John Wesley Hardrick – 'Through the Eyes of an Artist' at The Indiana State Museum

A Thousand Words on John Wesley Hardrick.

 

John Wesley Hardrick at Indiana State Museum

Interesting works by John Wesley Hardrick have popped up at auction in Indianapolis over the past several years. Knowing little about the artist I was happy to come across notice of his Indiana State Museum exhibit shortly before its end June 29.  

The show's  arrangement is both beautiful and thoughtful. Paintings, both large and small, grouped in a way to tell the story of Hardrick's long life in dedication to his art.  Its title promises a showcase of the vision of the artist. It actually delivers so much more. Not only the amazing sights captured in his paintings, but also an insightful revelation of his person. 

John Wesley Hardrick "Through the Eyes of an Artist"
Indiana State Museum, left to right - Thou Good and Faithful Servant 1930, Portrait of Irvena Harvey Ming 1929, Going Fishing c. 1940s, Hay Wagon on the Farm 1935, and Hale Woodruff's 1960s Unknown Title landscape

 

Innovative Eyes, Virtuoso Touch.

We see in his landscapes that Hardrick developed his own vocabulary for color. For me, it's as if he saw the world, not color blind or predefined by tradition, but color enhanced, as if pulsating with some magical lifeblood.  His palette seems to includes hues not only on our own visible spectrum, but maybe infrared or ultraviolet too.  The dark brown of his exposed board support (he rarely paints on canvas in the show), the deep navy blue of the shadow of trees and foliage. His areas of brightest light are green – a neon in the trees, caused by the mixing those dark blue shadows and yellow he used as highlights. It dazzles, its mixing, as if charged by electricity. Overhead, his clouds with patches of sea green, caused, again by his melding the same colors, but diluted with white, more subdued, less charged, more ethereal like the sky. 

detail Hay Wagon on the Farm, John Wesley Hardrick

By varying the tone of these colors from foreground to deepest distance, his enlivens his landscapes with tangible depth.  Follow your eyes, you can walk right into them.  

And the path is often clear. It's right down the middle. For Hardrick also has a signature preference in landscape composition that deviates noticeably from the classic golden ratio seen in tradition. At least in many of his paintings in this show. Like a stage play before our eyes, his scene is flanked and curtained in a balance on either side, with an action that opens in the center. It engages like a soft subliminal vortex, to draw the eye in. 

This is demonstrated by comparing the famous John Constable painting, The Hay Wain, 1821, which uses the classic golden rules methods to meander the view from side to side and front to back across its image. You see Constable's wagon at first glance, but are quickly drawn away down the road and along the stream, back and forth, in a zigzag to the depths of the painting. This traditional composition is also seen in the late landscape painted by Hale Woodruff, (Title Unknown), c. 1960s that hangs in Hardwick's show.  Woodruff's cottages in the lower left draw you into a bright center, that pulls back toward a bright pink, and finally back again to a golden distance.  

Woodruff, most known for his late 1930s Amistad murals in the Talladega College library, shared space with Hardrick and they advertised art lessons when their paths crossed in Indianapolis back in the late '20s. 

Hardrick's Hay Wagon on the Farm, 1935, parts a sea of trees like Moses to reveal a hay wagon and worker, not to grab at attention, but as a main event. You bask in its central scene. The yellow glow of noonday hay, a horse whose only respite is its own cast shadow. The hardworking man and his pitchfork has no shelter from the sun. The American Scene, the regionalist ethos of dignity, labor and the common man, but with Hardrick's unique romantic touch and perspective.

Hay Wagon on the Farm, John Wesley Hardrick

Additional landscapes in the show have this centralized composition as well, such as Winter River and Cabins with a sapphire creek ripping a glacial crevasse through the center of the picture. And Salt Lick Creek, in which the endless days of summer seem to live in youthful splendor beyond the red autumnal leaves at each side. In the center, as if to reiterate the impression, not a hint of leaves changing color are reflected on the eternal river's sheen.  

Winter River and Cabins, John Wesley Hardrick

 Blue Lagoon, 1935, again, has a systematic up/down, left/right balance that leads to the exact center of the picture. The shade ends there, as does the mere reflection of sky upon the water. A sun dazzled beach at the end of the lagoon. There is something sublime, something Caspar David Friedrich, about being placed at the epicenter of numinous beauty. 

