Famed songwriter and performer John Mellencamp has a double life.
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The musician is also an accomplished painter, proving that yet again with a new exhibition, Paintings and Assemblages, in New York City this fall.
Mellencamp will display his artwork at the New York Academy of Art from September 29 through November 15 this year. More information on The New York Academy Website HERE.
But wait, there’s more! Mellencamp will also release the coffee table book, John Mellencamp: American Paintings and Assemblages, this October 18 via Rizzoli New York.
“The art of John Mellencamp stretches the American brand of expressionism…Free in spirit, his work punches out at us.” said Dr. Louis A. Zona, a professor in Fine Arts of Mellencamp’s work. “His is not a work that dabbles along the edges; it is every bit as strong-willed as the best of the American expressionists no matter the period with which we might make a comparison.”
An example of Mellencamp’s work can be seen below and can also be seen on the album cover for his most recent record, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack.
As his musical career flourished, Mellencamp began to paint earnestly in 1980 with an early affinity for portraiture influenced by the works of Otto Dix and Max Beckmann.
His kinship with the German Expressionism of the early Twentieth century, with its existential focus on the human condition, serves as the foundation for the development of Mellencamp’s artful “oeuvre.”
The heartland artist’s large-scale oil portraits and mixed-media pieces document America’s heart and soul, revealing unsettling but beautiful truths with a kind of anti-establishment frown, with a rich sense of narrative. Like his music, Mellencamp’s paintings are carefully composed through the structural requirements of harmony, rhythm and order, and is thematically in line with the small-town, earnest voice of the heartland.
John Mellencamp: American Paintings and Assemblages documents “America’s heart and soul” with an “anti-establishment frown.” The book features 170 original works, essays from David L. Shirley and Bob Guccione Jr, and a forward written by Dr. Louis A. Zona.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s upcoming exhibition is curated by Dexter Wimberly, an acclaimed American curator based in Japan who has organized exhibitions around the world.
“Mellencamp is a very serious visual artist with a lot to say about life and the times we’re living in,” says Wimberly. “I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to share his work with a new audience of art enthusiasts and collectors.”
American Book publisher Bob Guccione Jr. says, “Although we may primarily know Mellencamp as a rock star, one of the highest-selling of all time and a Hall of Famer, he is also a great painter, as this book shows. Not a musician who also paints… No, John legitimately belongs in the modern art pantheon.”
Photo by Marc Hauser / Sacks & Co
