The Unknown Night: The Genius and Madness of R.A. Blakelock, an American Painter

By Glyn Vincent

Book Overview

In 1916, Ralph Albert Blakelock's haunting landscape was sold at auction for a record price for a painting by a living American artist. Yet at the time of his triumph, Blakelock was confined in a psychiatric hospital. This remarkable biography chronicles the life, times, and madness of one of America's most celebrated--and exploited--painters. Full-color illustrations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802140645
• ISBN13: 9780802140647
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Pictures You Skipped Over In The Encyclopedia Americana's "American Painting" Article (from Ahad

I've always found the European Painters more to my taste in pre-modernism: Giotto, Leonardo, di Cosimo, Raphael, Durer, David, Ingres, Gericault, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, who can beat them? Moreover, Blakelock's pictures--"The Chase"; "Moonlight," etc.--always constituted the wallpaper I skipped to get to Jackson Pollock and the modernist crazies in the American Painting section of the Encyclopedias I used to read as a kid. I even recall, much later in another incarnation, strolling past "Old New York: Shanties at Fifty-fith Street and Seventh Avenue" at the Milwaukee Art Museum on my way to Clifford Still without even slowing down to catch the name of the artist. Well, this book put a name to that painting in Milwaukee, and "dusted off," in a manner of speaking, the work of this remarkable American artist. Sure, the Cracker Jack prize in the book is the story of an artist's madness (scads of 'em are)and evil as embodied in the doe-eyed Miss Adams (evil gals abound in the history of art too), but I like the caramelized popcorn better: the historical detail that Mr. Vincent provides us with concerning turn of the century Art Biz, and how certain "Big Names" dined on oysters and champagne while the unknowns remained--well, unknown, and packed away in an asylum, or stuck working hard for their dignity in a "pictures made to order sweat shop". (Well, Ha ha Big Names THEN! Where are you NOW? In some Guggenheim cellar or MOMA warehouse, I bet, or over-priced in a New York gallery.) Yes, Vincent's excellent tome made me "see" Blakelock's work anew and led me to reconsider Ryder, Blyth, Quidor, Vedder, Rimmer, Newman and the rest of the American pictures I skimmed over in days past. Are they as good as the Europeans? As the Asians? (There are plenty of unsigned works in China and Japan that would have done Leonardo and the rest of the West proud.) I don't feel so patriotic today, so I'm going to say maybe. Blakelock is still a "minor" in my book, but Vincent has made me revise his status to a "major minor" and that's not at all bad.

Fascinating Account of a Brilliant Yet Fragile Artist...

Blakelock's life is beautifully portrayed in all its glory, madness, and sadness. There is something so haunting about this biography, it leaves one feeling very sorry for this poor man. I had never heard of Blakelock but now have a deeper respect for his work, and more importantly his shattered life.

Art and history on a collision course with madness

Blakelock's paintings of moonlight have the weird, dissociated values of gesture that we associate with a much later generation of American painters (e.g. Pollock or De Kooning), at least according to controversialist Glyn Vincent, who notes that Blakelock, after a traditional and demure career as a minor artist of the Hudson River Valley school, made a great breakthrough as the 1870s turned into the 1880s. Unfortunately, insanity came along for the ride, and before long Blakelock was clapped into a mental home even as the prices of his completed paintings soared in a seller's market in the ateliers of the corrupt NY art world. Enter the real villain of the story, a seductive and beautiful "philanthropist" who, under cover of helping Blakelock's worthy, long suffering and penurious family, worked to rescue him from the asylum but secretly to transfer the title of all his work to her name. You won't believe that one woman was capable of so much skullduggery, but such is the gift of Glyn Vincent's writing that you ALMOST do. Vincent is wonderfully accomplished and always looks to contextualize the individual incidents and privations of his characters inside a wider social sphere, which is much appreciated. Once you start reading THE UNKNOWN NIGHT, its story will never leave your soul.