Arnold Mesches: A Life’s Work

Miami Dade College Museum of Art + Design

Curated by Kim Levin

The Cultural Contexts of Arnold Mesches

By Jill Thayer, Ph.D.

During the Great Depression, artists portrayed the plight of the working class by exposing the dire economic and social conditions of the 1930s. Throughout this period, Arnold Mesches developed a penchant for social change. His left-wing proclivities and outspoken activism defied the social structures perpetuating these conditions and informed his voice in Social Realism. Mesches’ figurative style evoked that of the gestural Action Painters, as his work would rival the critiques of genres to follow–the human existence in Existentialism; the instinctual understanding of Abstract Expressionism; the commodified culture represented by Pop Art; the literalness in Superrealism; the emotive intensity in Neo-Expressionism; and the transformative liberation in Feminism. His formal grounding set into motion a lifelong inquiry of art’s historical trajectories, which would transpire in contemporary culture. The paintings and drawings Mesches produced throughout his nearly seven-decade career expound upon issues of the day through a mise-en-scène of masterful articulation.

“Arnold Mesches: A Life’s Work” is currently on view in a retrospective at Miami Dade College Museum of Art + Design. The exhibition portrays the artist’s powerful and thought-provoking depictions of a changing society amidst turbulent times in our country’s 20th-century history. The horrors of WWII, the anti-Communist crusades of the McCarthy era, civil rights, the Vietnam War and peace movement, social stratification, the political policies of the Reagan and Bush years, terrorism and the Iraqi War are a sampling of the cultural contexts that Mesches defines.

Arnold Mesches, The FBI Files 56, 2003, acrylic, Polaroids and paper on canvas, 14” x 22”. Collection of Glenn and Trish Zelniker, Gainesville, FL. Courtesy for the artist and Miami Dade College Museum of Art + Design.

The main gallery features more than 85 works from 1945 to 2012, including large paintings from many of the 14 series completed. Curated by Kim Levin, the exhibition marks Mesches’ 90th birthday and 136th solo show to date. “A Life’s Work” is augmented by three satellite-campus galleries, which total over 200 works. An elaborately designed 280-page catalogue accompanies the exhibition with essays by Lowery Sims, Peter Selz and Robert Storr.¹

“Arnold Mesches: The FBI Files” at Kendall Art Gallery at Pat & Martin Fine Center for the Arts presents a series of collages resembling illuminated manuscripts. The mixed-media pieces replete with mid-century iconography were transformed from 57 documents from his 760-page dossier citing 26 years of FBI surveillance.

“Arnold Mesches: Minispective” at Centre Gallery on Wolfson Campus looks into the process and methodology behind many of the artist’s large-scale works from 1996 to 2012. Included are small paintings, drawings and collages–a road map through the imagined realities and social consciousness of Mesches.

“Arnold Mesches: Noise” at the North Gallery on the North Campus displays more than 10 works from 2010 to present. The series reinterprets Brueghel’s Renaissance motifs through present day semiotics in which opposite extremes happen simultaneously. Mesches’ allegorical staging shows the complexities of a burgeoning society and the angst of its discord.

Though mostly self-taught, Mesches attended the Art Center School (now Art Center College of Design) on a 1943 scholarship where he gained formal training in composition from professor Lorser Feitelson. His early aspirations to become a commercial artist segued into painting as an illustrator in Hollywood’s film industry. The oppressive entanglements he faced as an activist in the McCarthy Era during the late 1940s and 1950s–and consequential shadowing by the FBI from 1945 to 1972-revealed a dicey tome of the artist’s political and social activities. This involvement helped shape his view of the cultural discourse and define the sociopolitical currents of our time.

Arnold Mesches, Shock and Awe 1, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 44” x 601/2”.

Mesches was influenced by Brueghel and Goya; German Expressionists Ernst Kirchner, Käthe Kollwitz and Anselm Kiefer; and Social Realists Ben Shahn, José Clemente Orozco and the Mexican muralists. His paintings reveal a dissension of government views on issues concerning the working class, economic hardship, war, racial injustice, class structure and power, much like the works of post-World War II figurative Abstraction and Expressionists Reg Butler and Leon Golub; German Dadaist/Expressionist George Grosz; and Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning and David Smith.

Social commentary is a narrative theme in Mesches’ work. Series such as: Anomie (1989-2006), It‘s a Circus (2004-2005) and Coming Attractions (2005-2007) are reminiscent of the theoretical touchstones of Mikhail Bakhtin, who signified carnivalesque humor as a participatory spectacle and social force in cultural transformation; and Bertolt Brecht, whose exploration of epic theater presented a social and ideological forum for political expression and critical thought.

