Patrick the First, King of Mass Ave – Part Three

Gemini AI for illustrative purposes only

King for a Day.

Was it all just a dream, a long, long, time ago, along a skid row close at hand? Where a fair-haired young man approached a non-existent art world with little more than a business plan and a packed resume of experience, and a dream.  

This part of his story, told as a fable, although deserving a serious treatise. But art histories usually yellow as clippings in the dusty scrapbooks of time.  Whereas, stories, who knows,  might live and breath the bad and good of their hero's journey, where the quest is the destination, because the present is not a place, it's the kingdom of one's life. So head on pillow, read to me, and show me the pictures...

That...once upon a realm, Patrick King Contemporary Art was heating up, lighting a fuse that would soon explode into a full-fledged scene of merry pranksters and banksters, artists and critics. An emerald-city of a place to draw archetypal characters to its glow –  throne usurpers and pretenders, courtiers and the great unwashed...

To tell it another way...

If a painting was like a football, if only for a little while, that magic movement converging on Massachusetts Avenue was like a packed and crowded Hoosier Dome might be, about a year later, down the road near Union Station. 

A cavernous edifice, big as the Indiana sky, towering above all the crumbling asphalt and the corn. Filled with puffy, cloud-like thoughts of  buzz, and excitement and dreams, all along its small town, yellow road. And looking out, a hazy phantasmagoria, just passed the curve of the visible horizon...

The shade of a flat hand pressed to the forehead as a visor, not trembling, but barely unsteady, trying so hard in the bright sun  just to see. 

Down the way...yes...it's something...yes something is there...an art scene, maybe it is...like a tournament, in that place way yonder on, or way back when...with jousts and banners, fanfare and fancy clothes. 

But dropping the hand, and looking down at the ground beneath the feet. The art before art scene was a ever-changing shadow on the move.  Just a year or so until the start of the ball.  And when it starts, the timer's on. 

And then they would come for the king, like the boilermaker for the leprechaun. At the thundering Dome, with the first whistle, they would come. Some for the love of the game, some for the party, all for the wave. 

And just as Mass Ave, as the colorful mirage was beginning to be called, as the crest was breaking over  cracked sidewalks littered with booze bottles and smelling of, well, let just say the letter 'P'...

Just as as the crest poked above the sea-level of the local topography – the flat-line of the city's art trajectory of late – its gentle first spurtle offered hope. For a rising tide, even if tiny, lifts hope. 

But what kind of rising hope was this Pluto water to become – a tsunami, or just the wind-driven lapping of wavelets upon a small pond?  

And in what state, this H2O? Be it frozen, or an in-between flowing or a gas?  Time would tell.  

Its clock ticking toward midnight with every footstep and every heartbeat. With every bravo, and ring of the register, the echo of something more hollow, and grave. 

Until the next rainbow ends in the moon's caress, the tide's rising and falling assured to repeat in a cycle even older than oceans, but younger than the night. 

But for the moment of King's halcyon days, his remaining weeks and months as the sole ruler of Mass Ave, he kept floating his boat on whatever the water. 

Serene and majestic, Patrick, on his royal barque...  

Big Bang or Steady State?

Much as Patrick King's first year of shows seemed to be pleasing the local art writers, there were a couple of group shows that were shown by institutions that critics found disappointing. One was a first-ever show and the other was the penultimate of a long-standing and storied local biennial. The reviews were just a day apart, hours even, as one appeared in the evening Indianapolis News and the other in the next morning's Star.

The First Juried Exhibition sponsored by the Indianapolis Academy of Fine Arts was the source of Marion Garmel's vague disapproval.  She reviews the show in her June 25, 1983 News column, writing,

“It's a small show, ultimately disappointing, but it says a lot about the state of the current Indianapolis art scene and contemporary Indiana artists.”

Garmel goes on to describe the art and artists in the show, but is sketchy, at best, in describing the roots of what comes across as a very mild ire. She does say that many of the artists and artworks are of the orbit of Herron Art School. As such, works are repeated or similar to those already seen in student and faculty shows. Connecting styles of professors to students are noted, and obvious at times. Other than that, she does not specify her disappointment. 

Steve Mannheimer, in his criticism of the 69th Indiana Artists exhibit at Indianapolis Museum of Art, in the next day's Star, displayed the trickster in him.  The trickster, as agent of change, as soothsayer, when he observes and he prods. He begins his review with a shrug and sigh,

“There has got to be a better way. At this rate we're never going to figure out whether Indiana artists can really cut the mustard or will forever play catch-up ball with the rest of the country.”

He quotes the museum's director, Robert A. Yassin, in the exhibition's press release that touts work in the show as competitive with art in Chicago and New York galleries. Mannheimer's reaction after seeing the show was succinct,

“Hoosier kidding who?”

For Mannheimer, the show was an amalgam of good, and not so much. The good being, by and large, the award winners in the show. Explaining his reaction more thoroughly,

“What we get is something for everybody. What we don't get is any sense of that 'strong Indiana tradition,' unless said tradition consists  simply of being from Indiana.

The vast majority of the work simply does not live up to such praise...

The first two rooms of the south gallery are littered with lackluster paintings, unexceptional in either concept or execution. What competence does emerge is completely undercut by adjacent amateurism...”

But he also notes that, generally speaking, the prize winners are worthy, technically competent and visually interesting. So he doesn't just complain. And he offers alternatives to the exhibit's “scatter gun attack.” As ways to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, he suggests,

“...take the prize winners, all 20 of them, and invite them to fill the third floor (of IMA) with five or six of their best pieces. Such an exhibit would represent the state of the art of the state more succinctly and, more importantly, with greater individual depth....

