Opinion: ‘There are subtle guys and there are guys who like to shout. I like people to see the pictures and be taken aback.’
We are told we cannot know what the future holds but, sometimes … we can.
It was that way, I think, for the artist Ed Mell.
Mell passed away a week ago and since then those who knew him, and those who know art, have been celebrating his life and lamenting his loss.
The loss to his family, his friends, the artistic canon and Arizona cannot be calculated.
1984 was like another world for art
You can read what they have to say about Mell in an article by The Arizona Republic’s Bill Goodykoontz.
This is not about what other people have to say about Mell, however. This is about what Mell had to say about himself, about his work, about his future, in 1984.
Back then I was covering the arts for The Republic.
Just a few weeks after President Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale to win reelection, I spoke to Mell, who was about to show his work at the Suzanne Brown Gallery in Scottsdale.
It was the year the movie “Footloose” came out, the year LeBron James was born. The video game Tetris was all the rage and the big advancement in personal computer technology was floppy disks.
Mell focused on drama in landscapes
In art, Mell’s interpretation of the Southwest’s landscape was a revelation. And fast becoming a sensation.
I wrote at the time that the terrain he painted was “more angular, more broad-shouldered, more smooth and sharp and sinister,” and that “the clouds are cut and blocked as polished granite … .”
Mell told me, “There are subtle guys and there are guys who like to shout. I like people to see the pictures and be taken aback. I make it theater. I am not dealing conceptually with the subject of landscape. I am not playing a game with my art. I want the drama. I know the drama works.
“There are a lot of collectors of art who love the Southwest but who want to see it portrayed in a contemporary manner, not romanticized.”
He’d had enough of commercial art
Mell had been schooled as a commercial artist and had a successful career in New York that he gave up to do fine art.
“I felt I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish in New York,” he told me, “I did work for big ad agencies. I worked with large accounts. But I could not do fine art there. In New York, an artist is too concerned about being hipper than hip. I could not have survived there.”
So he came back to Arizona.
He said, “The one thing that commercial art teaches you is technique. It is something I will always be grateful for. That and discipline. In commercial-art school, it is skill that is stressed, not imagination. You had to be able to do things right.”
He added, “Let’s face it. If the pictures don’t sell, then you won’t end up painting what you want to paint, anyway. There’s no compromise in painting commercial work, unless you reach the point that you are doing it only for the money.”
Mell dreamed his future, then lived the dream
Mell did sculpture as well, and worked in other mediums.
He said, “When I paint people, or sculpt them, or do images for lithographs or posters, I want the humor to come through. I want to play with Western stereotypes in a contemporary manner. It is a good release for me from the other work, my more serious side.”
The bottom line, however, the future, was something Mell saw clearly all those years ago.
He said, “I dreamed about becoming a fine artist. I didn’t know if I could pull it off, though. There is calculation to my career. I wanted three things: I wanted to do work that excited me, work that kept my interest and work that fed my family.
“Those were my criteria … When it comes to what’s ahead for me, I don’t see anything beyond the next mountain.”
Looking back from whatever summit on which he now rests, I’d bet it looks perfectly clear.
Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.
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