A revised edition of the tell-all biography of the businessman turned outsider artist In this no-holds-barred biography of controversial artist Matt Lamb, Richard Speer takes readers on an all-access tour of Lamb's life and times. With true insider access that includes interviews with family and friends and Lamb's own personal archives, the book offers a massively compelling look at the artist's life. The successful millionaire CEO of a family business, Lamb turned away from business and toward painting as a response to a diagnosis of grave illness. Whether that diagnosis was accurate or not, it was the basis for a massive personal transformation, from wealthy but little-known businessman to an artist hailed as the heir of Pablo Picasso. Thumbing his nose at the art establishment that dismissed his work and wealth as the antithesis of starving-artist chic, Lamb dedicated his work to world peace and redefined the art world in the process.
- Revised to cover the years leading up to the artist's death in early 2012
- Tells the story of a truly unique character who succeed spectacularly in the wildly different worlds of business and art
- This book offers an insider's look at the art world's ultimate "outside insider"
For those who relish tales of larger-than-life personalities who break the mold, Matt Lamb: The Art of Success is a thrilling and enlightening biography of an unforgettable personality.
Table of Contents:
Introduction xi PART ONE
The Prince of Paradox
CHAPTER ONE
A Portrait of the Starving Artist as Tycoon 3
PART TWO
The Backstory
CHAPTER TWO
Butchering Sheep and Sipping Tea 19
CHAPTER THREE
South Side Story 25
CHAPTER FOUR
The Love Affair That Began in the Womb 35
CHAPTER FIVE
Family Business and Other Oxymorons 39
CHAPTER SIX
The Sales of a Death Man 51
CHAPTER SEVEN
Drunken Days and Papal Knights 67
PART THREE
The Crisis
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Funeral Director Picks His Own Casket 77
CHAPTER NINE
Misdiagnosis or Miracle? 83
PART FOUR
The New Life
CHAPTER TEN
The Undertaker’s New Undertaking 91
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Jew, the Nun, the Architect, and the Old Irish Bastard 101
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lamb Debuts to Rants and Raves 107
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Wake as Collage 113
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Power Plays 117
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Tycoon Tackles Gandhi 121
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Chaos, Rage, and the White Heat of Passion 127
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Finding Faces in the Clouds 133
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Spirits Who Live in the Canvas 137
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Characters Take the Stage 145
PART FIVE
The Career Blossoms
CHAPTER TWENTY
Getting Hammered 155
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Painting for Pierre Cardin 159
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Finding Fassbender 163
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Doyenne in Leather Pants 171
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Dealer with Glow-Stick Nunchucks 177
PART SIX
The Pope, the Princess, and the Giant Child
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Painting for the Pope 187
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Spiritualist Takes On the Mall of America 191
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Knight and the Princess 195
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Giant Child 203
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Pollyanna Meets Patton 211
PART SEVEN
The Controversy
CHAPTER THIRTY
Fuck the Puck 217
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Straightjacket as Painting Smock 221
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
There Once Was a Gallerist from Nantucket 227
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Media Sharks Tear In 233
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Outsider, Outschmeider 241
PART EIGHT
The Present Tense and Future Perfect
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Maximalist Wrestles with Minimalism 247
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Lamb Meets Picasso 253
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Canyon Full of Ghosts 261
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Around the World in 80 Studios 265
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Pans and Praise: The Critics Look at Lamb 277
CHAPTER FORTY
Always Further: Lamb Today and Tomorrow 289
PART NINE
The Epilogue
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
When the Saints Go Marchin’ In 299
PART TEN
The Exit Interview
Afterword 307
Q&A
The Pony at the End of the Rainbow 329
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 341
TIMELINE 343
SELECTED COLLECTIONS AND
EXHIBITION HISTORY 347
CONTACT INFORMATION AND GALLERIES 355
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 357
NOTES 359
INDEX 365
About the Author :
Richard Speer (Portland, Oregon), www.richardspeer.com) is an Associated Press Award-winning writer whose essays, reviews, and commentary appear in Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, ARTnews, Opera News, The Sacramento News & Review, The Oregonian, and other national, regional, and local publications. He is Visual Arts Critic at Portland, Oregon's groundbreaking alternative newspaper, Willamette Week, where his take-no-prisoners reviews have won him vocal admirers ("A hedonist-critic in the tradition of Apollinaire and Cocteau, Speer has a dramatic, Baroque flair to his writing..."—NW Scuttle critic Jeff Jahn) and equally vocal detractors ("...clearly has Oedipal issues and should return to the whorehouse where his inspiration is born..."—Willamette Week Letter to the Editor). Formerly a television news anchor/reporter, Speer worked at CBS, ABC, NBC, and FOX affiliates throughout the United States. Among the national and international figures he has profiled are opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti, composer Philip Glass, U.S. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Trent Lott, authors Chuck Palahniuk, Nathaniel Branden, and Barbara Branden, painter David Geiser, and architects E. Fay Jones and James Lambeth. His groundbreaking monograph on painter Piet Mondrian, The Soul of a Straight Line, was published in the webzine Final Cause and critiqued in "The Aesthetics Symposium" of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. He has written about Matt Lamb for ARTnews, the German arts journal Hominum Genus, the Centre-Picasso (Horta, Spain), and the Centre Joan Miró (Mont-roig, Spain). An accomplished public speaker, Speer lectures on aesthetics, journalism, and criticism in academic and popular forums around the world. He has appeared as a talk radio guest on KRLA Los Angeles, WJR Detroit, WUCF Orlando, KPAM Portland, and other radio stations around the country.