But if the invitational approach sounds too limiting, another alternative might be to offer winners small, one-person shows throughout the year. The IMA contains several spaces ideal for a small show.

 ...yet another alternative...could be...theme shows. Would not a more discussable, and hence a more useful exhibit be achieved by, let's say, a survey of the best realistic work in the state one year and only surrealism or abstraction the next?”

Mannheimer had had his say. To what effect was yet to be seen.  

As the art world in Indianapolis was to evolve it would display the tenancies of any old universe. Most simply explained as competing and binary theories; Big Bang or Steady State?

Big Bang is easy enough to imagine, a scene that keeps growing and expanding; more art and more artists, more galleries, more patrons, more sales. 

Whereas Steady State is a closed system;  finite resources or energy, where the rise and fall of things overlap and overlap, until the stasis of an ever-promised equilibrium is once again perceived. That is to say, in such a system, the rise of art on Massachusetts Avenue would foretell a fall elsewhere, such as the many decade's old Indiana Artists show. 

Recall that Indianapolis swapped out the old County Courthouse for the new City County Building. Indianapolis was missing something of a big bang there, either resources or imagination, parking or a jail. It either could not or would not not sustain both a beautiful heritage and the dazzling future, in that example.

Pax Ars Rex...

Outside of theories, and bedtime stories, the real world lurks. And Patrick King Contemporary Fine Art concluded its first full calendar year with Patricia Campbell's The Modular Form in October 1983 and then Shadow, Spaces and the Real by Rick Paul in November.  

Marion Garmel reviewed Campbell's show in an October 21, 1983 Indianapolis News column,

 “(Patrick) King has carefully renovated his small gallery to best exhibit the hanging, flowing, curving works of fabric that Miss Campbell creates.”

And further, about the “architectural fabric constructions,”

 “They swing from ceiling to wall...(and) in alcoves lit from behind...

...Each is composed of identical 'modules,' usually pieces of cotton muslin stretched and shellacked till they crackle like paper, connected by wooden dowels and paper chord.”

And about the design and/or effect of the artworks,

“The pieces are obviously designed to fit into, yet soften the harshness of, contemporary architecture.

The regular repetition of modules is (quoting the artist) 'very geometric. It has a machine look. But the closer you get, you see it is handmade. You understand an artist made it, a machine didn't.' ” 

Barbara Stokely reviews Rick Paul's exhibition of six drawings and five wall constructions in her December 4, 1983, Indianapolis Star article.  Her comments about his drawings relate to his wall constructions as well,

“The imagery of these monochromatic illustrations on paper denotes mostly itself and rarely connotes other allusions.

...For Paul, the illusionistic conventions of painting and drawing become the subject...”

Stokely quotes the artist and his motives,

“I create illusion in dimension...but I don't want to build. In my drawings, I record sculptural ideas that can't be made. I have fantasies that can't be defined.”

She will also review Patrick King's following show, Sculpture Jam, in the February 4, 1984, Star,  

“While Sculpture Jam...may sound like an upbeat improvisation, the crowding together of all these works brings another meaning of 'jam' to mind.

Some of the pieces by the nine featured artists are fresh and new; more suffer from deja vu. King might have better served his artists by showing a little restraint and limiting the show to new work.

Several of the works by Skip Koebbeman, Valarie Eickmeier, Dale Traugott, Doug Calisch, Rick Paul and Gary Freeman have been seen in recent exhibitions at the Indianapolis Art League, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, or the Herron Gallery. IUPUI.”

She points out one egregious example, judging from her phraseology, 

“Overexposure for (Gary) Freeman's five maquettes for the American United Life sculpture competition has reached the point of diminishing returns... 

Freeman's Sally's Jams, a large, welded and bolted steel sculpture which dominates the center (placement in the show) is much more eloquent.” 

You get the sense from the newspaper coverage that Patrick King really hits the mark with his next show, Paintings by Joni Heide and Dennison Griffith, in March. Both Marion Garmel, toward the shows opening, and Steve Mannheimer, near the closing, have good things to say. 

In the March 9, 1984 News, Garmel writes,

“Pattern is the key to Joni Heidi's large paintings...Simplicity is the key to Dennison Griffith's. 

Yet the two, who each have maintained a sense of childish delight, work well together in the exhibit...”

About Heide's Hope to Tell You, she writes,

“...one of her liveliest works, (it) features a primitive four-legged dog with his flowered shadow on the right and a spangly costume, head area cut out for a real person to step behind, on the left. A small, enigmatic, figure of a woman seems to be sitting under a tree nearby, while dots and dashes, stripes and tumbling stick figures populate other areas.” 

 And about Ohio artist, Griffith, 

“His large paintings contain simple, large areas of vivid color heavily painted in acrylic, enamel and oil stick.

His largest and most serious painting provides a good example of how Griffith isolates portions of an image to emphasize the whole. It's called Beth – Pink on Gold, and is basically a nude.”

Garmel describes how the works interplay together in the show,

“Neither Griffith nor Miss Heide use three-dimensional perspective – their paintings are all on the surface. Yet the difference between them is readily apparent in two works hung side-by-side. Griffith's Deener is a bare table set with one glass, one knife and one napkin. Miss Heidi's version of the same scene, though untitled, is packed with cups, forks, dogs and a Matisse-like sense of gaiety.”