Similarly, in (Title Unknown) Waterfall with Figures, an immense, powerful waterfall dominates the center of the picture, craggy rocks shore at the sides. A tiny group of figures are so infinitesimal in the composition, they are nearly lost in the  spectacle of water.  Effortless, casual strokes sketch in three anatomically precise people, amazing in their two-tone simplicity. The artist's secure feel for his brush is evident in his brushwork. And while your eyes are honed in, look up the river. There is nothing smaller than infinitesimal except for the second group of figures way down the way. Impeccably painted. See, people gather, then they gather again, in groups of three, visual echos, in a Mandelbrot journey up the river of life. Or maybe just a great fishing spot Hardrick happened upon. But it's hard to imagine catching anything with a current running so fast. Other than what Hardrick caught in his untitled painting– a tour de force of a view.  

detail (Title Unknown) Waterfall with Figures, John Wesley Hardrick

Handshakes, Hugs, and a Heart for Heavy Lifting.

The portraits, the people pictures by Hardwick in the exhibit show not only a variety of sitters and situations, but also serve as insightful snapshots of aspects of the artist himself. The show's curator has accomplished a wonderful narrative in the placement of the paintings. 

We see in them, the ever story of Hardrick's love of family and community, his faith, even pastimes he enjoyed. And the broad societal milieu that opened up to him as a gifted artist, that likely would have remained out of reach to a taxi cab driver, which he was as well at times, to put food on the table. 

Hardrick was not your everyday cabbie, though.  In a world of interesting people and wondrous sights, he was an artist-injected one. Sketchbook with him, equipped and ready to transcend the daily grind, and capture quick portraits of passengers or landscape motifs that caught his attention along the way between fares.

We see in Indianapolis Street Scene such a sight.  As if caught from his taxi cab glance in the middle of a downtown intersection, a honey-dipped scene mesmerizing in its golden wind. Three people again – Hardrick sees a group of three.  A trinity of windblown saints just trying to a cross the street. The inexplicable epiphany of artists,  marvelous to behold.

detail Indianapolis Street Scene, John Wesley Hardrick

Hardwick's portrait of his neice Trili, 1942, shows a girl, pretty in a fancy pink dress and bow, painted  with the swift and sure handling we see in his floral subjects in the show. The puffy bow, her frilly skirt could be peony flowers at full bloom. To paint flowers best be swift and sure, they fade quickly, just as sure as the girl will blossom into a young lady in the blink of an eye. 

Such a woman is revealed in the stunning, society-type painting Portrait of a Young Lady.  The painting's sophisticated composition of extended side-view of body, but with head looking over the shoulder at the viewer, is a bit Egyptian. It recalls in my mind the unfinished painting by Jacques-Louis David, begun in 1800, of a young lady I remembered as Josephine Bonaparte, but was actually a Madame Récamier. Cascading fabric of beautiful gowns, a long bare arm on each lady extended to the knee. Elegant bare neck and an allure of indifference in the eyes. Hardrick's sitter is unnamed, but perhaps someone with recall something in some visual memory somewhere that will rediscover who she is. Until then, she is the blossom of a debutante, a quinceanera, of girl to young lady, universally.

detail Trili, John Wesley Hardrick

Outward Reaching Hands.

In 1927, Hardrick's painting Little Brown Girl won the second prize in in the fine arts category in a competition sponsored by the William E. Harmon Foundation, noted in its support of  African-American arts. It delights with the colorful exuberance of Matisse or Derain. 

Little Brown Girl, John Wesley Hardrick

The award winning painting was a source of pride and joy for Hardrick's Indianapolis faith-based and artistic communities and they united efforts to fund the purchase of the picture and its eventual donation in 1929 to the John Herron Art Institute (now the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields). 

Almost 100 years later, belated, this show.

And a current artist, Mason Archie, who follows in the footstep of those before, as we all do, every step.  His The Road Less Traveled #12, 2020, has Hardrick's gleaming golden road, but not in a city center, but a country landscape of a type loved by both men. It's not golden by a rule of composition, but it's golden in the glow of the sun on its bare rutted dirt.  The tired tracks of tires or wagon wheels, or just people walking side by side.  The golden sunset, or is it dawn, of an artist on the road.

Mark Diekhoff, June 2025

John Mellencamp, First Paintings – Art World Remembers

Whenever We Wanted II, John Mellencamp (c) 1992 

The Demise and Birth of Whenever.

In January of 1993, George Bush, the father, was vacating the White House and Bill and Hillary were moving in.  On the Billboard Top 100, despite the seismic success of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit from a year earlier, and the grunge mania that followed, Whitney Houston's version of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You was No. 1.

