In the past I have been up on Altman when everyone else was down, and down on Altman when everyone else was up. I have always found it strange that so somber and so pessimistic an artist has managed to be so productive in an industry dedicated mostly to the manufacture of cotton candy.

Part of the answer may be that he was regarded for a long time as a realist and an iconoclast…. No one seemed to notice the stylization and absurdism in [his] works. But when Altman went completely abstract in Brewster McCloud, Images, and Three Women, most reviewers found no outlet for their anti-establishment rhetoric and turned thumbs down on these violent ruptures from all realistic conventions. For my part, I have come to appreciate Altman more and more as a thoroughly eccentric and resourceful artist. His art remains hard edged at a time when...