Vintage Trench Art

Heavenly Metal: How Trench Art Keeps the Memories of Soldiers and Their Service Alive
By Ben Marks — From the winter of 1914 to the spring of 1918, millions of Allied and Central Powers soldiers hunkered down within an estimated 35,000 miles of zigzagging trenches, from the Belgian city of Nieuwpoort on the North Sea to “Kilometre Zero” at the Alsatian-Swiss border. When these soldiers weren’t being exposed to mustard gas, sent into suicidal battles in the deadly no-man’s land between the opposing front lines, or struggling with the dysentery, typhoid fever, lice, trench mouth, and trench...

Homespun Beauty: Jim Linderman on Folk Art’s Authentic Appeal
By Maribeth Keane and Bonnie Monte — My interest in 20th-century American self-taught art came about after I had gone through a million other things—from stamps to bootleg records to books about who killed JFK. I had been at CBS News in New York City for about 8 or 10 years, and I was kind of burned out from working too hard and drinking too much. So I just stopped doing both for a while. It was 1981, and the art scene was exploding. The most entertaining thing to do in New York at the time was to go gallery hopping....