However rationalistic his motives, Parrish's elaborately artificial methods give his pictures a good deal of aura and a surrealistic, even slightly hallucinogenic feeling, which puts an odd spin on the otherwise generically picturesque imagery and its cliched eulogizing of the rural past. If you discovered them unlabeled in the right contemporary gallery, you might mistake them for essays in postmodern duplicity. But Parrish himself was innocent of ironic intent, and the heartfelt romance and hard-won beauty of his calendar-art vision offers a gratifying break from late-modernist cynicism. What Parrish made may have been kitsch, but it was great kitsch.
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Ken Johnson in "Kitsch meets the sublime — illustrator Maxfield Parrish" Art in America (March 1996)Maxfield Parrish
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Parrish, Maxfield
Parry, Bruce
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