In the heartland here in Indiana, there is a farming mindset about the changing state of things. Farmers keep a close watch as the climate moves over and storms past them, like seasons everyday, or a year of summer in the course of one week. So ubiquitously fickle and unpredictable, and yet somehow, always the same. Heartlanders say 'don't like the weather, just wait a few minutes, it will change.'  They think it's a local saying, but actually Mark Twain said it, and not about hereabouts, but New England. It may have been and old adage young Sam Clemens had picked up as a kid in Missouri. Who's to say, really? 

John Cougar had a saying the year I graduated high school. 'Nothing matters and what if it did.' It's not a question. It's a statement, with fightin' words attached. For me, just a Hoosier kid, I thought he was cool. His first self-titled record on the Riva Records inspired me to buy my first pack of Winstons and go to college in Miami. 

Throughout the 1980s, John Cougar cycled through the last of his name changes, and phased out Cougar for good. He picked up the classic paintbrushes and easel, and as a newfound visual artist made news in the city papers here in Indianapolis. A music video for a track from his album Whenever We Wanted, 1991, showed his performance surrounded by paintings. The same paintings filled the cover of the CD, as well. And like the Beatles inspired a wave, of not only fans, but musical followers and wannabes, John Mellencamp, at that time, with all that artist stuff, awakened in me, a feeling of both abandon and embrace, a want to go that wherever way he went.

A Leg Up Artist.

Whenever We Wanted was the first album released under the name John Mellencamp and Get a Leg Up was its first single released. On the record's cover and starring in the music video was a long-legged, blonde temptress and model, Elaine Irwin. She would become both artistic muse and wife to Mellencamp by January 1993.

The music video shows Mellencamp primped and performing his new song with Irwin cavorting about,  before a backdrop of large framed paintings. One of those paintings, American Boy and Girl, 1991, is a dual head and shoulders portrait of a hippy/hipster pair, dark haired, dark eyed, flat affect mostly, a little more edge to the eyes of the girl. There is a snugly luxurious feel to Mellencamp's empty red background. It has no feeling of sterility or vacancy despite the lack of anything but painted color. 

Mellencamp is quoted as saying  the Whenever record was an attempt at Hurts So Good with better lyrics. 

A fan had suggested he get back to his basic sex and rock and roll after a couple previous more socially aware records. Whatever.

Two other paintings behind the pop singer share their name with the album. Not sure which came first, the paintings or the album. Maybe all just a part of a theme he was exploring, whether visually or with music, at that time. Or were the paintings nicknamed with place keeper titles simply for their central inclusion in the record's cover and 1st video set piece? Probably a theme, not that it matters, but let's embrace the wonder.

The hurts so good of love and sex, but with better poetry.  The paintings can't be explained by the phrase 'whenever we wanted,' but by some riddle of a question, to which Mellencamp replies in song and in paint, that answer. 

Whenever We Wanted, 1991, shows another couple, maybe it hurts, maybe it's good, depends on a lot of things.  The girl is probably American as she looks to be the same dark-haired girl in the painting already described. She is seated nude (at least topless behind a table)  within a theatrically contrived space. She is extending one arm, bent awkwardly at the elbow, holding up an apple of temptation. She stares straight at the viewer. The standing, sandy-haired male at her side, dares not look over at her, rather he too, looks at the viewer.  His elongated figure, accentuated by the twin curves of suspenders he wears, seems to slink toward the painting's edge. He may have asked her when she started seeing that other one on the side, and well, we know the answer.

Whenever We Wanted II, also 1991, a domestic bedroom scene of man and woman on a bed. The male is most certainly Mellencamp himself. And if the femme fatale is not Elaine Irwin, then Mellencamp had a premonition of being existentially intimate with a look-a-like blonde.  The painting is the exact size of the other Whenever..., but that one is a vertical and this one is a horizontal. The wider view works with this image as Mellencamp has painted the gaze of both persons looking as far away from the other as possible.  And the feeling is amplified by the format. But what question is that feeling?

Both paintings share the same color scheme as well. It's almost a Rembrandt palette of golden brown, deep maroons, wood tone and flesh. In this picture, the Mellencamp character, nude, leg crossed over his privates, picks at his toenails. The Irwin character is a head floating on pillow, blonde hair cascading, lump of body entirely cocooned in the thick bedspread of curtain that drapes the scene oppressively. The only two objects other that those described, are a cross round the man's neck, and something on the night stand towards the outward gaze of the woman. What it is though, hard to tell.

