It feels impossible not to envy Peter Mendelsund – the man who can do everything, and does. Masterful designer of some of the most recognizable of our era bookjacks. Believed author of Fiction, as well as books about graphic design. Creative director of the legendary monthly The Atlantic Ocean. Accomplished classic pianist. And now, moving expressive painter.
But as his new book Exhibitionist Shows on devastating effect, it was abandonment that made him one. Depression during the pandemia brought him to the existential edge. As related to the news bookings for lush reproductions of 100 paintings that he made during this period, his state of mind became dangerously gloomy during his family’s stay on a farm in New Hampshire. Different angry singing birds “Never Shut The Fuck Up”, he smokes, the sight of a heron only makes him “jealous of his stupid determination”; Not able to eat or sleep; fiercely inspecting a stock of painkillers and alcohol; And filled with self -hatred, he descends to deposits.
The ladder appears in an unlikely place: the art and craft shop Michaels. Without a plan he notices that he is loading his basket with acrylic paints and pre -principled cloths; He then goes to the IJzerhandel for less fine art supplies. He then repairs an old barn on the rental home with only a vague idea of what to do, and even less knowledge: his wide education seems to have covered every subject than painting. Nevertheless, his resolution offers to try the path of escape from his besieged mental state: alone doing Could he push him out of starting Unbeing. He starts, and finally – “I had felt something while painting,” he writes. “What I felt was movement.”
Appropriate, the works that are the result of this act of self-recovery (although painting is far from reduction, because the magazine also investigated philosophy, music, literature, friendship and a large number of other searching for searching)) are non-restricted gestures. Mendelsund’s version of Action painting provides work in which Acrylic is collapsed, printed, worked, left to the elements and written on (using an extension or with its non -dominant hand, to prevent the needle). Other media include rainwater, which gives a delicate melancholy to the surface; coffee; whiskey; mud; spray paint; Sharpie.
Giving himself the freedom to explore without prejudice or conditions of claims little familiarity with art history, although his oeuvre echoes contains the giants of 20th-century art, Van Klee and Miró via the abstract expressionists, with a final interpretation of Basquiat-kicking something loose in Mendelsund. But it unleashes not only a generative creativity, but also a long -awaited settlement with the dark memories of his pilgrimage but deeply loved father, also an artist.
“Depression is a language: often translated incorrectly,” Avert Mendelsund. The paintings in it Exhibitionist Speak eloquently – and stubbornly – for themselves.
Exhibitionist (2025), written by Peter Mendelsund and published by Catapultis available for online and in bookshops.
