Many musicians begin their lives as art students. It is worth noting that the artist, John Melville, began his as a musician. He earned his bachelors degree in music at New York University and though his ear was trained in school he developed his unique visual sense through experience.
You could say Melville gained his art education from the inside out. His classroom was the gallery, the framer's workshop and the artist's studio. It was here he was able to scrutinize and analyze the world's most celebrated artists close up, at his leisure, examining their methods, discovering their visual vocabularies and individual imagery. Preparing solo and group shows for these renowned artists gave Melville intimate access to hundreds of their paintings, prints and photographs-a twenty-year internship or perhaps a reality degree in the world of fine art. It's the kind of firsthand contact most art students dream of.
Concurrent with Melville's immersion in the art world has been his illustrious exploration as a percussionist and a drummer. Melville's recordings have been produced by rock legends Mick Ronson and Lenny Kaye. He has shared the stage with some of music's most interesting innovators: Patti Smith, Cat Power, and The Kills. His music and art-for Melville, these are closely entwined-attest to an innate talent for tempo. A metronomic pulse propels his images, becoming one with the drive of the machine, a primary icon in his art, as well the machinery of advertising, that interface between object and desire. He employs a rhythmic geometry of shape and a syncopated line reminiscent of Russian and German constructivism punctuated with an occasional trill of Dadaist surrealism that keeps his work on its edge.
Like Kurt Schwitters, who moved from visual art to music and sound, and Arnold Schoenberg or John Cage who streamed from experimental atonality to painting, John Melville proves again the natural movement and flow between sound and vision.
You could say Melville gained his art education from the inside out. His classroom was the gallery, the framer's workshop and the artist's studio. It was here he was able to scrutinize and analyze the world's most celebrated artists close up, at his leisure, examining their methods, discovering their visual vocabularies and individual imagery. Preparing solo and group shows for these renowned artists gave Melville intimate access to hundreds of their paintings, prints and photographs-a twenty-year internship or perhaps a reality degree in the world of fine art. It's the kind of firsthand contact most art students dream of.
Concurrent with Melville's immersion in the art world has been his illustrious exploration as a percussionist and a drummer. Melville's recordings have been produced by rock legends Mick Ronson and Lenny Kaye. He has shared the stage with some of music's most interesting innovators: Patti Smith, Cat Power, and The Kills. His music and art-for Melville, these are closely entwined-attest to an innate talent for tempo. A metronomic pulse propels his images, becoming one with the drive of the machine, a primary icon in his art, as well the machinery of advertising, that interface between object and desire. He employs a rhythmic geometry of shape and a syncopated line reminiscent of Russian and German constructivism punctuated with an occasional trill of Dadaist surrealism that keeps his work on its edge.
Like Kurt Schwitters, who moved from visual art to music and sound, and Arnold Schoenberg or John Cage who streamed from experimental atonality to painting, John Melville proves again the natural movement and flow between sound and vision.
