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    The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art
    The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art
    The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art
    Ebook192 pages2 hours

    The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art

    By Greg Bottoms

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    About this ebook

    The Reverend Howard Finster was twenty feet tall, suspended in darkness. Or so he appeared in the documentary film that introduced a teenaged Greg Bottoms to the renowned outsider artist whose death would help inspire him, fourteen years later, to travel the country. Beginning in Georgia with a trip to Finster’s famous Paradise Gardens, his journey—of which The Colorful Apocalypse is a masterly chronicle—is an unparalleled look into the lives and visionary works of some of Finster’s contemporaries: the self-taught evangelical artists whose beliefs and oeuvres occupy the gray area between madness and Christian ecstasy.

    With his prodigious gift for conversation and quietly observant storytelling, Bottoms draws us into the worlds of such figures as William Thomas Thompson, a handicapped ex-millionaire who painted a 300-foot version of the book of Revelation; Norbert Kox, an ex-member of the Outlaws biker gang who now lives as a recluse in rural Wisconsin and paints apocalyptic visual parables; and Myrtice West, who began painting to express the revelatory visions she had after her daughter was brutally murdered. These artists’ works are as wildly varied as their life stories, but without sensationalizing or patronizing them, Bottoms—one of today’s finest young writers—gets at the heart of what they have in common: the struggle to make sense, through art, of their difficult personal histories.

    In doing so, he weaves a true narrative as powerful as the art of its subjects, a work that is at once an enthralling travelogue, a series of revealing biographical portraits, and a profound meditation on the chaos of despair and the ways in which creativity can help order our lives.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateJun 15, 2011
    ISBN9780226066882
    The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art

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    • 3/5
      Parts of this book were really interesting but overall I found it somewhat limited focusing only on 3 artists, all of which were religious fanatics. While I appreciate that religion is one source of inspiration for outsider artists, there is a much more comprehensive range of creativity, and influence that could have been covered, and I think the author would have had more fun guiding his journey this way. I felt like a lot of the narrative was somewhat unnecessary so I became disinterested in parts. Some parts were really intriguing. The writing style was decent except when written in interview style. I don't like interview style when I am reading a book. It feels abrupt to suddenly have to read text as a script.

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    The Colorful Apocalypse - Greg Bottoms

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