From the book jacket: "Matt
Lamb emerged from the rough-and-tumble streets of 1940s
Southside Chicago to transform a cash-poor funeral parlor into a
multimillion-dollar business empire. But when a mysterious
midlife illness caused him to question the true value of his myriad
accomplishments, Lamb stunned family, friends, colleagues, and
competitors by turning his back on business to become a self-taught
painter. The undulating spirits and flamboyant depictions of
heaven and hell that sprang from his brush were at once
sophisticated and primitive, life-affirming and disturbing.
Today, Lamb's unique vision has made him one of the world's most
controversial painters. Tagged by some as an
"Outsider artist," a designation
he has alternately embraced and rejected, Lamb has seen his work
collected by museums, universities, celebrities, and royalty -- even
as his art has been blacklisted by some of New York's most powerful
dealers. He has won rapturous reviews from critics in
publications from London to Shanghai and has been hailed as an heir
to Pablo Picasso, even as he --
and his millions -- have been derided as the antithesis of
starving-artist chic. In Matt
Lamb: The Art of Success, renowned writer and
critic Richard Speer tells
Lamb's story in a no-holds-barred style that is both uncompromising
and uplifting. Given unprecedented access to Lamb's inner
circle and the artist himself, Speer traverses the world to discover
what drove Lamb to triumph in the diametrically opposed worlds of
art and business. Speer coaxes Lamb to open up about his
personal and artistic crises, the unconventional spiritual beliefs
that inform his paintings, and his daunting current project:
painting for world peace. This is a fascinating biography and
artistic chronicle, filled with inspiration for finding true success
in every aspect of life."
PRAISE FOR
MATT LAMB:
THE ART OF SUCCESS BY RICHARD SPEER
"A captivating
biography..."
– Beverly Close, The
Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)
"Outrageously
funny, vividly colorful..."
– Carol Gilbert, The Southern Star
"Ready-made
material for a Hollywood movie..."
– The Coral Gables
Gazette (Miami, Florida)
"Most
biographies lope along; this one runs and jumps. Speer is
fascinated by Lamb, as will be any reader. After all, how
many art books open with a sentence anything like, "There are
demons in the gallery"?
– Dan Hays, The Statesman
Journal (Salem, Oregon)
"Richard Speer
powerfully illuminates Lamb's art, life, and career...
Speer takes the reader on a detailed journey through the
artist's humble origins, personal struggles, and the birth and
development of his intriguing artistic techniques..."
– Stephanie Snyder,
Willamette Week (Portland, Oregon)
"An
entertaining and educational read for the lay person as well as
the scholar, Matt Lamb: The Art of Success is a
well-conceived, cleverly written global view of Lamb’s personal
and artistic life. With clarity and humor, Richard Speer
engulfs the reader in Lamb's world, pointing out his many
paradoxes and introducing us to the diverse network of people
surrounding the artist… This
is an apt retelling of a boisterous life, full of fascinating
vignettes, charm, and irony."
– Enrique Mallen, Ph.D.,
Picasso scholar and professor, Texas A&M University
"Mr.
Speer guides us with insight and humor through the amazing story
of Matt Lamb, an artist who lives large while tip-toeing on the
sidelines of death."
– George Wendt, Actor
"...Emphasizes that the American
Dream is alive and well. A great story!"
– Robert L. Waltrip, Chairman/CEO, Service Corporation
International
"Richard Speer brings insight and
sensitivity to the envisioning, making, and business of art through
the evolution of Matt Lamb. We follow Lamb's creative choices,
his development of process, selection of materials, and so much more
-- all with the artist's salty approach and focus on love as a
primal force."
– Nancy Azara, Artist and Author of
Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art
"Matt Lamb: The Art of Success showcases an extraordinary
life built on hard work and raw talent. Richard Speer's biography
of Lamb shows that being an artist, entrepreneur, visionary, and
Teamster are not mutually exclusive. In this inspiring story, they
are all parts of one man's remarkable life."
–
James Hoffa, General President, International
Brotherhood of Teamsters
"Lamb is an earthy blend of
multiple strata: keen business acumen, spiritual
curiosity, uninhibited artistry, and infectious enthusiasm.
With so much texture and so many layers, the man, his work, and
this book catch and hold our attention."
– Fabrice Braunrot, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan Private Bank
"Matt Lamb represents that innocent
child in each of us who is alive with creativity and energy.
Like his paintings, this book is created in layers and allows us
to go into each period of Lamb's life so we may better
understand him and the spirits coming out of his canvases."
– David Sabin, Founder and Chairman, Salton USA
Renegade painter
Matt
Lamb stands at the center
of arguably the most divisive controversy in the art world today:
the battle over the boundaries of contemporary art.
A feisty, outspoken multi-millionaire, Lamb was banned from the 2003 Outsider Art Fair in
SoHo because his fabulous wealth did not jibe with gatekeepers' ideal of
the penniless Outsider artist ("Outsider" meaning self-taught or
naïve). New York's
most powerful gallerists squared off on the controversy, and The Wall Street Journal,
in
an article entitled "When is an Outsider Really an Insider?",
dubbed Lamb “the
Outsider Outlaw.” National magazines and Internet newsgroups picked up the story, and
the septuagenarian Lamb found
himself an unlikely enfant terrible
leading
the charge in a hotly contested academic and popular turf war.
