Manny Farber; Movie Critic Had Reputation As a Maverick

He attended Stanford University, the California School of Fine Arts and the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco before moving to Washington in 1939 with his first wife, Janet Terrace.

After working in carpentry and construction in Washington, Mr. Farber moved to New York in 1942, where he plunged into the city's lively community of artists, writers and intellectuals. He began writing art and film criticism for the New Republic.

In 1949, Mr. Farber left the magazine and for the next two decades wrote for a variety of publications, including Time, the Nation, the New Leader, Artforum and the men's magazine Cavalier. He continued to contribute to Film Comment and Francis Ford Coppola's City magazine until the mid-1970s.

His art criticism could be as vivid and playful as his paeans to low-budget "B" movies. Of Matisse, he wrote that his "line is as much a thing of genius as Cary Grant's dark, nonchalant glitter. With one swift, sure, unbroken flip of the wrist he can do more for the female navel, abdomen, breast, and nipple than anyone since Mr. Maidenform."

His film writings were published in "Negative Space" (1971), an expanded edition of which came out in 1998.

Mr. Farber's marriages to Terrace and Marsha Picker ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, painter and installation artist Patricia Patterson; a daughter from his second marriage, Amanda Farber of San Diego; and a grandson. His late brother Leslie H. Farber was a leading figure in psychiatry.

For his own part, Mr. Farber evinced disarming humility when it came to his work. "It used to scare me, talking to Pauline [Kael] about movies, because she was so certain," he told Art in America. "Her opinions were so strong the moment she left the movie. Criticism is very important, and difficult. I can't think of a better thing for a person to do."