Weather Patterns (2009-2010) is a series about the precariousness of today. The incongruous schemes align with Surrealist techniques and imagery, which express a free association of visual elements. This notion regards the psychological theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud and the political ideas of Karl Marx.² Mesches also explores this construct in Coming Attractions (2005-2007), evocatively illustrating the Bush years and the uncertainties of life.

Weather Patterns 10 (2009) depicts a trapeze artist in mid-flight, poised under siege from an imposing tidal wave. His sunlit physique is clothed in bright yellow, taupe and orange in sharp contrast to the deep azure blues of the turbulent sea. The acrobat, in static equilibrium, is on the verge of safety as a swinging bar beckons his grasp to offer reprieve from a sky fall into the abyss. The powerful juxtaposition alludes to the instability of the day and our futile attempt to control an unpredictable world with an unforeseeable future.

The FBI Files (2000-2003) is a series of interpretive montages from Mesches’ activist years. The censorship in the film industry, which blacklisted artists and writers for alleged Communist subversion during the Hollywood strike of 1946-1947, contributed to the national consequences of the McCarthy era in the late 1940s and 1950s. Mesches gained access to his abridged FBI files in 1999 through the Freedom of Information Act after the demise of The House Un-American Activities Committee. This inspired an eclectic array of collages from the partially blacked-out documents that reminded him of Franz Kline paintings.

Regarding these series, Peter Selz observes, “With each new countenance, Mesches alchemizes the Renaissance glazes and vigorous, wild brushstrokes, until his canvases rival Action Painting, the human face barely distinguishable in the gestural paint (Selz 8).” The series, resembling contemporary illuminated manuscripts, was first exhibited in 2003 at The Museum of Modern Art’s PS1 in New York and traveled to other venues, including the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles; the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, N.C.; and the University Galleries at the University of Florida School of Art and Art History, Gainesville, Fla. In the catalog of this exhibit, Selz notes, “The exhibit happened to coincide with the passage of George W. Bush’s odious Patriot Act, which permits broad surveillance of citizens, and remains largely in force in the Obama administration (6).”

The FBI Files 56 (2003) is a diptych collage incorporating a page from Mesches’ file. On the left is a portrait of a man in a dark suit–his head shown in close-up, disproportionately large for his body. A pompous expression is loosely painted in analogous shades of vermillion, red, gray and black as swashes of white cast a revealing spotlight on the intent of his message. The subject’s exaggerated features resemble a caricature of an orator, a trial prosecutor or perhaps McCarthy himself. On the right, a Federal Bureau of Investigations letterhead with singed edges is mounted close to the diptych’s center. The typing describes an announcement designed by Mesches. Entitled “Come Walk With Us For Peace,” the flier urges attendance at a vigil under the auspices of the American Friends Service Committee on Saturday, April 1, 1961.

Further down, the text reads, “A suggested letter to President John F. Kennedy regarding disarmament; and an announcement about the Walk For Peace.” The record is stamped May 31, 1961. Mid-century cutout reproductions border the page with objects such as Roman warriors, keys, dark mannequins dressed in pink and green, two doll heads, one end of a double Ferris wheel, a winged sculpture, a skeletal spine, a tricycle, finger puppets and a partially eaten apple. The background transitions from black to vivid red, unifying the disparate images in a surrealistic dreamscape of existence.

The vastness of Mesches’ oeuvre is astounding. From the sublime character of his haunting portraiture and intimate sketches to the profound intensity of his paintings that bear his conviction towards social change, “Arnold Mesches: A Life’s Work” is a compelling trek into the mind’s eye with an empowering initiative that seeks justice for all.

(February 14 - May 4, 2013)

WORKS CITED

• Selz, Peter. “Arnold Mesches: Aesthetic and Political Engagement,” Arnold Mesches: A Life‘s Work. Gainesville: Cement House, 2013. Exhibition Catalogue.

Notes

1. Arnold Mesches: A Life‘s Work is published by Cement House and distributed by the University Press of Florida. Exhibition Catalogue design by Connie Hwang Design, San Francisco.

2. “Surrealism,” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, © 2000-2012 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, online. 17 Feb. 2013 <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm>.

Jill Thayer, Ph.D. is an artist, educator, and curatorial archivist. She is online faculty at Santa Monica College in Art History/Global Visual Culture.

Filed Under: Reviews