Life On Mars
Mesches is a stud of a painter. 90 years young, he exudes a
macho strut. This confluence of wisdom and pluck is reflected in the muscular,
confrontational strata of his painterly architecture.
His no-nonsense scenery, influenced by Soviet Social
Realism, derives from a colorful life on the left coast. Born to an orthodox
Jewish family in the Bronx, he became a left-wing Zionist interested in
Marxism. I’d assume he was sympathetic to the American Communist Party, (he was
a friend of Paul Robeson) and the enlightened tradition of the Hollywood
Comintern in the 30s and 40’s before Stalin’s crimes and McCarthy’s paranoia took its toll on the movement.
In the tradition of socialist atheism, Mesches embraces a
secular perspective. His paintings do not indulge in speculative metaphysics. They
are festooned with feisty decorations that may not soothe the soul, but are
soulful.
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| Detail Coming Attractions 5 |
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| Detail, Coming Attractions 6 |
In Coming Attractions 5,
clothes hanging from a line rudely interrupt the interior of a cathedral-like
space, playfully nudging our frame of reference, while perhaps belittling
organized orthodoxy.
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| Coming Attractions 5 |
The urban collages contain a reflective presence. Eternal Return 3 features a foreboding skull,
conjuring up medical imagery, while foreshadowing a sense of doom. Possibly an
elder’s reference to the impending urgency of mortal decay.
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| Detail, Eternal Return 3 |
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| Eternal Return 3 |
There is a rough elegance to Mesches’s collages. They may
not be technical tour-de-force’s, but what they might resist in symbiosis with
the viewer, they more than make up for in compellingly authentic visual narratives.
These rambunctiously riotous compilations of city sprawl contain haunting
imagery that evokes an apocalyptic notion worthy of that gloriously noir LA
tradition.
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ETERNAL RETURN 2 |
Mesches’s art is laden with character metaphor. This cogent
ability to infuse compositions with symbolic versions of person and personality
lend a kind of veiled intimacy to his representational prowess. But you don’t
really get to know the artist, so much as respect him. Cryptic revelations
imbued with fire conjure up Charles Burchfield’s burning houses without the
spiritual ascendancy. This conflagration consumes an artist consumed by a
desire to paint succinctly forceful gestures.
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| Detail, Shock and Awe 23 |
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| Shock and Awe 23 |
His expansive interiors coalesce as references to dream
sensations that offer up a splendid dichotomy of loose and tight/dark and light.
In Coming Attractions 6, skeletal
archetypes span a voluminous void, inhabited by iconographic constellations of
dinosaur fossils floating about an allegorical realm.
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| Coming Attractions 6 |
The crowd scene paintings foment a lustrous visage of
pigment, spread about with less of a regard for pictorial realism, and thus end
up becoming more pure compilations of chromatic intensity.
They merge towards a filmic synthesis; a long shot zoomed in,
impelling an almost abstract result. These works epitomize the artist’s
figurative gestures. Casually staged and painted, they belie a highly charged
picture plane chock full of incipient drama. Like blossoms bursting they release an
outpouring of life energy that affirms this painters humanist mission.
Mesches is an old school, lunch pail artist whose
workman-like oeuvre has hammered out a well-deserved niche. Probably the last
of his generation, it is amazing to see such a prolific artist still painting
his ass off.
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| Eternal Return 10 |
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| Eternal Return 4 |
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| Detail, Eternal Return (?) |
A good synopsis of Mesches’s career:
