| Artist, gay activist and iconoclast Charles Merrill is enjoying a prolific period of creativity by addressing his social concerns in his art. A move last year to Palm Springs, California, with its brilliant sunlight inspired Merrill to integrate aspects of Cubism into his latest work, particularly the use of form and bright color. Like Picasso and the passion of his mural, Guernica, Merrill is working with a profound sense of artistic purpose. He states, “The role of the artist is to fix unjust laws in the fabric of society that need to be fixed.” |  |
The Protest Art of Charles Merrill – Milton Fletcher
Artist, gay activist and iconoclast Charles Merrill is enjoying a prolific period of creativity by addressing his social concerns in his art. A move last year to Palm Springs, California, with its brilliant sunlight inspired Merrill to integrate aspects of Cubism into his latest work, particularly the use of form and bright color. Like Picasso and the passion of his mural, Guernica, Merrill is working with a profound sense of artistic purpose. He states, “The role of the artist is to fix unjust laws in the fabric of society that need to be fixed.”
What has to be fixed, according to Merrill, is the repressiveness of an increasingly theocratic US Government toward same-sex couples and the denial of equal treatment to all citizens as guaranteed by the US Constitution. In 1996, for example, President Clinton signed “The Defense of Marriage Act,” which disallowed same-sex couples the Federal tax benefits heterosexual couples receive. President Bush's efforts to amend the US Constitution against gay marriage provoked Merrill to stop paying his taxes in protest.
In addition to being a lifelong artist, Merrill published and edited Art In Ireland magazine in the 70s. During this time, he interviewed artist Joseph Beuys, who introduced Merrill to the concept of “Social Sculpture.” Merrill explains, “Society as a whole is to be regarded as one great work of art to which each person can contribute creatively. Beuys said, ‘Everyone is an artist.’” This expansive definition of art’s role in the community gave Merrill a new perspective on creating art and inspired him to use it as a tool for transformation.
Influential artists throughout history who were homo- or pansexual have also galvanized Merrill into action, including da Vinci, Michelangelo, Paul Klee and Andrew Warhol. As the artist notes, “Many artists of the past were gay, some of the most gifted.”
Using boldly colored acrylic and oil paints on 36 x 48-inch canvases in his most recent work, Merrill’s visual forms are recurring motifs of triangles, circles, lines and arrows which, taken together, create the artist’s visual language of emphatic expression. These elements are also used to create symbols and references that reiterate—rather obliquely visually, but more explicitly in the pieces’ titles (like Oppressed Sexual Minorities and In Remembrance of Matthew Shepard)—Merrill’s strong passion against pervasive intolerance.
Many of his compositions recall the styles of Soviet Constructivism and Kandinsky. However, the iconic upside-down pink triangles in his work have a more sinister reference—this was the emblem that gays had to wear in Nazi concentration camps.
Merrill cites a spiritual reference to the symbol in his work, “In Native American culture, the Berdache, or two spirit ones, were gay or bi-sexual men and women accepted by the tribes as leaders of the spirit world, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse for example.” Merrill uses Cubist-like lines to refer to this influence rather than to depict the original symbol, the swastika, which included Berdache as part of its meaning, because it was perverted by the Nazis.
Merrill is also a performance artist who makes his attitudes toward Christianity uncompromisingly clear; he uses scissors and a black marker to edit Thomas Kinkade’s Family Bible by cutting and striking out the hateful passages in the text.
Perhaps most importantly, Merrill is altruistic. The proceeds from the work sold at his show at New York City’s Broadway Gallery benefits the William Institute UCLA Sexual Orientation Legal Think Tank. Ultimately, Merrill wants “to make social change, educate, to leave the world a better place for the next generation of oppressed people,” and this is an admirable goal by a progressive artist.
Merrill can be located on the Internet at www.merrillcharles.com .
Milton Fletcher is director and curator of CyberGallery66.org
