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Manny Farber

1917–2008
Manny Farber in Encinitas, California, in 2003. (Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Major works:
Negative Space • “The Gimp” • “Underground Films” • “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art”

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White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art

Manny Farber

Wayne’s acting is infected by a kind of hoboish spirit, sitting back on its haunches doing a bitter-amused counterpoint to the pale, neutral film life around him. In an Arizona town that is too placid, where the actus was planted last night and nostalgically cast actors do a generalized drunkenness, cowardice, voraciousness, Wayne is the termite actor focusing only on a tiny present area, nibbling at it with engaging professionalism and a hipster sense of how to sit in a chair leaned against the wall, eye a flogging over-actor (Lee Marvin).

(On The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)

Read a passage from White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art by Manny Farber
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