It feels not possible to not envy Peter Mendelsund — the person who can do every thing, and nicely. Masterful designer of a few of our period’s most recognizable e book jackets. Lauded writer of fiction, in addition to books on graphic design. Artistic director of the storied month-to-month The Atlantic. Achieved classical pianist. And now, movingly expressive painter.
However as his new e book Exhibitionist demonstrates to devastating impact, it was desolation that made him one. Despair throughout the pandemic introduced him to the existential brink. As associated within the journal entries accompanying lush reproductions of 100 work he made all through this era, his frame of mind grew dangerously bleak throughout his household’s sojourn at a New Hampshire farm. Variously indignant — songbirds “never shut the fuck up,” he fumes, the sight of a heron solely makes him “jealous of its stupid single-mindedness”; unable to eat or sleep; fretfully superintending a stash of painkillers and alcohol; and crammed with self-loathing, he descends to abyssal depths.
The ladder seems in an unlikely place: the humanities and crafts retailer Michaels. With no plan, he finds himself loading his basket with acrylic paints and pre-primed canvases; subsequent, he goes to the ironmongery shop for much less tremendous art-y provides. He then repairs to an outdated barn on the rental property with solely a imprecise notion of what to do, and even much less data: His wide-ranging schooling appears to have lined each topic however portray. But his decision to strive offers the avenue of escape from his beleaguered psychological state: Solely doing may propel him from incipient unbeing. He begins, and at last — “I had felt something while painting,” he writes. “What I felt was movement.”
Peter Mendelsund, Untitled portray (c. 2020), acrylic, crayon
Fittingly, the works that end result from this act of self-healing (though portray is way from reductively redemptive, because the journal additionally examines philosophy, music, literature, friendship, and a number of different looking topics) are unconstrainedly gestural. Mendelsund’s model of motion portray yields work by which acrylics are glopped on, squeegeed, labored over, left to the weather, and written on (utilizing an extension or along with his nondominant hand, to keep away from preciosity). Different media embody rainwater, which lends a fragile melancholy to the floor; espresso; whiskey; mud; spray paint; Sharpie.
Giving himself the liberty to discover with out preconceptions or preconditions — he claims little familiarity with artwork historical past, though his oeuvre accommodates echoes of the giants of Twentieth-century artwork, from Klee and Miró via the Summary Expressionists, with a closing fillip of Basquiat — kicked one thing unfastened in Mendelsund. Nevertheless it unleashed not solely a generative creativity, but in addition a long-awaited reckoning with the darkish recollections of his bedeviling but deeply beloved father, additionally an artist.
“Depression is a language: frequently mistranslated,” Mendelsund avers. The work in Exhibitionist converse eloquently — and obstinately — for themselves.
Peter Mendelsund, Untitled portray (c. 2020), acrylic, acrylic marker, pencil, espresso
Peter Mendelsund, Untitled portray (c. 2020), acrylic, pencil, grime, rainwater
Peter Mendelsund, Untitled portray (c. 2020), oil, acrylic
Peter Mendelsund, Untitled portray (c. 2020), spray paint, pencil
Peter Mendelsund, Untitled portray (c. 2020), acrylic
Exhibitionist (2025), written by Peter Mendelsund and printed by Catapult, is out there for order on-line and in bookstores.