Ewing Street Incident.

It's strange now, I cannot remember how we traveled in those days. But on a winter afternoon, in early 1993, I found myself at the Southern Indiana Center for the Arts just north of Seymour, Indiana in a town called Rockport. I'm sure I read about the show in the Indianapolis papers, but it was before GPS and before the internet and I wasn't familiar with the town. But I found the old mansion, easy enough, set back from Highway 11. An exhibition called simply John Mellencamp was showing from January 8 through 28.

John with Puppet, 1992, was the painting teased in the newspaper, and was presented as a large show stopper near the entrance. Mellencamp paints himself in the light and posture of a Mannerist saint, a grim puppeteer dangling his marionette from one hand and teetering a cigarette from his lips.  The hollow eyes of his tiny plaything, and his own jaded view cast to opposite sides.  The ambitious scale of the painting, the tone of its feel, seem to aspire to the summative quality and mysterious pathos of a piece like Picasso's La Vie at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Two pictures to discuss together are Stella and Kristi Blindfolded, both 1991, both the same size, and both a head and shoulders nude portrait of a redhead woman with short cut hair. One an immense success and the other a heavy handed metaphor. 

The blindfold occurs more than once in Mellencamp's paintings, not always used in the same way.  In Kristi, the blindfold is the type we see on hostages. Hers is not masquerade. She's no coquette with a playful veil. Kristi seems a brutal caricature of victimhood. Like the title of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes,  the painting is heavy on the scary, and lyric-lite.   

Articles around the time of this Mellencamp exhibit cite German Expressionist Max Beckman and American painter Walt Kuhn as key influences.  If Kristi is more Kuhn, then Stella is more Beckmann.

Or maybe more Ernest Ludwig Kirchner than Beckmann. Stella has the jarring and angular line of Kirchner. Mellencamp does it, though, without the camp cabaret of Kirchner's era. Stella, although enervated and jaggy, is a woman of real flesh and blood. You never doubt this lady was seated before Mellencamp, his paints and brushes, just being rather than pretending to be.   

With this line of thinking in mind, Untitled, 1991, whose attractive blonde subject with long hair and red dress, standing partially behind a filigree architecture of some sort, stands expressionless as if sleeping with no dreams.  Your Mother, 1991, is back to the prop department, for something Tarantino again, like a gimp. Mellencamp paints his memories or our collective unconscious, a leather belt to go with this archetypal 'mean mom.'  

Somewhere in between fact and fiction, Jocko, 1990, succeeds. Again, I go back to an aspiration of  intent. Some of Kuhn's clowns have it. And Mellencamp's whatever he is, this Jocko – a horse-drawn carriage driver – Napoleonic cannon fodder – drum major – elevator boy – not really sure.  Something about him is beyond  stereotype and toward the universal, even if he ain't there yet. I'm reminded of this intent in Picasso again. His Boy with A Pipe from the rose period. A whole art history really of youthful portraits that capture some of the beauty and magic of life before time has had time to take its toll.

The minimal facepaint on Jocko points toward a clown or circus of some kind, regardless of whatever the hell else he is. And aren't we all, a clown or circus sometime, regardless of who we are?

Jocko, John Mellencamp (c) 1992 

See Also - Mellencamp - Selected Paintings, 36 page catalogue (c) 1992 John Mellencamp

Boy with Pipe - Pablo Picasso

Review of 'Stories of the Salon' Companion Exhibit to the 100th Annual Hoosier Art Salon

Booth Tarkington Portrait  by Wayman Adams? from Stories of the Salon

A Thousand Words on Stories of the Salon. 

Running at the same time and in an adjacent room to the 100th Annual Hoosier Art Salon, The Indiana State Museum presents Stories of the Salon from August 24 through October 20, 2024.

From several impressive, French Salon-scale paintings by Hoosier Group artists such as T.C. Steele, Wayman Adams and William Forsyth, who exhibited in the early years of the annual exhibit when it was still held in Chicago, to recent scenes and visions by this century's artists, the companion show presents a visual narrative of the evolution and variety of many of Indiana's great artworks and artists.

Deliberate Men and Their Noble Vocation.