 Steve Mannheimer's review of the same show in the March 25 Star, is half part review, and half part sociology. About Heidi, he writes,

“Pieces like Hope to Tell You and (Untitled)...may seem too raucous or arbitrary at first. Their colors and pattern-filled composition come across like exploded plaid giftwrap on a Christmas morning aftermath.

Viewers will note that despite this...(they) are really warm, even quietly intimate in their intent. Perhaps this is due to her obvious winks, blinks and nods to children's and ethnographic art.”

About Mr. Griffith's painting he writes,  

“Feeshteek shows us a fish cut by the edge of the picture. It doesn't look like anything else.  Deener is simply a stylized table with a glass, knife and napkin. 

Only (his) Boosh – which, if his mock-accented titles run constant, must mean 'bush' – seems beyond literal interpretation. It's an odd painting, which is to say puzzling, which is to say sort of mysterious, which is to say there's something there worth looking at.”

But regarding Mannheimer's socio-anthropological angle, he concludes his review with a soliloquy about the plight of the starving artist versus the career of the comfy institutionalist, as pertaining generally to the uncertain economy and specifically to the two persons in the show,

“This (making art) is at best a tough, often painful business, fraught with disappointments, occasional disasters and always fickle fate. Not necessarily knowing where one's next bottle of beer is coming from can frazzle the most committed art-aholic.

It's best to appreciate those who manage whatever they can  in whatever their circumstances, and understand those who can't always manage as well or we might hope.”

Art is worth rooting for, and maybe supporting too, Mannheimer seems inspired by the exhibition to say.

Hot on the heels of the show, Patrick King's Passion Leads would quickly follow. And again both Marion Garmel in The News and Steve Mannheimer in The Star would provide thorough reviews.

In her April 20, Brush Strokes column, Garmel sets the scene,

“The paintings at Patrick King Contemporary Art literally scream off the walls: 'Me. Look at Me. This Is Me.”

Her review continues,

“This is Passion Leads, an exhibit of current Chicago painting by three artists...continuing through May 12 at the gallery...

In contrast to the impersonal images of the geometers and minimalists of the 1960s and '70s, Jim Brinsfield, Darinka Novitovic and Will Northerner want you to know these are their paintings reflecting their ideas, their insights, their emotions.

They trace their lineage to the first generation of truly American 20th century painters, the abstract expressionists of the 1940s and '50s, who also wanted to create a pictorial language that would express the physical and spiritual complexities of the modern world. As Brinsfield put it at the opening of the show,  'Being American, we have to be true to ourselves – and we have to be true to our ancestors.'

But unlike their ancestors, to whom the word 'abstract' was as important as the word 'expressionist,' these artists are working in a time when the figure is making a comeback. Their goal is to adopt the formal values of abstract expressionists to an art that incorporates the figure.”

This sounds like a serious undertaking and hearkens back to Patrick King's statement when still working at Editions Ltd., about his early days employed at the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City and even earlier exposure to galleries out East. He was attracted to serious, thought provoking artists, and the professional accommodation of the exhibition of their art.

Mannheimer would review the show as well in the April 29, Art World column,

“Passion Leads...sounds like the title of a Harlequin Romance. There's far more to it, but it's not an inappropriate analogy. Whatever their stylistic simplicities, these paintings, like those books, capture something basic of the American psyche.

As shows go, it's small – 11 decidedly neo-expressionist paintings by three Chicago artists...That's about all the gallery can accommodate. 

The show's impact, however, should be large.

...we have the first show of neo-expressionist painting in a local commercial gallery. Much more than the non-profit culture importers, commercial galleries take the temperature of a city's art scene. 

We're getting warmer. Whatever real art world sophistication is, we're getting closer to it.”

Both Garmel and Mannheimer refer to the exhibition catalog that accompanied the show, containing an essay written by art historian Joanna Muller Kuebler. The tagline to her overarching thesis is that the three Passion Leads artists make “art forms that transcend taste and style.”  Or perhaps to translate, this succinct Kuebler assertion, and Mannheimer's earlier analogy;  something like Beauty meets the Bold.

Mannheimer writes about the works,

“Jim Brinsfield...growls...power in Young Caesar and Loveland. The two paintings rely on energetic black-and-white brushstroke, some shades-of-subway spray paint and tumorous surfaces. Young Caesar is a scraggly, broken-limbed figure proclaiming a mixed stylistic heritage: Giacometti by way of graffiti.

Miss (Darinka) Novitovic's work, on the other hand, seems to have lept full-ardored from the brow of Venus. Her Language of Flowers (et al.)...are, in comparison to Brinsfield's, downright tender. 

In each piece, female figures are outlined in gentle brushstrokes against warmly colored backgrounds. They hug their knees, lift a hand to their face, whisper to each other, perhaps to themselves.

Northerner...has hold of a clutch of themes. His five paintings explore a spectrum of motifs and techniques that all, to some degree, bespeak religious metaphor.” 

Mannheimer describes Northerner's most compelling work, Solemn Maelstrom, Morass, Lianis Lift, 

“The simple, silver spray-painted figure emerging from a multi-colored maelstrom reminds one thematically of New Yorker Keith Haring's 'radiant child' emblem, a mythic creature of light dispelling modern gloom. Northerner's technique, however, is vastly more complex and engrossing.” 

Dividends of a Dream.

As can be seen from this survey of the critical coverage garnered by the exhibitions at Patrick King during his first year and a half of operation, he was riding high on street cred on the avenue. His gallery a force to be reckoned with by mid-1984. A pied piper or a kraken, sweet music or a roar? It's up to art's ear to decide. 

