Nothing Like I Planned: The Art of John Mellencamp

“Nothing Like I Planned: The Art of John Mellencamp,” appeared at the Tennessee State Museum from 12 April to 10 June and presented 49 expressionistic figurative paintings that served as a panorama into the vision of a painter who hails from Seymour, Indiana.  Mellencamp breaks away from the spectacle of popular culture and delves into the virtue and vice that characterizes daily life in this blue-collar Dustbowl state.  Riveted with socio-political commentary, these paintings do not seek to please viewers with any kind of gratified appearance.  Instead each canvas is saturated with gray, red, yellow, and black—colors that collide together and create a deep mood, which casts a cautious, skeptical eye upon the present.

Many of Mellencamp’s paintings are portraits of anonymous subjects known only to the artist.  However the varied facial expressions trigger a curiosity that becomes a desire which takes one into the medium and surface of the painting itself, showing how visually arresting subject matter does not have to be drawn from a commonly-known sign system.  Instead the artist’s manipulation of the medium itself is a draw without appealing to the sensational.  The portrait genre, moreover, is another avenue that Mellencamp utilizes as a means to respond to the events of the world, the impact of these moments on his life as well as those around him.

Three expansive panels, all made in 2005, range from 12-feet to 16-feet in width.  Together these serve as mural-like statements that dwarf the viewer and respond to several unexpected events, such as the dismal re-election of George Bush and Dick Cheney in 2004.  Coast to Coast features the loss of an American dream that devastated New Orleans, Louisiana.  This rupture and damage was felt across the country as televised news reports showed people either fighting for their lives or swimming among the dead as the President ironically stayed hidden from view.  

The two panels that piece together Fear in America portrays nine portraits that gaze out into the room as two figures point the way to Fear in America, directly opposite from Freedom of Speech that appears in the center of this two-part composition.  The third large-scale piece titled, Hay Cowboy grapples with the smoking lifestyle, practiced by many cowboys who have long been icons of American freedom, which has been reframed as a health threat by the government. Moreover, the layered paint and cut canvas fragments that appear in each piece serve as a metaphor for these contradictions that attempt to redefine one’s own better judgment.

“Nothing Like I Planned” captures a sense of someone’s life behind the spectacle.  Since he was a child, John Mellencamp has been drawn to paint.  Today he paints out of a natural need that makes him unavailable for weeks at a time and entirely out of touch from the rest of the world.  Most significant is the artist’s use of portraiture, which is a more potent genre than one would first surmise.  During the mid to late1930s, Roy Stryker directed the photographers of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to collect true representations of the economic impact wrought by the Great Depression.  Rural communities were struck especially hard.  However many of these realities were too devastating, leading Stryker to destroy many of the photographers’ negatives.  John Mellencamp’s art reflects a dark mood—a true reality—that acknowledges the racial, economic, and political division rippling across America’s natural, but supposedly free, landscape.