A massive, even monumental, floral still life by William Forsyth encapsulates the dark, severe and Victorian tastes of the art buying public around the first quarter of last century. It's easy to imagine the painting looming aside a dark dining room table amid thick florid drapery, intricate and ornate carpets and wallpapers, clusters of  bric-a-brac, and the dim glimmer of china and crystal. Lost in an enveloping clutter, the painting itself and its subject floral, vestiges of color and reflection, overwhelmed by a dark palette of background suffocation. 

Brighter, and less time-trapped, but of an equally monumental scale is The Hill Country by T.C. Steele from the 2nd Annual Salon, 1926. A close inspection reveals Steele's use of the entire color wheel spectrum from yellow to violet in the sky, red ochre to green in the pleasing roll of Hoosier hills, orange in the fore to blue in the aft of his stately composition. Steele's abundant and joyful hues are both delirious and delicious, attributes befitting his impressionist ways. 

The famous Art Jury by Wayman Adams, is a near life-size, multi-portrait of huddled, standing men and is included as well. It was also shown in the 2nd Hoosier Salon. In the magnificent picture, he presents the history of his subject in a neighborly way like a Normal Rockwell front porch conversation of sideways glances and under the breath gossips. You sense a dynamism of mischief and competition among the men he portrayed, the titans of Indiana art at the time, as they choose the winners from the others in their art show deliberations.

Pioneer Women of the Morris Scene.

Three artists who all once practiced their craft as pioneers within the confines of the spacious Morris Building artists' enclave on South Meridian Street (later called the Faris Building) can be seen within several feet of each other at the exhibit. Sky Rider, by Lois Main Templeton was in the 67th Salon in 1991. The painting is discernible from her later work in the '90s, in that it is smaller, more buoyantly colorful, and is less purely abstract. It does possess her signature touch of gesture and action, and her bold use of line. The yellowish block in the golden triangle area of the work would become a predominant color in years to come.  

The Leaders by Ellie Siskind from the 1986 Salon, presents the namesake subjects as comic book grim reapers. The simplicity of the overall imagery, the candy-wrap colors and the five figures' deathheads are reminiscent of Mexican Day of the Dead sculpture. Perhaps world leaders they are, as the sole female among them sports a blouse that seems like a nod to Margaret Thatcher, one of the others is dressed in a military outfit and cap that recalls Saddam Hussein, and either of a couple of other wrinkly necks could easily be Ronald Reagan under a mask. Somehow this painting survives its own wiffs of propaganda, as we whistle by its graveyard, maybe due to the allure of the lurid hues and the playfulness of its shock.

The final of the three, is a  sculpture Fragile Shards / PTSD by Clare Hollett from the 99th Salon in 2023.  The work's title alludes to mental health and its stark color contrasts of black porcelain base and white ceramic shards present a bipolar unease of their own. The shards are irregular facets repelled from the core, not ordered and unfolding like blossoms, but adverse like magnetic repulsion and entropic like explosion or flame. Or appearing actually, like a box of Kleenex, sneezed at from within.

The Capture of Mid-Century Escapism.

On another section of wall are three works which hang well together. All offer mid-century views of one type or another. Harley W. Rhodehamell III, by Marie Goth, was created and shown in 1964 at the 40th Hoosier Salon. The delightful child's portrait shows a polite young cowboy, sitting up straight, attentive, hands crossed in his lap and dressed for a gunfight if given permission. He wears a getup of suede riding pants and vest, baby blue stetson, and pink button-down shirt peaking from a dark gray longsleeve v-neck like a rakish bandanna around his neck. His trusty cap-gun hangs by the ready, its belt and holster slung over the back of chair at his side. With the passage of time, the artwork operates on dual levels. The painting itself is impeccable, the relaxed handling perfect for the portrait of child.  But looking at its innocence with the jaded focus of modern eyes now raises questions. At what cost, all this wish-fulfilled excess of the TV age generation? And how on earth did it come to pass that the endearing picture of this boy escaped from the family's collection? 

The Barber's Chair by William Burton Lawson was included in the 2007 exhibition. The painting appears a time capsule the artist stumbled upon. A composition, through storefront plate-glass, that is worth more than a passing glance. A tan leather barber's chair at the center, rubbed shiny on its edges from wear. It has a massive chrome footrest, that, like the grill on a '50s Buick, seems a menacing grin or grimace. It's not really a stretch to say that the chair is endowed with an air of personage. It holds court with a surrounding overflow of interesting sidekicks and characters. Barstools from the Happy Days with foot rings for the tired feet of jazzy drinkers, a rocket age pedestal ashtray, linoleum floor and enamel cabinetry from a color-blind era in yellow and brown. Some Polaroids and a massive taxidermied fish on the gray paneled back wall.  A leaning broom, a Fedora hat. The carefully painted items are endless and intrinsic. A familiar red gumball machine, but empty.  The ashtray, the chairs, a trash can, all empty. A modern cheap plastic fan, its blades stopped.  Is that a reflection in the ornate mirror behind the barber's chair...? Maybe not. But a few clumps of hair on the floor hint at the quiet humanity of it all. The artist knows a composition and color scheme when he sees them. And in this time-trapped tableau, his meticulous hand preserves all of the colorful details for those who didn't take time to notice in real time. 