And as the beginning of the story has come to a close, it's time to thank Patrick King for being the first. 

And just think, if he had a nickel for every $100 being charged in rent along Massachusetts Avenue from 1982 up until today...

Well let's just say he could buy IMA or Newfields with that kind of money.  The building and the grounds, that is, not the art. The art inside, as Patrick knows, is priceless.

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

 

Indianapolis Painter Ed Sanders in the 1980s

Evening, Ed Sanders, oil on board
AWI Collection, orig. acquired from the exhibit Ed Sanders - New Works, FLUX,
October 2006

A Thousand Words on Ed Sanders, Indiana Artist

An Indy artist, par excellence.

My research into a trilogy of Indianapolis art topics led me to a dusty manila folder in the newspaper archive section of the Indiana State Library downtown. I was looking into the origins of the Indianapolis art scene I had joined in the 1990s. Specifically the Faris Building art enclave at 546 S Meridian Street, and its precedent boom on Mass Ave, and the larger context of the overall contemporary scene that gave birth to both.  

Cursory and initial research into these topics at the State Library revealed three articles relevant to my study, and a common thread among them. 

Nan Hoffman's October 19, 1986 Indianapolis Star 'Art World' column, “Downtown studios ideal work space, say artists” contains resident and founding artist interviews and is accompanied by a photo of the east-facing entrance of the massive Morris Building as it was known in the '80s along with artists in their studio spaces.

Steve Mannheimer's Indianapolis Star 'Art & Leisure' section front page column February 26, 1989, “A sharing of art, but not a school” opines about a group of local painters, who share a Herron training and an association with the by then established Massachusetts Avenue gallery scene. Exceptional talent, if not a cohesive artistic sensibility or creed, was a common feature of the group Mannheimer discussed.

Finally, Marion Garmel's Indianapolis News 'Free Time' section front page article “Critic likes what he sees in Indiana art” provides enthusiastic coverage of the current scene and specifically the 1990 Indiana Arts Competition hosted by American States Insurance at 500 North Meridian. Theodore F. Wolff, art critic for the Christian Science Monitor judged the competition. 

Ed Sanders looms large in all three write-ups.

Serious meat.

Ed Sanders was slightly apologetic about the small studio space he rented in the Morris Building in 1986. He tells Indianapolis Star writer Nan Hoffman he needed a bigger place but can't afford it. “Maybe one day I'll move into a place with more room, but what I like about this place is that it's very private and lets me go about my work very seriously.” 

Sanders talks about his art materials to Hoffman. Huge oil paintings on plywood, combined with spray paint, caulking materials and more exotic items.  One work contained a real fish. Sanders explanation?

“I coated it with a lot of varnish so it doesn't rot.  I hope it works. It didn't with my last meat painting.” 

Something in the way he painted.

Ed Sanders' 1989 solo show at 431 Gallery was something. Something of a pinnacle of artistic achievement for the painter. Something of the soon to be global zeitgeist of grunge. Something of an almost tornado spinning in a circles attempting to form. Something of a cautionary tale. Whatever its something, it inspired Steve Mannheimer to write a column among his very best.

Mannheimer writes about what he sees as the show's most successful work Torso.  

“Tradition figure studies delineate bold musculature or delicate curve, express the vitality of gesture or sensuous grace. None of that for Sanders. He topples the torso...truncating the trunk, chopping the arms and spilling its guts out on the table.”

The strange workings of the light in Sanders' Torso (and other paintings) bedevils Mannheimer. He thinks out loud when he tries to explain the disconcerting effect. 

“Sanders paints a shrouded world, drenched in night or ashes. And the mass of shapes is too thickly painted and repainted, colored and recolored to allow any simple specific reading.”  

Mannheimer imagines an alternate read of the painting, if rolled on its side 90 degrees (like Sanders has  toppled his Torso).

“...the viscera bloom as flowers in a char-broiled Chagall. And like Chagall, Sanders' compositions float in a fog of melancholy...”

Mannheimer continues to reason with the dark and weight-less peculiarity of Sanders' work.

“As palpable and heavy, as grossly physical as these subjects are...no innate sense of gravity anchors them...Buoyed by the darkness, these subjects float across a range of interpretations.”  

And further, “These paintings hit the viewer like a punch in the face. The piled-up and scraped-down paint coagulates in oily, polychromed scabs.  If anything weighs upon these subjects, it is moral exhaustion. They collapse, not so much in defeat as in deflation.”    

The destabilizing impact and power of the paintings unleashes in Mannheimer thoughts beyond Sanders, his subjects, or his paintings. Mannheimer's thoughts are drawn to a negligent Indianapolis, careless or blindingly unaware of art treasures in its midst. Despite the anguished and existential screams of its best talents, despite a purported bridge to somewhere, a land-locked city sleeps.

“Indianapolis may not exactly be oblivion, although it has too often appeared oblivious to artists like Sanders.” 

A Two for Won.

Although Steve Mannheimer was reticent to declare a contemporary 'school' or identifiable movement in the Indianapolis art scene of a little over a year prior, Indianapolis News columnist Marion Garmel declared such an arrival in her column in the summer of 1990. Her remarks were based on the critical success and growing reputation of group of working artists, mostly Herron grads from the early '80s, who had exhibited at a by then defunct Lyman & Snodgrass Gallery, and the artist-operated 431 Gallery on Massachusetts Avenue. Their new association was the recently formed Indiana Artists' Forum which had a show of work at the new Hindman Gallery at Geist.

