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Art review: Lee Mullican at Marc Selwyn Fine Art

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In 1959, L.A. painter Lee Mullican spent a year in Rome, soaking up the sights and sounds of the city and looking at its artistic treasures. He also painted furiously, churning out works on canvas and paper that are a little looser and freer and more fluidly animated than his usual tautly structured compositions.

At Marc Selwyn Fine Art, five of Mullican’s Rome paintings fill the main gallery with an abundance of fun, bustling energy. All are on paper. One’s backed by canvas. Four are approximately 5 by 7 feet. One runs nearly 12 feet long.

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The palette is black and white, painted and drawn with charcoal, ink and tempera, except for one, in which gray graphite lines are softened by watercolor washes in a deliciously rich range of golden yellows and lovely blues.

The surfaces of all of Mullican’s works are jampacked with swift little marks — mostly circles, semicircles and rectangles, but sometimes triangles and odd polygons as well as stray lines. These rudimentary units resemble the letters of the alphabet after they’ve been tossed in a food processor or run through a paper shredder.

It’s amazing how much energy and movement Mullican gets out of such basic forms and common materials. His abstract compositions never depict anything realistic (although sometimes you swear you see body parts in them). They are urgent and unfussy, like everyday street graffiti. Yet they are also erotic, their sensuality and charge as electrifying as any finely rendered illusion.

The fun Mullican must have had that year in Rome lives on these works, which look as fresh, sumptuous and spunky as the day they were made.

– David Pagel

Marc Selwyn Fine Art, 6222 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 101, L.A., (323) 933-9911, through Dec. 5. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.marcselwynfineart.com

from Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

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