Film critic and artist was iconoclastic and influential

Describing Wayne's performance in John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," he wrote: "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 cactus was planted last night and nostalgically casted actors do a generalized drunkenness, cowardness, 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 a wall. . . ."

In 1977, Farber turned full time to painting because he "no longer wanted to be viewed as the film critic who also paints."

He regularly exhibited in New York and was the subject of two well- received retrospectives of his paintings organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in 1978 and 2003.

He was best known for the still-lifes he produced from the 1970s until his death, some of which referred to his previous life as a critic.

He admitted that, despite the thrashings he once delivered, he often found it painful to read reviews of his artwork.

"Criticism," he told an interviewer for Art in America a few years ago, "is very important, and difficult. I can't think of a better thing for a person to do."

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elaine.woo@latimes.com