The best among them were represented in the exposition '1990 Indiana Arts Competition' at the American States Insurance Company headquarters downtown. 

About the Indiana art he chose,  the show's judge, Thomas F. Wolff of the Christian Science Monitor, said that the work “would hold up well almost anywhere.” The resulting exhibition he describes as “of very real quality, range and depth. I am particularly pleased with the award winners.”

In a personal conversation with Wolff, Garmel quotes the the judge about his unusual selection of not one, but two paintings, as best of  show. Both were by Ed Sanders.  Wolff said simply, “he's a cut above.”  It is an interesting way to describe an artist, head above the rest, one of whose winning paintings was the infamous, dismembered Torso. 

Through a desert in a school with no name.

Marion Garmel seems intent on naming the unifying feature of the high and rising Indy art movement she proclaims in 1990. She seems at a loss for words though. She names not what its members share, but what they avoid. No easy, no cutesy, no bland, she sums up, about those invited to Wolff's party. It's almost a punch line about the prior movements of Kelly, Warhol and Judd or the future AI photoshop age, but she makes the point.  

Suffice to say, it's a difficult business – the discovery, the elucidation and the coining of 'schools.'

Steve Mannheimer wrestled with the same damned predicament in his Ed Sander's Torso column. It's like he yearned for the perfect word to describe all the great Sanders-like artists around.  He did a good job wondering about their “gritty edge of despair,” their “hands-in approach to the paint,” their “sense of hooded light in cramped spaces,” and their “grappling with uncertain personal metaphors.”  Mannheimer is brilliant here, and unparalleled, in his writing on this subject. 

The searching words of his fretful dissertation could  end with the maxim he used at the start of the column. His early words say it perfectly.

“Before there is history and before there are styles, there are individual artists like Ed Sanders mucking about with that oily aroma on their clothes and canvases.”  

And whether or not history will recall, or for how long, oil paint always smells the same.  

Mark Diekhoff,  July 2025

See also: Ed Sanders - Life and Art  - partial catalogue of 2014 posthumous retrospective at Herron School of Art and Design 

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

Becoming Steve Mannheimer

(c) The Indianapolis News, appearing Jan 19, 1979             

By the time my eyes were opened to the Indianapolis art scene, the name 'Steve Mannheimer' or simply 'Mannheimer' had attained a unique gravitas, a status apart from all other persons' names. It possessed a certain public and powerful heft. The oft-mentioned persona was an end all and be all of names, at least among the veteran or aspiring artists I knew. Also true for the local galleries and visual arts readers that I had become aware of or associated among in those days. Love it or hate it, 'Steve Mannheimer' was not just a name, it was the name. And it was there every Sunday Star, in black turtleneck and white pages.

This was the state of being and nature of things in the Indy art world of the mid1990s. There were other names moving and shaking for sure, such as IMA's 'Holliday T. Day', Art Indiana's 'Ann Stack', Ruschman Gallery's 'Mark Ruschman', and Christel DeHaan's 'Christel DeHaan'. But if those four names were Presidents in stone on Mt. Rushmore, then 'Mannheimer' was the mountain itself.

I realize Indianapolis is incredibly flat and entirely devoid of hills, let alone mountains, but everything is relative, and every creative scene, however large or small, has its peaks and its valleys. The '90s scene was our scene, we were myopic in that way. For us KenGen tweeners, coming of art age at the tail end of Boomer and the early Gen X, 'Mannheimer' was the man.

It wasn't always so, though. No reputation or mountain or Rushmore is carved in a day. Steve Mannheimer became 'Steve Mannheimer' with hammer and chisel, perseverance and perspiration.

Throw in sedimentation and erosion. Evolution, and time.

In an Art Scene Long, Long Ago.

It's incredible to realize that Steve Mannheimer, the artist, first hit our scene at the time of the Bicentennial, 1976. And like Star Wars whose debut was about the same time, his force is still with us.

He was a young artist and a painting instructor at John Herron Art School. The school by then was part of IUPUI although it was still located at the original 16th and Pennsylvania campus.

Mannheimer was thrust almost immediately into the thick of the overall art scene in the city and the state when he participated in the panel discussion “Art in the Indiana Image” on December 1, 1976 at the then Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). The cerebral-sounding focus of the talk was on the role of artist, teacher, critic, collector, historian and museum in the development of Indiana art. There was a participant of each type person represented in the panel, including Robert A. Yassin, director of IMA, and Gayle Thornbrough as historian. Steve Mannheimer played a lone twofer role as artist/teacher.

In May 1977, Mannheimer exhibited drawings in a two-person show with printmaker Margaret 'Peg' D. Fierke at the Kit Basquin's Washington Gallery in Frankfort, Indiana. Fierke will be re-introduced in more detail to follow.

In an very unique art happening the following year, Mannheimer participated in the Indianapolis Art League's 'Billboard Art Project.'

The Indianapolis News art writer Marion Garmel described the sprawling outdoor exhibit as the placement of 42 artwork billboards (by that many artists) around the 402 square miles of Marion County, Indiana. The humongous 25 x 12 foot pieces were unfortunately exhibited for only one month, mid January through mid February, 1978. A timing that fatefully coincided with the Great Blizzard of Indianapolis, its whiteout and drifting snow conditions severely limiting any potential for viewing by the public.

Garmel's article mentions the exact street location of all the billboards so any art enthusiast with a good set of snow tires and a street map might still grab a look out the windshield. Mannheimer's was at 5242 Crawfordsville Road, facing east.