The
hullabaloo stood in stark contrast to Lamb's renown in Europe, where he is
loved without caveat. In September 2003 he was given a hero's
welcome in Horta, Spain, where the Centre Picasso curated a 2-month-long
exhibition entitled Lamb Encounters Picasso. Documented in a
60-page catalogue with a lead essay by Dr. Leonard Folgarait (Art
Department Chair, Vanderbilt University), the show highlighted the
cultural divide between the art world in Europe and the myopic art scene
in the U.S., which is largely focused not on ideas, but on sensation and profit.
Even more
riveting than the controversy surrounding his art is the story of how Lamb
came to painting. In his "first life," Lamb was CEO of the
Midwest's largest family-owned funeral home--a job with all the drama,
pathos, and dark humor of the HBO series,
Six Feet Under. In his late 40s, when doctors diagnosed him
with a fatal disease, Lamb faced the grim prospect of becoming his own
customer. Although he had never taken an art lesson, he began
painting as a path to inner peace, filling his canvases with garishly
colored angels and demons from the far reaches of his imagination.
Then one day, Lamb's doctors showed him new test results that showed he
was not dying after all. He had either been misdiagnosed or
miraculously cured. Grateful for the reprieve, he decided to sell
his businesses and dedicate the remainder of his life to art.
While leaving the business arena has simplified his life, Lamb is still far from the “starving artist”
of the cherished bohemian mode.
He travels by limousine and private jet between his immense studios
(one in excess of 30,000 square feet) in
France, Germany, Ireland, and the United States, and hobnobs with the
world’s political and social elite. Twice knighted by order of
Pope John Paul II, he is formally known as "Sir Matthew."
An international organization helps him
spread his spiritually charged message throughout the world.
It
is precisely this mix of wealth, connections, and marketing savvy, along with a
penchant for withering, loose-cannon tirades ("An artist and a
gallery owner are two whores dancing," he is fond of saying) that provoked
the organizers of the 2003 Outsider Art Fair to oust Lamb and his
Nantucket gallery rep, Carolyn Walsh.
“He
is that rarest of birds,” writes Michael Hall in
Raw Vision, “the highly sophisticated naÏve.”
Lamb, Hall asserts, is too much of an insider to be an Outsider, but
too much of an Outsider to be an insider in contemporary-art circles.
The hairsplitting semantics and OPEC-like exclusionary tactics
among gatekeepers have re-inflamed the long and uneasy
relationship between money, power, and art.
For his part,
Lamb has taken it upon
himself to champion the prerogative of the artist, whether vagabond poor or
Vanderbilt rich, to be judged by his quality of output, not his quantity of
income.
Designer Pierre Cardin and
Matt Lamb at the artist's opening, Espace Pierre Cardin, Paris, October 2,
1990
Pope John Paul II accepts a
catalogue of Matt Lamb's exhibition at The Vatican Museums, April 7, 1994.
Her Royal Highness, Princess
Michael of Kent, and Matt Lamb at the artist's installation, Westminster Cathedral, London, June 6, 2000.
In the middle of the
maelstrom over Outsider art, the prolific Lamb continues to produce his
iconic, boldly colorful works, born of a secretive process that imparts a textural topography unique among painters.
The menagerie of enigmatic characters inhabiting his canvases
are players in an idiosyncratic cosmology based on universal values like
tolerance, hope, and love. A painter
whose lack of training as a figurative artist is counterbalanced by
an
extraordinary intuitive grasp of the gestural drama of Abstract
Expressionism, Lamb has in recent years struggled with conflicting
aesthetic impulses: maximalism versus minimalism, figuration versus
abstraction. Wrestling with these polarities has encouraged a
dynamism that has invigorated his work.
As
a personality, Lamb is a confluence of seeming contradictions:
a deeply religious Roman Catholic who swears like a sailor and
makes mincemeat of his enemies; a man who entertains world
leaders but would prefer to sit on the floor, fingerpainting with
children; a gregarious raconteur with an infectious laugh who is adopting
an increasingly hermetic existence as he focuses ever more monomaniacally
on his painting.
Lamb has exhibited at venues
including Grant Gallery (New York), ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries (Coral
Gables/Miami), Judy
A. Saslow Gallery (Chicago), Mark Woolley Gallery (Portland, Oregon), Rima
Fine Art (Scottsdale), Sailor's Valentine Gallery (Nantucket), State
Russian Museums (St. Petersburg), Vatican Museums
(Rome), Espace Pierre Cardin (Paris), Centre Picasso (Horta,
Spain), Centre Joan Miró (Mont-Roig, Spain), Museo di Sant'Apollonia
(Venice), Galerie Leupi (Lucerne), Museo Ambrosetti
(Buenos Aires), Warren Gallery (County Cork, Ireland), and Westminster Cathedral (London). His works have
won juried shows such as the National Federation of French Culture’s Deauville Exposition and have been reviewed in
ARTnews, The New Art Examiner,
The London Times, The
Daily Independent (Dublin), The Chicago Sun-Times, The Miami
Herald, and other publications.
In
the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United
States Government called upon Lamb to help children orphaned by the
tragedy deal with their loss through painting.
Lamb and the children took their “Lamb Umbrellas
for Peace” to Capitol
Hill (Washington, D.C.), Daley Plaza (Chicago), European
Parliament (Strasbourg, France), and Brandenburg Gate (Berlin).
Lamb teaches painting at the Germany, Argentina, and
China campuses of San Matthias College.
For
more information about Matt Lamb, please visit
www.MattLamb.org.
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