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David MellenTriptych Oil on linen: 'Elephant'2024
2024
About the Item
David Mellen has proceeded to work according to his own design. He sees art as a medium of discovery rather than a display of untrammeled emotion. This has very little to do with a liberal or conservative attitude toward painting, especially at a time when any kind of style can be justified as effective. Mellen’s merger of non-objective form with figurative indications is an ambitious decision that works. At a time both ways of proceeding are established, it makes sense to use the two approachesin tandem. We have to remember that, in contemporary art, the very pursuit of painting is seen by some as an anachronism! The question then becomes, How do we move out of something regarded as antiquated and establish a platform for new visual l articulations? This is easier said than done. Legacies have a way of shutting down innovation. Mellen rightly moves in a direction of change. His historical subtleties may be construed as an unwillingness to move ahead, but this is wrong, instead, he is producing work with an intelligent insight: painting today is meant to move across genres and periods. The effectiveness of appropriation and eclecticism can be questioned, but that need not concern us. Mellen paints the way he does because he has to, not because he has a theory in mind. His complexity, intellectual and formal results in work that remains both a critique and of an advance in art’s past. This is likely the best way of advancing painting. – Jonathan Goodman
- Creator:David Mellen (1970, American)
- Creation Year:2024
- Dimensions:Height: 78 in (198.12 cm)Width: 102 in (259.08 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Framing:Framing Options Available
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU422314036912
David Mellen
David Mellen (b. 1970, Chicago, IL, USA) attended the American Academy of Art and exhibited his work in his hometown of Chicago until 1994, when he moved to Europe. Over the next five years, he exhibited work in Paris, Brussels and London while working at studios in Germany and Brussels. After returning to the states and living for a time on the west coast, he moved across the country and now lives with his family in Connecticut and exhibits in New York. “When I start a new painting, it’s as if I’ve forgotten how to paint. I mean, once a painting is finished, that final image is so separate from the painting’s beginning, which is buried in this history of false starts and mistakes that I’ve forgotten how I went about it. For me, a finished painting is an accumulation of many small decisions which eventually add up to form a final image, but when starting something new, there is no history…there is nothing but a feeling and an idea. There’s a line in Becket’s Endgame ‘There’s something dripping in my head… A heart, a heart in my head.’ That’s how painting feels to me, slowly accumulating drop by drop.”
About the Seller
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Association of Women Art Dealers
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Stratford, CT
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 7 days of delivery.
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