Critical consensus on Lamantia's art centers around four aspects, its: 1) "high voltage" emotional impact; 2) pushing of form and subject matter to aesthetic and psychological extremes; and 4) outsider status beyond mainstream critical categories, which has led some to classify him as an
Art brut artist. In terms of chronology and psychology, critics write that he "hovers at the edge" of the Chicago Imagists, sharing themes of sex, aggression, and psychological menace and a tendency towards vernacular expression. Critics
Peter Frank and Hawkins concur, describing his work as rawer than the Imagists, with cartooniness a "wrapper for something scarier, less aesthetic and polite." Lamantia set his scenes in garish, compressed domestic interiors that recall the harrowing rooms of
Francis Bacon and
Max Beckmann. Lamantia's figuration also evolved towards an
H.P. Lovecraftian, sci-fi-like "mechano-morphism," James Yood called the work a "strangely hypnotic" catalogue of unmediated male desire "immersed in sheer pictorial thrill." Critics hold that the drawings, while thematically similar, are neither tangential nor mere studies, but autonomous, open-ended works that explore oneiric, metaphysical and visionary pursuits with a searing, concentrated energy. Cozzolino, and others, consider the drawings to be among the least well-known, understudied bodies of work among artists of Lamantia's generation. John Corbett, nonetheless, suggests that this work built "a historical bridge between the rough-hewn feel of earlier Monster Roster artists and the sleek, cartoonish gleam of later Imagist work." Lamantia's drawing has continued apace his painting in subsequent decades, including some monochromatic drawings in the 1970s, such as
Your Favorite Sores Bronze Plated in Raw Meat and
The Vendor of His Scars (Art Institute of Chicago collection), both from 1977. In the catalogue to Lamantia's 2016 retrospective, Margaret Hawkins described late drawings, such as
Oddball Losers (2000) and
Peep Freak (2001), as gorgeous explorations of "infinite inner space" that flow "directly from the subconscious" and teem with provocative sensory information Since 2014, Lamantia has started painting on frozen pizza boxes, leaving portions of the color food photography to peek through and morph into skin and eyes; these works share an affinity with 16th-century
Mannerist Giuseppe Arcimboldo's "whimsically grotesque portraits." In addition to his drawings, Lamantia has also created prints at Anchor Press in Chicago and Lakeside Press in Michigan. == Collections and recognition ==