Today, Bess is regarded as a unique phenomenon, an artist who cannot be grouped with any one school, but who answered solely and completely to his own vivid, personal vision. His best art consists of only about 100 small paintings, many with simple driftwood frames that he built himself. The majority of these paintings are in private collections, although the Menil Collection, Houston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art have Bess paintings in their collections.