She does not comment on Mannheimer's piece in her article, but writes “without explanation or text, many of the billboards don't look like anything at all. Some are so complex they can't be deciphered.” She cites as perhaps the most successful attention grabber in the bunch as James Faust's giant eye on 16th Street. She sums up the audacious, if not entirely successful, exhibit with “billboards were made for cartoons, not for Rembrandt.”

Valentine's Day Misapprehension.

Whether or not, or how little of how much, an artist thinks about art varies from artist to artist. From 'action' to 'conceptual', the entire gamut from cave painter to Marcel Duchamp has been recorded in art history books, documentaries and interviews. It's not just a matter of history though, just eavesdrop the enthusiastic and drunken conversations in whatever Cedar Tavern your local artists shoot the shit. (Or maybe your local non-profit gallery opening is the current watering hole.)

That Steve Mannheimer was a thinker even as a young artist and teacher is not really up for discussion. His selection for the IMA panel indicated he was. Over a one year period from about Valentine's Day 1980 to Valentine's Day 1981, Mannheimer's deepest thoughts on art would be expressed, in a tit for tat public spat, played out for all to see in pages of The News. During this inaugural phase, it is still his own art that Steve Mannheimer talks about.

On February 6, 1980, Marion Garmel penned her Brush Strokes column in the News titled “Nose Knows About This Art”. It covered the Herron faculty show for 1980 but showcased one instructor's work predominantly.

Margaret (Peg) Fierke presented a work “Waitin' On Summer” that defied easy understanding, but sure stank up the place. It assaulted the nose, not the eyes. The organic installation was composed of soil and plant matter, in a state of drying decomposition that thankfully was losing the brunt of its stank over time. But oh my, the smell on first day, whewee! The rustic assemblage contained other elements such as cattle fencing, string and wooden boxes which were utilized is a more sculptural way. From Garmel's vivid description, the piece would seem more nasal art than visual art, a realistic punch in the nose presentation of a wafting and rural idyll. A post-modern barn painting.

At least fifty percent of Garmel's coverage is devoted to Fierke's literally 'sensational' work. As a result, with a total of 23 faculty exhibiting, her column attempted to cover a few of the other twenty-two with one-liners, arguably throwaway, necessitated by her limited column space. She may have been better off just covering Fierke one hundred percent (especially if that artist stood out the most). As a critic, and what with artists' egos, Garmel was bound to lose either way.

One of her Don Rickles lines (to belabor the metaphor) was barbed toward a massive, unstretched acrylic by Steve Mannheimer.

“...Steve Mannheimer plays with the black and white design of a 500-mile Race flag.” she wrote.

That's it... but that was enough to get Mannheimer's attention.

In a Letter to the Editor appearing in Indy's afternoon daily, February 15, 1980, he thanks The News for its faculty show review, but calls out Marion Garmel for her 'misapprehension'. He writes in a hilarious legalese, reminiscent of the Red Scare hearings, “My paintings are not now nor have they ever been comments, plays upon or take-offs of the Indy 500 Race checkered flag.”

Was Mannheimer's temerity sincere, or just a comical cold open, a witty play on the Watergate zeitgeist of public denial? His reply went on:

“The checkerboard pattern has existed for centuries and still continues to afford the artist with formal and intellectual challenge. Likewise the reduction of design elements to simple black and white is a recurrent theme in art history but still fertile ground for new interpretation.

My work is not without its influences and derivations but the 500 Race is not one of them.”

No one knew it at the time, but this wonderful repartee was between the once and the future Indianapolis art critics. And in the microcosm of Mannheimer's letter, his first penned art thoughts in Indianapolis, his future writing style is voiced. A slightly sardonic humor, a deep analytic nature, and a thoughtful attentiveness to the art world are revealed.

The entire first episode comes off as a bit of a one-sided affair. Mannheimer's imploringly earnest 'be mine' on the heels of Garmel's innocent brush-off. My guess, Garmel's sleight was all about the word count, nothing personal. Her column's emphasis affected not only Mannheimer, but all of the other Herron faculty save for Fierke.

Maybe Mannheimer was just working the ref, because a year later, he would receive a sweeter box of chocolates (call them Garmels) in her column February 14, 1981.

In Garmel's article “Not for Sale – So It's Art for Art's Sake” she covers Mannheimer's recent batch of paintings that were currently on display at Herron. On the walls of the art school gallery, it was the 29-year-old artist's paintings, but in the news column, the 29-year-old thinker is on view.

About the artworks, Garmel writes, “He takes large, unstretched canvases, covers them with paint that drips and splashes, cuts crosses in the middle, creates squares out of masking tape, paints bright stripes on them and calls them paintings.”

She continues about the work, “As a group, Mannheimer's paintings are a striking lot, some vibrant with color, others subdued, almost mystic with their buried suggestions of broken crosses and jagged wounds...to describe these paintings is almost impossible. They are paintings about painting, and as such they are thoroughly in the modern mode.”

Garmel asks a question as she concludes her observation, “In one (painting), a bright orange stripe zips down the center of the canvas that looks like it is simply painted blue. But don't be misled. In the deep blue field are stripes of a fainter, more subdued blue. Why?”

It's interesting that Mannheimer answers Garmel's question about a subdued blue stripe in his painting with remarks about the mechanics of a visual phenomenon. “You always get a blue afterimage from an orange stripe. There is nothing new in that. It's just a physical fact about color. But in this painting, there also is a blue stripe. The orange is so definitely different that it destroys that blue, yet when you turn away, the afterimage recreates it. These paintings are about the process off seeing...”

