Jim Melchert

Jim Melchert (* 1930 in New Bremen , Ohio , USA ; lives in Oakland , California ) is a contemporary American painter , graphic artist and sculptor .

life and work

James Frederick Melchert studied at Princeton University until 1952 , at the University of Chicago in 1957 and at the University of California at Berkeley in 1961 .

He was a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1961 to 1965 and taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1965 to 1992. From 1977 to 1981 he was the National Endowment for the Arts Director in the Visual Arts Program and from 1984 to 1988 he was the director of the American Academy in Rome .

He used ceramics as a sculptural art medium and is known for his combinations of mismatched elements. The ceramic object Ghost Plate with Mickey Mouse Ears ( Ghost Plate with Mickey Mouse ears ) is a typical piece of a series of works which he in 1964, inspired by Ingmar Bergman's film " The Silence ", produced. Melchert decorated the plates and glasses in the series with masks and used them to work on questions from his past. The ghost in Ghost Plate with Mickey Mouse Ears wears a Mickey Mouse hat. The object is both a playful object and a reminder of the humiliation of a child who has to wear a fool's cap.

Jim Melchert was a participant in Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 in the Individual Mythologies department . His works have been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , the Oakland Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the University Art Museum at the University of California Berkeley.

Literature and Sources

• Documenta 5. Survey of Reality, Imagery Today. 2 volumes (Vol. 1: Material, the presentation of the visual worlds and the artists. Volume 2: List of the exhibited works, the presented situations, the expected events, their nature, their manufacturers and owners, their organizers. General bibliography. Guide through the Exhibition. ). Documenta ua, Kassel 1972, ISBN 3-570-02856-9 (in ring binder).
• Roland Nachtigäller , Friedhelm Scharf, Karin Stengel (eds.): Resubmission d5. A survey of the archive on Documenta 1972 (= series of publications of the documenta archive. Vol. 8). Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2001, ISBN 3-7757-1121-X .

Web links

• Homepage of the artist