In an entry from 2001, Angel Mercado presents a sunsoaked fishing cottage that is reminiscent of the the East Coast lights of Edward Hopper. But only in the sunshine they share. Hopper was a post-war existentialist despite the occasional glow, but his early colorful row house pictures have the feeling you feel in Mercado's picture. We seek isolation as a tonic for the stress of city life. And Mercado's scene is splendid in that way. Pure sunlight and cool shadow in a harmony of mutual compliment. Primary color fields of blue sky, red roof and yellow grass are equally as melodious in their equitable distribution over the picture plane. The verve of the paintbrush, dashes out a row boat with minimal strain, a couple of blocks of black shadow, and a sweeping curve of white. The glee of existentialism, hold my beer.  

The Mysterious Amberson Age.

Booth Tarkington's coming-of-age novel Seventeen preserves an Indiana long gone, but contemporary to the times that spawned the first Hoosier Art Salon, one hundred years ago.   Before all the widespread store bought snacks, there was bread with butter and sprinkled sugar. Before there were several cars in every driveway, there were trolleys that linked far flung places like Irvington to the city, and at a conversational, leisurely pace. 

A magnificent seated Portrait of Booth Tarkington is included in the show. It presents the imposing man with trademark leather gloves and cigarette. Unfortunately, I did not note the artist or the year during my visit to the show. An online search revealed a photograph in the W. H. Bass Photo Collection with a similar pose. Different Tarkington portraits are in the collections of Smithsonian and Newfields. The bravura handling of the piece in the Stories of the Salon show is in the manner of  William Merritt Chase or Robert Henri, so perhaps it was  Wayman Adams, but he's already represented in the aforementioned Art Jury. But he did present a Tarkington portrait in the first Hoosier Salon in 1925. So perhaps it's an Adams, or a student of Adams or of William Forsyth, who also painting with a similar skill and abandon. Simon Paul Baus comes to mind, but perhaps his brush is looser yet.

In the gilded heyday of Hollywood, as Tarkington's Ambersons brightened cinema screens, Cecil Head was painting a meek and sober lamplight on a depression streetscape in our city. Street Corner at Midnight was exhibited in the 1942 Salon. A red brick corner store or bar, second floor apartments, sidewalks empty, all but rolled up. One parked automobile blends into the shadows of everything outside the lamp's midnight glow. The darkest shadows reserved for what lies beyond windows and door.

 

Mark Diekhoff,  June 21, 2025

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Thoughts on the Closing of Ruschman Gallery

AI image by Gemini for illustrative purposes only

originally appearing in The Ornomath Journal, 06/24/09

Mark Ruschman's One Helluva Ride

About a month ago, I ran into David Kadlec, who used to run Eye Blink, a gallery in the Murphy Art Center. As two former gallery guys, the subject was showing art. He asked me if I ever thought about opening up a new place. It wasn't really a question maybe, probably just small talk. Truth is, I think about it quite often still — even though next year marks ten years since I closed my final commercial space. Besides Grateful Dead concerts and great stuff I did as a kid, running an art gallery was the most fun I’ve ever had doing something.

I told Kadlec no. I remarked that the local scene had changed. Things — the world — had moved on. “They don’t even do solo shows anymore,” I said. Kadlec reminded me, “Ruschman still does solo shows, doesn’t he?”

I first saw Ruschman Gallery in 1992 or 3, just before I walked a couple doors down to Bill Adkins’ In Vivo art gallery when they were still neighbors on Massachusetts Ave. By then the Indy ‘golden age’ of contemporary art was arguably ending. A 'phase two' was sorting itself out with In Vivo closing and Ruschman relocating to the slightly more remote and exclusive situation on Alabama Street. Hot House and Four Star were on the horizon.

