Ricki Morse – Keith Mayerson Reimagines Our World
Keith Mayerson
American, 1966-
Someday we'll find it, the Rainbow Connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me, 2023
oil on linen
55 1/8 x 88 in.
SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by the Luria/Budgor Family Foundation
Keith Mayerson, Me in the Proust Room for our 40th birthday, oil on linen, 22 × 30 in. (detail)
COMMENTS
Kermit has a special place in my heart growing up and now that touches me deeply. Loving Sesame Street when I was young, and being the perfect age for the Muppet Show and the Muppet Movies, Jim Henson’s Kermit as the bandleader for all the Muppets taught me much how to be a good person and successful human being in every way, giving back to the world to make it a better place, and to assume a queer positive role in terms of masculinity that could still be sensitive and compassionate but strong without having to perform in negative macho heteronormative gender roles of the John Wayne stereotypes we had in my generation growing up.
This is part of the famous scene in the 1977 Muppet Movie when after being inspired by the Dom Deloise Hollywood Agent, Kermit sets forth upon his bike to get out of the swamp and take his talents to Hollywood to make “millions of people happy”! It was a magic moment in cinema, where everything seemed “real”, the Muppet had no strings, and miraculously could ride a bike through a on location environment, therefore the story seemed real, and the ideology behind it. Truly this was a scene that helped me believe in myself and talents to set forth the journey of my creative life!
I surreptitiously signed my name in the patterned blanket covering the banjo in his basket, as I feel this character and world view has biked me safely into the future, like E.T. In his bicycle basket when he was being saved. Whatever anxieties or troubles I had in my life while painting I synaesthetically painted unconsciously into the swamp, wanting it to come apart in surreal figurative abstractions, like in a Joan Mitchell or Gaugin painting (or the murky beauty of Newcomb Pottery glazes of the late 19c New Orleans women pottery school who had their own swamps to contend with!).
But Kermit is riding confidently and optimistically right past the melancholic dream world of the swamp into a positive future, as I’m peddling as fast as I can as a teacher and as a painter, and in my life!
https://keithmayerson.com/works/someday-well-find-it/
© 2023
Keith Mayerson (b. 1966, Cincinnati, OH) is inspired by symbols of American history and pop culture, and depicts familiar figures who have impacted the country's consciousness, in addition to personal scenes and his abstract "iconscapes." His work “allegorises” themes of resilience, determination, and the "American dream." Iconic images, heroes, places, and events are rendered luminous and transcendent through Mayerson's micro-managed brushwork and coloring. His subjects are often selected for their backstories and cultural impact; in Mayerson's paintings, they embody contemporary national feelings and sentiments. While his formal features hint at a French Impressionist influence, his images could be seen to recall the work of Symbolists in their spiritual components, cultural commentary, and review, in addition to being inspired by the more visionary aspects of American Modernists and the Old Masters.
Mayerson's paintings are informed by his immersion into his subjects. Like a method actor, he listens to albums, biographies, or other audio materials on the figures in question while painting them. The entrenched conceptual investment and consideration behind his practice imparts an earnest, emotive resonance. His exhibitions are often installations of images that create larger narratives. Each work is imbued with allegorical content that relates to the world, yet allows through its formal nuances for the transcendent and sublime. The works stand on their own for form and content, but like a prose poem of images on walls, experienced in context the images as a series, the viewer creates the ultimate meaning for the installations. Since the George W. Bush era, his long running non-linear narrative "My American Dream" has been presented in separate exhibitions as "chapters" and the ongoing series continues through today.
Keith Mayerson studied Semiotics and Studio Art at Brown University and received an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and is now Professor of Art and Chair of Painting Drawing, and Printmaking at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California. Mayerson's work was prominently featured in the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art with a solo show My American Dream, the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and the Whitney Museum's inaugural downtown show, America is Hard to See. His recent solo exhibitions include the Elaine de Kooning House Foundation, East Hampton (2019); Marlborough Gallery, New York (2019); and the Bridge, Bridgehampton (2019).
His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.
https://ocula.com/art-galleries/karma/artists/keith-mayerson/
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
Mayerson borrows images from popular culture, such as photographs of the World Trade Center on 9/11, the Grand Canyon, or Superman comics from the 1960s. He feels that, by reproducing these important images in paint, he can personalize them. As opposed to the blunt facticity of a photograph—a snapshot of something that really did happen—a painting clothes the event in emotion. Mayerson makes these events feel as familiar as the sepia-toned photographs in a family photo album or a scratchy
VHS home movie.
This painting illustrates a scene from early in The Muppet Movie (1979) when Kermit the Frog is pedaling his way out of a Florida swamp to audition for a role in a Hollywood film. Full of optimism, Kermit leaves Florida, where we learn frogs are eaten, and finds romance with the empowered feminist Miss Piggy, not another frog. He befriends comedian Fozzie Bear, and they eventually end up riding to Hollywood on a converted hippie school bus driven by the rock band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. The Muppets, as in many stories made for children, had a moral message. They stressed the importance of welcoming many kinds of characters, regardless of how they locked or what species they belonged to. As a gay person who grew up in Colorado outside of accepting urban areas, Mayerson identifies with the Muppets' message of inclusivity and belonging.
- Inside/Outside, 2023