With its zigzagging styles, fluctuating quality and uneven selections, the Denver Central Library’s showcase of Mel Strawn’s 60-year artistic career can be a frustrating, even off-putting experience.
The Salida artist, a member of the University of Denver art faculty from 1969-1985, unquestionably deserves a retrospective. But this soon-to-close exhibition, subtitled “All Together Now, 1940s-2000s,” does him more disservice than service.
With about 75 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints, this ambitious presentation reaches too far and includes inferior examples that never should have been considered.
A more tightly edited show focused on Strawn’s best works would have shown the artist in a better light and offered a richer, more enjoyable experience.
While it makes sense to display a comprehensive cross-section of his work, some of these pieces simply do not belong in a show of this kind. Among them is “Stackrite” (1993), a superficial, cloying composition with what looks like confetti and streamers.
Another unfortunate inclusion is “Shift” (ca. 1989), a diptych in which Strawn has bizarrely overlaid a diagonal strip of his patterned abstraction on loose, snaking lines rendered with little fluidity or grace. The whole thing seems clunky and forced.
At the same time, it would have helped if the exhibition was arranged with some obvious organizational structure. Given the constant evolution of Strawn’s work, a strong argument could be made for a chronological approach.
As it is, periods and styles are seemingly randomly intermixed, making it difficult to get any sense of continuity or make connections from one period or piece to another. The whole show seems scattered and unfocused, which, of course, does not do Strawn any favors.
Born in Idaho in 1929, the future artist later moved with his family to Los Angeles. A couple of Strawn’s early pieces from the 1940s, reflecting a kind of American Scene vernacular, are on view, including “City Builder” (1946).
The budding artist enrolled at the Chouinard Art Instute in Los Angeles, but his studies were interrupted by service in the Korean War. Drawing on the work of Rico Lebrun, one of his teachers, he completed a series of provocative works depicting the prisoner-of-war camps there. All have been lost except for “Night Camp” (1952), a semi-abstract casein drawing on paper.
Returning to the United States, he earned his bachelor of fine arts degree in 1955 and master of fine arts degree a year later from the respected California College of Arts and Crafts; the famed painter Richard Diebenkorn served as his graduate adviser.
Like virtually every other artist at the time, he was heavily influenced by abstract-expressionism. He painted some strong works in the style, especially “Fall” (1959), with its powerful, de Kooning-like gesturalism.
But this style did not stick around for long. In the 1960s, he was creating abstract works that have more of a landscape feel, such as “Garrigue Walls” (1967), one of the show’s beauties. Its evocative title refers to the low scrublands around the Mediterranean basin.
Tiny glimpses of bright colors peep through the surface of this mostly muted impressionistic work covered with patches of white. Evocations of snow perhaps?
Strawn’s work reached its maturity in the 1980s, when he created a series of first-rate paintings offering a hard-edged take on the pattern and decoration movement that emerged in New York City in the mid-1970s. Many fine examples in this style can be cited, including “Chronos” (1981) and “Genie” (1983).
Less successful are a puzzling series of more representational works incorporating images of flattened bottle caps, including a few of his most recent works, such as “Medal for Mystery” (2004), a mixed-media piece in the shape of a military medal.
Strawn is an accomplished local artist, but, sadly, this survey does not always show him in the best light.
“Mel Strawn: All Together Now, 1940s-2000s”
ART EXHIBIT|Exhibition of paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints by Mel Strawn|Vida Ellison Gallery, seventh floor, Denver Central Library, 10 W. 14th Ave. Parkway|FREE|Noon to 5 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, closed Saturday and Sunday; through Nov. 24; 720-865-1482 or 720-865-1821 or denverlibrary.org
