By James Foritano Waterville, Maine - Fresh, honest, engaging — even ‘crafty’ — have been some of the adjectives lavished on the Bernard Langlais solo exhibit now at the Colby College Museum of Art. And yes, they’re all true, in all senses; yet, I didn’t drive the three hours plus up to Waterville, Maine just to repeat them. So, here are, I hope, some new or half-new insights, or maybe just self-addressed explanations, glimpsed from standing on the shoulders or peering between the legs of those previous insights. Langlais went out of his way to come back to his family farm from near apotheosis in the bubbling ferment of the 1960’s N.Y.C. art scene. Was he afraid of the loneliness of pre-eminence, too sensitive to the heat and venom of competition — just a backwoods boy, in other words, yearning for the barnyard A.S.A.P.? Maybe, but my take is that, like Br’er Fox in the … [Read more...] about Bernard Langlais at the Colby College Museum of Art & the Bernard Langlais Art Trail
