Emotionally raw, physically intimidating, beautiful and barbed, the work of American painter Alexander in the 1970s and '80s captures perfectly the artistic sensibility of the time. Growing up in the Gulf Goast marshlands of east Texas, Alexander came of age in the midst of the turbulent 1960s, and the contention of the Civil Rights movement, along with a distrust of his religious upbringing, are common themes. An artist's artist, he combines his political message with stunning depictions of nature, portraiture and the occasional bizarre still-life, often taking the theory and conscience of Expressionism into satirical territory-works Pope Dewey, Pope Huey and Pope Louie depict the holy men in beaked masks and dunce caps. The course of Alexander's evolution from chaotic drip paintings of devils and pigs to a more refined and illustrative technique are chronicled, tied by "dramatic light-and-shadow effects" and an "overall apocalyptic atmosphere." Also included are post-9/11 works, many concerning capitalist greed and religious hypocrisy. Alexander is anything but subtle, and this volume-as informative as it is beautiful-frames his work well without diminishing its impact.

This handsome book presents three decades of artwork by John Alexander (b. 1945), who draws upon the rich imagery of his East Texas heritage to create art with a national impact. A native of Beaumont, a Gulf Coast oil and fishing-industry town, Alexander grew up in a region heavily influenced by Cajun, Creole, and African-American cultures. Early in his career, Alexander produced visionary landscapes and feverish, often self-revealing drawings that incorporated the imagery of the bayou. By the mid-1980s, the scale of his oil paintings had increased, and his landscapes had assumed a more hallucinatory character. The authors show how the artist's frenetic expressionism gave way to an interest in figuration and narrative, and how his approach to genre painting gave voice to his outrage at social injustice. In tracing the evolution of Alexander's work, the authors also explore the enduring theme of the natural environment and its depredation.