With this Mannheimer painting you get an actual painting, blue, with an orange stripe. But the moment you look away, when you glance upon a bare spot on the wall, you get its afterimage for free, orange, with blue stripe, and thrown in as a bonus, a subdued blue stripe almost hidden in the actual work, but revealed as what, a paler orange?

To think of an artwork's afterimage and incorporate that knowledge into the creative process, and paint a work that is not only the painting but the fading glow of its negative doppelganger when one looks away. That is heady stuff.

And it's just one aspect of one painting. From his explanations, you get the feeling that Mannheimer's show was jam-packed, overstuffed, with wall-to-wall ideas.

More generally, he says, “Step 1 of painting is illusion. But what is illusion, and what is real? And can you tell the difference?” Tromp e-l'oell is not what Mannheimer is talking around or painting. His paintings are not just exercises in visual sleight of hand, but mental as well. This concept of illusion seems an overall theme. Case in point, about the painting 'Switzer Blue', Mannheimer explains in a jujitsu of lavender mist, “ All of this is fantasy...a Rorschach test...an illusion...not real, a trick...”

Is Mannheimer talking about the painting, himself, or the universe?

Is he stuck in a cave daubing shadows with charcoal or blood, or in a New Wave simulation, some Tron etching away at the Matrix with Luke's lightsaber?

On the spectrum from Neanderthal to Duchamp, my money's on Marcel.

To Read or Not to Read a Painting.

Around the same time in early 1981, the 'Art World' columnist for The Indianapolis Star had a take on Mannheimer's painting quite apart from the remarks expressed earlier by Garmel or the painter himself.

Donn Fry's March 29, 1981 article, “Dolls and politics enliven exhibit,” covered a small show at the Jewish Community Center in Indianapolis consisting of three paintings by Mannheimer and six multi-media 'doll' sculptures by Joni Heide, a 1980 graduate of Herron.

In what Fry calls a departure, Mannheimer's painting 'Annunciation' is a large stretched canvas containing figures and a suggested space. As such, Fry contrasts this painting with the other two in Mannheimer's more usual non-objective style, on large unstretched canvases and pinned directly to the wall.

Fry's favorite in the show, 'Bruckner's Ninth: IPND,' is singled out. And his thorough remarks on this painting suggest either an intuitive premonition or an astute observation, perhaps both, as we shall see.

“Like a book or poem charged with symbolism, the work invites a 'reading.'..the artist has sprayed on a slogan in brilliant day-glo orange; it is political graffiti actually. 'Imagine a Painting Now Destroyed' it seems to say, although it only suggests the phrase since most of the vowels are missing.”

Fry continues his impressions, “There is one other key element in the 'language' of this painting – smack in the center of the composition, Mannheimer has cut a cross from the canvas.” Continuing in an inspired literary vein, Fry posits, “For this viewer, at least, Mannheimer's work reads from right to left, which may be a political statement in itself.”

The art writer provides a convincing argument for the power of the painting to move his eyes across the symbols and letters on its page. But it may be, that as a writer, he was bringing his own talent stack to the party, so to speak. Revealing a literary predilection as an arranger of words.

But especially in retrospect, Donn Fry's words ring true. Steve would soon show another side of Mannheimer in the pages of the Indianapolis papers.

Given Fry's 'reading' and description, taken at the face value of the painting's name and day-glo slogan, it does seem to shout out a message. Short and sweet and loud like a picket sign:

Imagine Painting Now Destroyed.

That's seems a simple read. But what is the meaning between the lines? (and the crosses, and the slashes and the stripes) What are we to make of Mannheimer's means of destruction. His vandalism. His propaganda. His division. His negation. His war-torn canvas, a battlefield of ideas both sacred and sick. His painting missing something at its center.

Next Man Up.

Within two weeks, Mannheimer, now an associate professor at Herron, would find himself no longer just painting his story, or teaching a story, but rather writing the story. On April 12, 1981, his first 'Art World' review appeared in The Indianapolis Star, when, as guest columnist, he filled in for the vacationing Donn Fry.

His column concerned his own holiday, when he'd recently jumped in, both feet, eyes wide-open to the New York art scene. It was not local review, but big picture, Big Apple, overall Art World stuff.

'Anything goes in the art of the '80s' begins with, well not a bang, but a bit of a strawman. Mannheimer's first statement is to all Indianapolis readers in need of some art brains, “Few of you, probably, have lost sleep lately wondering whether you comprehend the current varieties of artistic style and all their socio/political/economic/aesthetic significances.” Maybe not to the level of losing sleep, but those bothering to read an art column, perhaps many of them, are the exact types who worry about such things. It's not the actual Art World readers who eyes glaze over at the sight of the right side of Donn Fry's or Mannheimer's brain. It's the other 99.99% of Indianapolis readers who will never read the article to begin with, and turn the page like it's a Chop Suey ad for a southside restaurant, and they don't like Asian food.

But the opening aside, it's quick to the nitty gritty, and Mannheimer names a few of the current isms of '81 for those who slept through the credits. The mangy sounding bunch of black sheep movements including 'punk,' 'dumb painting' and just plain 'bad painting.' But also the more respectable sounding 'energism,' 'new wave' and 'new image' arts.

He describes the new wave and image movements as explicit or raw in subject matter and/or execution. But perceptively, Mannheimer further notes, “Most (new wave/new image art) is concerned with what in art history is called 'expression' rather than with formal qualities, that is, the image is generally more important than the niceties of picture-making.” And as time would tell, Mannheimer was on the ball with this observation, as a large swath of '80s art would be called neo-expressionism.

