Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the sun. They weren't pretty, but they worked. A great example is Marjorie Kinnan Rawl-
ings' home in Cross Creek.
THE FLORIDA HIGHWAYMEN
Beginning in the 1950s, about two dozen largely self-taught African American painters
made a modest living selling vivid, impressionistic 'Florida-scapes' on wood and Masonite
for about $20 a pop. They sold these romantic visions of raw swamps and technicolor
sunsets from the trunks of their cars along I-95 and A1A, a practice that eventually gave
them their name.
The Highwaymen were mentored and encouraged by AE 'Beanie' Backus, a white artist
and teacher in Fort Pierce. Considered the 'dean' of Florida landscape art, Beanie was
also largely self-taught, often preferring the rough strokes of a palette knife over a brush.
Backus and his contemporaries from the '50s and '60s are also referred to as the Indian
River School, a reference to the famous Hudson River School of naturalist landscape
painters.
Today, this outsider art is highly revered and collected. To learn more, pick up Gary
Monroe's excellent book The Highwaymen;check out the Highwaymen website
(
www.floridahighwaymenpaintings.com
); and visit the
AE Backus Museum & Gallery
(
www.backusgallery.com
)
in Fort Pierce.
Painting & Visual Arts
Florida has an affinity for modern art, and modern artists find that Florida allows them to
indulge their whims. In 1983, Bulgarian artist Christo 'wrapped' 11 islands in Biscayne
Bay in flamingo-colored fabric, so that they floated in the water like giant discarded
flowers, dwarfing the urban skyline. Everyone loved it; it was so Miami.
But then so was Spencer Tunick when he posed 140 naked women on hot-pink rafts in
the Sagamore hotel pool in 2007, and Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt when they
plunked salmon-colored
The Living Room
in the Design District. Whatever the reasons,
cartoon-hued silly-happy grandeur and exhibitionism seem Miami's calling cards. That
certainly applies to Brazilian-born Romero Britto, whose art graces several buildings, such
as the Miami Children's Museum. Miami's prominence in the contemporary-art world was
cemented in 2002, when the Art Basel festival arrived, and without question, Miami's gal-
lery scene is unmatched outside of LA and Manhattan.