I recall just one art detail from that day — a large calm Steve Paddack painting leaning against a wall in an upstairs storage room at In Vivo. It was a painting of a corner of an empty room leaning in the corner of an empty room. That painting, in that place, inspired me to take up paint brushes myself and open a gallery that might see fit to have such large impossible things inside and even hang them on the wall.

I didn't visit Ruschman Gallery often. Perhaps just a handful of times over all those years. Ruschman's activities were covered thoroughly in the art press though — spanning Steve Mannheimer all the way to Konrad Marshall — so you could keep up with his vision whether you saw it in the flesh or not.

When I had a gallery, I noticed all the young local artists aspired to be with Ruschman. Clearly he was able to balance business with beauty better than anyone else in Indianapolis.

At that time, in my young and dumber days, I found Ruschman Gallery ‘safe’ with its stable of regional academics. Keep in mind I was just an up and comer, trying to distinguish myself somehow. Hard knocks later, I grew to admire his long run business model. It contrasted so clearly with my crash and burn through the savings five-year plan. Ruschman’s was the tougher way, the road less traveled in the long haul, as my highway was littered with not only the wreck of my Five Ten Gallery, but with the rusting hulks of prior makes like 431 and In Vivo, and the accidents waiting to happen still on the drawing board — Oblique, EM Gallery, LAMP, Eye Blink, Everyday Inventors, Penumbra, FLUX and more. I'm not insulting us flameouts, just attesting to the dependability and durability behind Ruschman's nameplate.

Ruschman was always the standard. Others maybe wanted to be more experimental than Ruschman. Have bigger walls than Ruschman. Have more young artists than Ruschman. More 'laid back' atmosphere than Ruschman. More sculpture, more installations. More music, more themes, more chainsaws of death, whatever. In reality though, probably — just be the next Ruschman — certainly in terms of success.

We beg for change, and then it comes. The Murphy Building is for sale — IMOCA’s fired the paid staff and is tightening its belt— some Indy artists who have 'chose to stay' have finally gotten an exhibit at the Indiana State Museum (but not that many really, not when you consider all those who did not) — and now, Ruschman Gallery is closing — clearing out — bolting the doors.

That Ruschman Gallery lasted almost to a silver anniversary makes the reason for the closure seem all the more preposterous — mere economics — according to the David Hoppe interview with Mark Ruschman in this week's NUVO. Life is short, art is long, right? Oh well, maybe the math don't lie. In the same Hoppe article Ruschman does imply that in addition to the deep recession the changing numbers and habits of Indy's art collectors weighed in as an impulse to his final decision.

Maybe Ruschman will change his mind. Maybe this economy can turn on a dime. Whatever comes next — if Ruschman parks his Cadillac for good — the ride won't be the same.

Mark Diekhoff, June, 2009

see also:

On the Cusp : After 25 years, Ruschman Gallery Closing

Indy Star - Art Seen : Ruschman Gallery Closing After 25 Years

Indiana Economic Digest : Economy leads to Ruschman closing downtown Indianapolis art gallery

Hoosier Salon 85th Annual Exhibit ‘Designed to Last’ at the Indiana State Museum

Eager to Please with Some Pleasant Surprises - 85th Annual Hoosier Salon 

originally appearing in The Ornomath Journal July 18, 2009

Many Hands, Fred Doloresco, 2009 Best of Show, 85th Annual Hoosier Salon

Classics, Penny French-Deal’s small oil was the first picture to capture my attention. The painting is nostalgic in its entirety. Its brushwork is impressionist, as is favored by most painters in the exhibition. The subject is a small town street of yesteryear. Arched windows and quaint awnings compose the turn of the century facades. Depression-era automobiles line the curb in colors bright enough to cheer up our modern memories of that sepia-toned era — candy apple red and a shiny royal blue.

Garden Chores by Ronald Mack is also an amalgamation of entirely nostalgic elements. Some charming farm girls dressed as in the 19th Century — either inspired from sometime else, formed from the artist’s imagination or maybe staged as a fussy tableau that Mack painted from life. The young ladies stroll through a vegetable garden, between the split rails, in the foreground of a slope-roofed farmstead shack through the long shadows of a setting sun.

Kathleen McMurray’s Pears with Blue and White Vase is composed not only of the namesake fruit and ubiquitous Japanese blue and white vessel, but also a marvelously rendered pewter spoon. The oil painting salutes Dutch still life masterfully, but that is as far as it goes.