Mannheimer contrasts the new raucous pictures with the prior generation's abstract and minimal art which in comparison seem “...mute and elegant, even stiff.” Those works required a contemplative attention span, whereas, Mannheimer presciently asks, “ ...who in the 1980s has time for all that...?” And in a set of wonderful, if pithy, observations, “Now we experience art almost at a glance. We hear rather than listen, we identify rather than distinguish.” He speaks of some details of particular artworks, the 'Hey you' sex energy subject matter, the ability to elicit a 'knee-jerk' reaction devoid of thought process. Mannheimer returns to his general theme. “(The forthrightness of a 'new image' artwork) is an unabashed as a neon sign, about as subtle as a Pepsi commercial. There is instant sensation...immediate experience...it is a type of artist sensationalism.” 

Again, note that Mannheimer seems to see things coming. By the '90s, the Young British Artists movement (YBAs), would have a pivotal exhibit at Charles Saatchi's Sensation show.

On the same page of the paper as Mannheimer's review is an article by Franz Schulze, a freelance art writer for the Chicago Sun-Times with a piece that appeared in that paper as well. Over the years Schulze was to specialize in commentary and writing on post-war Chicago imagist art, and the architecture of Miles van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Schulze's review that day was also on the NYC scene, laser focused on the Whitney Biennial '81. His observations on the 'New' arguably more seasoned and reasoned than Mannheiner's, as Schulze had been appearing in the Chicago papers since the 1960s, but both men come to similar conclusions.

Mannheimer notes, “In New Wave / New Image the moment of understanding is simultaneous with identification, which is to say that it is a kind of ersatz enlightenment, it's a 30-second orgasm, delicious in its abandon, but a bit juvenile as love-making.”

Schulze's take on the same, “ Quality is not excluded from this new universe. Individual artists may be identified as promising, exciting, even memorable. Standards do exist, and some bits of the exploding matter burn brighter and longer than others. But as an asteroid is not a star, talent is not genius, an exciting artist is not a great one, and the differences are worth noting.” He elaborates further, “The best of the experiments like...the racy video exercises of Nam June Paik, drew attention to themselves as 'creative,' though more for their catchiness than for their urgency.”

Both men observe the creative catchiness of the 'New Image' versus the urgent engagement of the awesome, and note that exploding matter can be good or can be grand.

A Beautiful Case of Curious Mind.

In late 1981, Donn Fry takes a final 'read' of upstart critic and artist Steve Mannheimer. The following year would prove pivotal and intertwined for both men. Fry would move to Seattle and somewhat change the focus of his writing career, and Mannheimer would ascend the Art World throne as critic for The Indianapolis Star after Fry's abdication and flight. So as time would tell, something restless was afoot in both men, in the waning days of 1981, even if they did not know it yet.

In the November 22 article “Herron faculty exhibit disappoints,” Fry bemoans the “...disturbing moribund quality” of the show. The lackluster tone caused him to wax nostalgic about the vibrant, albeit, unfocused energy of Herron senior students' shows. In comparison, the kids, he said, “...aimed, at least, at testing and finding new personal limits, at establishing more distant goals.” He contrasts the faculty show which to him “...seems comfortably contented.”

Fry discusses a few of the underwhelming examples before leveling the ire of his sights squarely at two artists in particular. “What this exhibit begs for, really, are some top notch paintings, paintings that grip the imagination and haunt the eye. In this regard, the principal disappointments are the works by Robert Berkshire and Steve Mannheimer.”

His 'read' on Mannheimer 's wall-size creation sounds rough, but with a saving grace. “After producing in recent years a series of unstretched canvases that were visually and intellectually challenging, (Mannheimer) seems to have reached a stage where he is not sure of himself or of where to go next.”

Fry piles on the point, discussing the work called 'Love's Labor Lost (Breakage for Brakke)' writing, “the artist appears to have settled for trying to go everywhere at once.” 

After detailing the various appearances and methods of the artwork, Fry conclude, “ Unfortunately, there is neither edification or visual delight in all this. There are nods to funk and conceptual art, color-field abstraction, pattern painting and temporary, throw-away art. But above all, it says, 'I am floundering.'”

He concludes about the Mannheimer work, “What may be most significant, however, is that with the exception of sculptor Freeman, no other artist here, is pushing himself to those limits, is daring to flounder in a search for new goals.”

Perhaps Mannheimer's 'Love's Labor Lost' was a mirror into the floundering souls of both men, indeed of all men and women suffering a curious case of unrequited new goals.

Regardless, the die was cast. Within months Donn Fry would be in the land of greenest hills and bluest skies, and artist/teacher/thinker/writer Steve Mannheimer would become visual arts critic for The Indianapolis Star. The Sunday column was still called 'Art World' when Mannheimer took over. Lucille E. Moorehouse had built that brand locally through her tireless and dedicated writing for more than three decades beginning in 1913.

Mannheimer's debut article surveyed not New York or some overall art world, but the lay of the land in the environs of Indy. It's an exhaustive and well written time capsule of the ways things were, good and bad, in our state of the arts. The column displayed a scope and breadth of energetic engagement that would become and remain Mannheimer's signature achievement.

It's like as a result of his first good, long look, he noticed no mountain on the horizon. Not yet.

So he grabbed a pickaxe and heavy gloves. He grabbed a shovel  and wheelbarrow and got to work.

Mark Diekhoff June 2025

See also :

Steve Mannheimer website

Whitney Biennial 1981