James Snodgrass 1922 - 2000
American, Painter

Snodgrass first came to New York to the World's Fair in 1939. There he saw his first El Greco and Johnny Weismuller and "never really went home again." Considered something of an outsider artist, Baltimore's American Museum of Visionary Art purchased a major piece focusing on man's inhumanity to man. Many of Snodgrass's lighter works center obsessively and humorously on the penis, and often deal in opposites; homoeroticism with pop-up memories of George Washington or his mother, joyously fantastical animals versus the horrors of war, and sometimes organ — or at least, companionship-envy.

_______________________

James Snodgrass was that rare breed of painter who, first, envisioned every detail of medium, stroke and color as if on a color-xerox in his brain, then duplicated it onto a palette of paper, canvas or woodblock.

Snodgrass' art belies his background. Born in rural Maryland, he was the son of a schoolteacher and husband about whom little is known, other than that Grandma -- for crime unknown -- ran him off her farm with a rifle. During the Depression, the boy was nurtured on religion, books, music and products from the family farm.

Snodgrass "first came to New York to the World's Fair in the summer of 1939," or so he recalled on a resume. "Saw his first El Greco and Johnny Weissmuller. Never ever really went home again." He spent his 20s to 70s in artist's lofts in New York City and supported himself by repairing mannequins for a nationwide chain store -- Lerners. At the same time he started creating and stockpiling a lifetime's worth of companions who ranged from naive to, on rare occasion, classical paintings. Some he, himself, described as his "naughty" works. Many of Snodgrass' paintings center on the penis. Others, including his masterwork exhibited in the permanent collection of Balitmore's and the nation's foremost American Visionary Arts Museum, focus on man's inhumanity to man. It is some 17-feet wide by 7-feet tall, apparently peopled by thousands of folks performing unkind acts to and on one another. but if the viewer steps back across the room from the painting, (s)he sees a prism of lights and darks that perhaps form a serene Mother Earth, lounging and gracefully containing our human discord -- or two people making love? It is, as was Snodgrass, a giant picture-puzzle.

The body of work Snodgrass rarely chose to exhibit -- rather to leave behind, virtually intact -- speaks of opposites: humor and alienation; joyously fantasical animals versus hatred of war; homoeroticism or almost pop-up memories of George Washington or his mother; perhaps even organ -- or, at least, companionship-envy.

Snodgrass was both unique in his vision and, often, a loner in practice. Exhibitions have been limited: the Parish House at St. Marks-in-the-Bowery; Pace University ("work personally removed from the wall," according to a personal reminiscence, "by the president of the university"); Gallery 209 in Savannah; Chrysler Collection of the Norfolk (Virginia) Museum; "after hours in a dentist's garage," Pueblo, Colorado; and after his death on Staten Island at age 77, the Leslie-Lohman Gallery in Soho, NYC. Possessing a world-class memory, Snodgrass also is remembered as the quiz-show contestant who presented the U.S. Congress evidence needed to bust TV's "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" scandals of the mid-20th century.

Vivien Raynor, Art: Gathering of the Avant-Garde, The New York Times (May 31, 1985).