phone. “I was a year older than Robin, but we...
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The Art of "Star Wars": The Force Behind the Most Iconic Image in the Cinematic Universe
By Ben Marks — Earlier this year, when we reported on DJ Ginsberg’s and Marilyn Wagner’s mammoth collection of movie-ad print blocks and printing plates, scores of these stellar pieces of cinema history from the early 1930s to early 1980s caught our eye. There were ads for Bogart and Bergman in “Casablanca,” Elvis Presley in “King Creole,” Sean Connery in “Dr. No,” and Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz.” If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had a category for Best Print-Advertising Archive,...
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Paint Pedaler: How a 1980s Michelangelo Found Fame on the Ceilings of Old Victorians
By Ben Marks — Larry Boyce was the late 20th-century's greatest champion of the stenciled frieze. An Oscar Wilde-like character in pith helmet and zebra-striped tights, Boyce logged more than 200,000 miles on his bicycle as he pedaled from job to job, painting Victorian-style friezes, crown moldings, and ceilings across the United States. At once colorful and companionable, stubborn and brooding, Boyce was an exceedingly complicated man, whose life started out rocky due to the circumstances of his birth in...
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Cheap Thrills: The Freakish Fantasy Art of Mexican Pulp Paperbacks
By Ben Marks — In the 1960s and ’70s, tens of millions of eyeballs a month looked forward to the latest surreal compositions on the covers of Mexican pulp fiction. Unlike their counterparts in the United States, where depictions of steamy sex and the promise of somewhat-porny scandal sold best, pulp-fiction covers south of the border usually relied on bizarre visual scenarios, whose WTF weirdness was more important than their overt sexuality—although there was usually plenty of that. Take the covers now...