Two award winning paintings hanging near one another reveal the eye of the jurors at play. Bahama Breezes by Denise Pettee-Frazier and Lifting Skies by David Tutwiler both exhibit a loose, sensual gauze of brushwork and a subject matter that inspires happy fuzzy memories of sunny holidays.

Snowy Day on Washington Street by Chris Newlund showcases the artist’s engaging and deft handling of the brush. The painting’s subject is sweet and is seductive almost to the point of being cringe-worthy, like Auguste Renoir can be at times. The chair barely exists at the painting’s edges, as the artist skillfully propels the viewer’s attention to the drama of the scene — a pregnant clump of grapes about to splash the coffee cup.

An idiosyncratic vision is displayed in the folk art collage by Ed McEndarfer, Storm Over Paradise. Decoration for decoration’s sake really — one motif is a line of Indiana-looking trees interspersed with half hidden palms.

William Lawson’s Autumn Shallows captures a natural moment of expressionist color — the bright oranges, deep blues and paling greens of an Indiana lake side in October. Despite the active color scheme, Lawson achieves an almost Chardon-like calm and harmony with the painting. The painting’s realism is all the more apparent with the nearby hanging of Marianne Glick's Abstract I. Glick’s abstract shares the same expressionist's colors but presents them to provoke a jagged and jarring effect, quite the opposite intention of the serene scene painted by Lawson.

The big, rolling bend of Lynn Dunbar’s Mighty Ohio River is painted of similar expressionist colors, shared also by her other entry, Little Pink Houses, Alton. This artist seems to utilize the colors in a more premeditated manner, as both pictures use them the same. But maybe the artist caught both scenes at a similar moment of light.

Virtuoso performances are awarded with the palette knife oil by Beth Forst, Cornrows Below Zero, and the pastel industrial impression and gossamer handling seen in The Ethanol Plant by Carol Strock-Wasson.

Dan Woodson has a sense of humor, I imagine. His My Summer Home begins at first glance as a visual riddle. The scene is a seek and find of the picture’s subject amid the visually busy and interesting monochrome crosshatching woodland branches that act a Cy Twombly camouflage. Woodson’s summer place is a tree house, with requisite swinging tire hanging from a branch, all covered in winter snow.

C. J. Fang’s Expressive Tranquility, not surprisingly, expresses tranquility. I found the composition of the acrylic painting to be among the most beautiful in the exhibit. The shapes of the clumps of marsh grass — the sky indivisible with the crystal still water. The golden ripe and fresh green shoots.

I wanted to enjoy the fabric collage Chicago, N. Michigan Ave. by Joel Fremion more. However, the work affected me less due to the inclusion of the word Prudential on a skyscraper and the composition’s starting point, the front steps of the Art Institute of Chicago and the pre-fab drama of its stone lion.

By my count, there are thirteen pictures of the traditional ‘winding road’ genre all hung together on a section of wall. However, one work among them displays an unexpected turn. To state it simply, Alan Patrick’s Winding Road doesn’t. He’s painted a winding road stripped of all nostalgia and pre-packaged charm. It’s just a typical Indiana 3-way stop. A ‘T’ intersection. As if the blunting top of the ‘T’ wasn’t enough to frustrate a winding road, the stark left/right choice is further obscured by the heavy shade of the overhanging treeline.

Pamela Denny-Rohrbach’s Bittersweet, Vanitas I expresses joy. A joy in painting, a joy in the objects and color of life, a joy in living. She’s composed a still life that’s a roller coaster of movement similar to some of Cezanne’s lopsided cornucopias. Her approach contains no shortcut. All included is intricate and wild. The shrinking jagged oak leaves, an almost obscenely decorative fabric tumbling from the table in a myriad of folds, complicated oriental porcelain, an odd King Neptune fruit bowl.

The 2009 ‘Best of Show’ is Fred Doloresco’s Many Hands. Doloresco’s skills as a painter are marred a bit by the overwhelming nostalgia of his subject. Even the picture's framing seems to aspire to imitate an earlier age. The result, unfortunately, is somewhat gaudy and overly sentimental to my tastes — a mash of Milet’s L’Angelus and similar pictures with Monet's haystacks, all in a picture frame fit for a king. The picture’s scale is admirable. Indeed it shares the ambitious size seen in the works that make up the Society of Western Artists exhibit showing concurrently down the hall. The picture’s painterly effects can entertain, to be sure, if you stand nice and close. But at a distance, Doloresco’s harvest peasants have become too familiar to excite all that much.

See also:

Hoosier Art Salon website

Indiana State Museum Exhibits

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