The art critics of The New York Times have selected their favorites from this year’s crop of art books. Among Roberta Smith’s favorites is
‘Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee’
Doris Lee (1905-1983) worked simultaneously as a fine and a commercial artist, illustrating “The Rodgers and Hart Songbook,” while exhibiting paintings with the still-extant AAA Galleries in Manhattan. The paintings, which combined Grandma Moses with the textured color fields of Milton Avery cheerfully reflect this duality. This catalog, by Melissa Wolfe, and a traveling show at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pa., (through Jan. 9) should begin to end her obscurity. (Westmoreland Museum of Art and Giles Ltd., London)
