Manny Farber

About

Birth Place

Douglas, Arizona, USA

Born

February 20, 1917

Died

August 18, 2008

Cause of Death

Bone Cancer

Biography

Since the late 1940s, this highly opinionated, controversial art and film critic has written for such cultural arbiters as "Cavalier," "Art Forum," Francis Ford Coppola's "City," "Film Culture" and "The Village Voice." It was in the 1950s that Farber wrote the three essays which were to make his name: "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art" (for "Film Culture"), "Underground Films" and "Har...

Filmography

Himself

Negative Space (2001)

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism (2009)

Other

Bibliography

"Negative Space"

Manny Farber, Praeger (1971)

Biography

Since the late 1940s, this highly opinionated, controversial art and film critic has written for such cultural arbiters as "Cavalier," "Art Forum," Francis Ford Coppola's "City," "Film Culture" and "The Village Voice." It was in the 1950s that Farber wrote the three essays which were to make his name: "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art" (for "Film Culture"), "Underground Films" and "Hard Sell Cinema."

Born in Arizona (just one mile north of Mexico), Farber worked as a carpenter before moving to New York in the late 1930s and starting his new career with a job writing for "The New Leader." He continued working as a film and art critic through the 1980s, praising such neglected directors as Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh and William Wellman, and espousing his sometimes disputed (and often impenetrable) views on modern art and films. "Cinema" described his style as an "off-on, pos-neg, good-bad jolting around the once-linear American language." Farber--it is claimed--coined the term "underground film" in 1957.

When Farber met artist Patricia Patterson in 1966, his interest in art expanded from criticism to actual creation (he and Patterson wed in 1975). Farber's paintings have been shown several times in New York, as well as in the film "Routine Pleasures" (directed by Jean-Pierre Gorin).