Justin McCarthy (May 13, 1891July 14, 1977) was a self-taught American artist. His work is in many important collections, including those of the

American Folk Art Museum The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, at 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creativ ...

, the

Milwaukee Art Museum The Milwaukee Art Museum (also referred to as MAM) is an art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its collection of over 34,000 works of art and gallery spaces totaling 150,000 sq. ft. (13,900 m²) make it the largest art museum in the state of Wis ...

, the Petullo Collection, the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at ...

, and the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' has praised his "paintings and drawings of gestural force and narrative interest." McCarthy's imagery anticipates the Pop art of the 1960s.

Life and work

McCarthy lived for almost his entire life in the small town of

Weatherly, Pennsylvania Weatherly is a borough in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania and is located northwest of Jim Thorpe and south of Wilkes-Barre. The population was 2,525 at the 2010 census. History Originall ...

, where his family was well established (a patrician background uncommon among self-taught artists). He failed his second year exams while in law school at the University of Pennsylvania, which led to a severe mental breakdown, after which he was institutionalized for years before returning "to his family's decayed mansion, where he lived with his mother."For the fact that the breakdown followed on the failure of his exams, see any of the references (except Hughes). This breakdown saved him from the trenches of World War I, but considerably reduced his professional prospects. McCarthy then turned to art as a therapeutic outlet from the menial work he was limited to by his precarious mental health. His mother died in 1940, leaving him alone in the big, dilapidated house (which was grand enough to have its own theatre for the staging of plays). His art depicts figures from popular culture as well as animals, biblical scenes, and everyday life. Pictorially, he had a predilection for glamorous women—movie stars, fashion models, and other celebrities—as well as sports heroes. This interest in popular culture was not uncommon among American artists in the 1920s: both Stuart Davis and Gerard Murphy incorporated the visual argot of advertising into a bright Cubist syntax. Unlike these proto-Pop artists, however, McCarthy's style is expressionist, with a highly gestural and textured appearance that readily calls to mind works by European masters such as

Emil Nolde Emil Nolde (born Hans Emil Hansen; 7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and was one of the first oil painting and watercolor painters of the early ...

and

Chaïm Soutine Chaïm Soutine (; ; ; 13 January 1893 – 9 August 1943) was a French painter of Belarusian-Jewish origin of the School of Paris, who made a major contribution to the Expressionist movement while living and working in Paris. Inspired by clas ...

. (The most significant early "discoverer" and promoter of McCarthy's art, Sterling Strauser, characterized his style as "naive expressionist.")

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External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:McCarthy, Justin 1891 births 1977 deaths Painters from Pennsylvania American Expressionist painters 20th-century American painters American male painters People from Carbon County, Pennsylvania American outsider artists 20th-century American male artists