Arnold Mesches: Echoes, A Century Survey March 14 to June 28, 2003 Marsh Art Gallery University of Richmond Museums What picture ultimately emerges from Mesches’s survey of the last century? There is plenty of folly, tragedy, absurdity, and loss, to be sure, but these are tempered by the saving intimacies of love and the occasional flash of selfless idealism. . . . Mesches leaves us with a sense that all is not lost. . . —Eleanor Heartney (review, Art in America, February 2002) Arnold Mesches: Echoes, A Century Survey includes more than 100 paintings and drawings that present a survey of the last century based on world history and the artist’s own American childhood and life. A figurative painter, Arnold Mesches (American, born 1923) combines a collage-based esthetic with expressionist color and dynamic compositions in these powerful works that chronicle his experiences as well as the lives of his parents and grandparents.
The exhibition includes selections from Mesches’s “Anomie” series (anomie is defined as “a condition of society marked by the absence of moral standards”) drawn from historical events, to images of Coney Island, to selections from the artist’s “Echoes” series based on family photographs, to other more personal imagery. Most of the works were created in the last decade, but they offer a sweeping, kaleidoscopic view of the twentieth century. Important to Mesches is the story of his family, particularly his parents and his Jewish heritage. Born in the Bronx, New York, Mesches and his family experienced firsthand some of the major events and changes of the twentieth century. Part of his subject matter includes themes of immigration, assimilation, and even a childhood memory of a trip to Coney Island. A series of paintings and drawings of his mother illuminate the complex relationship between mother and son, and old world and new world. Arnold Mesches has had numerous one-person and group exhibitions, including one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York: Neuberger Museum, State University of New York in Purchase, New York; the Visual Arts Center at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina; and the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. His work is in several museums and public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the High Museum, Atlanta; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, and the National Gallery of Art, both in Washington, DC; and the Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums. He has been the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Richard Florsheim Art Fund, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The exhibition was organized by the Oregon Jewish Museum and the Pacific Northwest College of Art, both in Portland, in collaboration with the artist. The exhibition at the Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums, is made possible in part with funds from the Louis S. Booth Arts Fund and the generous support of the University’s Cultural Affairs Committee. The accompanying exhibition catalogue, published by The Oregon Jewish Museum, includes an essay by Charlotta Kotik, Howard Zinn, and the artist, Arnold Mesches. The catalogue is available at the museum.