Exhibitionist: 1 Journal, 1 Depression, 100 Paintings

Novelist and graphic designer Mendelsund (Weepers) blends memoir and visual art in this striking account. Toward the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mendelsund and his family visited an isolated New Hampshire farmhouse, where Mendelsund tried painting for the first time as his despair about the state of the world spiraled into suicidal depression. In short, percussive micro-chapters (“Unpacked. Searched the property. Sat on the porch steps”), he captures both the drudgery of his condition and the ways art helped alleviate it. Along the way, he reflects on his artist father’s life and death, his younger years as a classical musician, and the wisdom he’s gleaned from writers including James Joyce and Roland Barthes. Particularly memorable are passages in which Mendelsund details the inspiration for his paintings, including one inspired by his late grandfather’s fur coat (“It is facile to say that whenever I see a certain shade of brown, I think of him. Even if it is true”). The paintings themselves, which mostly appear in full-page photographs, range from claustrophobic and harrowing to playfully naive. Witty, inspiring, and endearingly unpolished, this chronicle of a creative mind learning to heal itself will enchant artists of all stripes. Photos. Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb, Gernert Co. (June)