John Mellencamp American Paintings and Assemblages

Longtime music icon John Mellencamp’s artistic expression has never been limited to song.

The acclaimed singer-songwriter John Mellencamp has been an accomplished painter for more than four decades. This definitive survey—curated by Mellencamp himself—of his large-scale oil portraits and mixed-media assemblages documents America’s heart and soul, revealing unsettling but beautiful truths with an antiestablishment frown and a rich sense of narrative.
 
“Although we may primarily know Mellencamp as a rock star, one of the highest-selling of all time and a Hall of Famer, he is also a great painter, as this book shows. Not a musician who also paints... No, John legitimately belongs in the modern art pantheon,” says Bob Guccione Jr. in his essay that delineates the connection of Mellencamp’s music and art, both imbued with the earnest voice of America’s heartland.

John Mellencamp, award-winning singer-songwriter and member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, is also a painter, collector, and longtime activist who has exhibited his work in galleries and museums across the United States. Dr. Louis A. Zona is the executive director and chief curator of the Butler Institute of American Art, in Youngstown, Ohio. David L. Shirey is a former foreign correspondent, critic, and editor with Newsweek magazine, a critic and cultural writer for the New York Times, and former chair of the MFA Fine Arts program at New York City’s School of Visual Arts. Award-winning editor and publisher Bob Guccione Jr. has created and managed some of America’s most iconic publishing brands, including Spin magazine and Gear magazine.