GRANDMA MOSES–AN AMERICAN PRIMITIVE
I don’t like shows about makeup. I don’t like shows where we’re supposed to appreciate how much time a star spent applying putty to her nose, and how true-to-life it looks, and how valiant she is to undergo such rigors, and how undergoing them signifies a superior talent. I think shows like that are cheap. The whole idea in a show like that is to signal the rubes that they’re getting their money’s worth.
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But his tone isn’t mawkish. It reflects what seems like an honest, if naive, yearning for the Golden Age represented in Moses’s paintings. It also recalls a sugarcoated-but-cunning rhetorical style that’s just plain old-fashioned American. Read Carl Sandburg if you don’t believe me.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/David Brewster.
