Introducing the World of

William Rice Rode

We here at Carl Hammer Gallery have had both the honor and the thrill of representing major self-taught artist discoveries to the world of fine art for over 35 years.  And so, it gives us great pleasure at this time to present a remarkable body of art work consisting of a modest five pieces, but, nevertheless, a body of work of incredible visual power and invention.

 The artist’s story is not dissimilar to that of the amazing saga of Martin` Ramirez. William Rice Rode, an immigrant to the U.S., was apparently a man who became afflicted by mental illness at some point in time during his adult life.   In fact, what we know most about this man, comes to us from his art.  In a cryptic, rambling, stream-of-conscious development manner, combining both text and pictorial imagery, Rode demonstrates a most incredible talent and an extraordinary level of self-taught genius.  His life is visually self-documented within the work, recalling experiences occurring both outside and within the insane asylum world from the late 19^th century to the early 20^th.  Serving as a kind of visual segue from one autobiographical story vignette to another, Rode employs use of colorful figurative drawings and sophisticated machine invention drawings, the latter, perhaps, expressing fantasy rather than serious design idea, but also having more than a casual Leonardo Da Vinci reference to them. 

The work consists of ink, paint and colored pencil on fabric.  By reading from text on the five pieces, we learn that the artist was originally from Denmark and lived in several locations in the U.S., starting from NYC, moving on to various towns throughout the Mid-West and primarily Illinois.  Throughout the disconnected story-telling vignettes written on these fabric pieces, Rode makes numerous, specific references of his assignments to insane asylums and one in particular in Jacksonville, Illinois.   

In 1910, while still serving as a mental patient at an Illinois Mental Hospital, Rode allegedly gave away these five pieces of art work, all sewn together, bound like a book at one end, to a Dr. Charles F. Applegate who was possibly superintendant of the hospital at the time.  These pieces were handed down to descendants within the Applegate family from that time forward.