THE PLUGGED-IN WORLD OF MARVIN GRALNICK

By Robert P. Metzger, PhD.

 

The dynamic art of southwest Florida artist Marvin Gralnick draws on twentieth-century modernism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Neo-Expressionism, and Post-Modernism which he assimilates into his singular vision for a new century. He has drawn inspiration from such modern masters as Picasso, Miro, Dubuffet, Pollock, Rauschenberg, Warhol, and Basquiat. Gralnick's mythologizing of the American culture is based on specific people, events, locations, objects, and creatures which he often enlivens with evocative words and catch phrases. The diversity and range of his images cross boundaries of high and low art, age, race, and class. His perceptive imagination reflects a culture glutted with massive amounts of information and boundless material surplus.The image overload of his pictures tends to elevate American popular culture to the status of high art. In his attempt to analyze multiple spheres of life, social consciousness is tempered with social satire. Gralnick's exploration of individual human relationships is frequently presented within a larger historical or sociopolitical context.

 

As Gralnick's visual and verbal vocabulary of images migrate from painting to painting, certain categorical subjects repeatedly emerge, such as the following: the cult of celebrities, both real and fictional, from Marilyn Monroe and bathing beauties to Captain America; historic sociopolitical leaders from Lincoln to Zapata, Fidel Castro, Martin Luther King to President Obama; consumer products such as Ford and Lincoln classic cars, bicycles, boats, airplanes to vintage advertisements for Coke, cigarettes, and fried chicken; familiar world-class artworks from Michelangelo's David and Leonardo's Mona Lisa to ancient and tribal sculpture; biological specimens from barnyard animals,birds, and insects to radiant trees and flowers; symbols ranging from the cross to Lady Liberty and the stars and stripes. All of these topics are selected from the wealth of appropriated material that mechanical reproduction and digital media have made abundantly available. Interspersed with this flood of visual images are clever and often humorous words and phrases which deliver a mental jolt, underscoring the artist's ironic point of view. The themes which reoccur most frequently are those which have the most pressing personal meaning for Gralnick, giving the body of the work density, texture, and an internal harmony.

 

Gralnick's pictures of his natural environment attest to his sympathetic curiosity for the flora and fauna of the fragile ecosystem of southwest Florida. His botanical and zoological subjects: exotic birds, lush plants, flowers, and insects are silkscreen images which are photo transferred onto brightly vibrant canvases. In his flower series, orchids and hibiscus glow with electronic colors while other series include bizarre insects such as dragonflies or floridan spinning spiders. The aviary series, depicting magnificent

 

egrets and cranes, reveal his delight in the grace and powerful presence of these strange creatures. All of the nature works bespeak Gralnick's maxims: "Be kind - Do Good" and "Be Kind to One Another."

 

In the figural works, the forms are often partially obliterated or swallowed up by their surrounding backgrounds. In these paintings he follows his penchant for breaking up reality into fragments in order to recombine the various parts into a unique entity. These compositions are notably branded with his own eccentric personality. He plays with tradition by juxtaposing images of reality and fantasy, setting up confrontations between static, crisp contours and blurred forms which suggest movement. This Dada inspired approach brings together seemingly unrelated elements in a single work, divorcing the images from their original context.

 

In addition to experimenting with different ways of applying paint--variously splattering, brushing, smearing, and squeezing directly from the tube--he has perfected the depersonalized industrial technique of photo transfer. These photo silkscreen paintings contain deliberate imperfections, revealing the uneven inking of the roller, slips of the screen, and an overall graininess and partial blotting out of images. In all his work Gralnick conveys a passion for kinetic strokes of color, provocative words and arresting images which embody the American dream filtered through the raw lens of popular culture.

                                                    

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