Photo via Museum of Wisconsin Art
Art lovers interested in the new Dean Meeker exhibit at the Museum of Wisconsin Art would do well to first swing by the education entrance on the West Bend institution’s east side. That’s where Athena, Meeker’s 1991 cut-and-rolled bronze statue beckons to travelers on the nearby Eisenbahn Trail.
The statute, standing nearly 8 feet tall, lacks a head, arms and feet, but there is a sensuous vibrancy to its essentially anonymous persona, an artistic heartbeat under the assembled small bronze rectangles that create its voluptuous female form. It also taps into the artist’s interest in the classics and serves as suitable introduction to “Dean Meeker: Myths and Legends” that unfolds within MOWA’s main gallery.
Meeker, who worked in a variety of mediums, returned to sculpture late in life. But the exhibit offers only a sprinkling of his three-dimensional work. The lion’s share of the 39 exhibited items is given over to the artist’s illustrations and serigraphy, or silkscreen printing, an art form he legitimized and championed during his remarkable 46 years as an art professor at UW-Madison.
“Dean Meeker was one of the great printmakers in Wisconsin and in 20th Century America,” says exhibit curator Graeme Reid of the artist, who died in 2002. “In 1948, serigraphy was considered a commercial process, not an art process. Dean changed that. He was incredibly inquisitive and taught an unofficial class in printmaking for two years,” Reid adds. “In 1950, UW-Madison turned his efforts into the first official screen printing class in the country.”
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Born in Orchard, Colorado, in 1920, Meeker found work during the Great Depression as a painter for a billboard company. He moved east and continued that work, eventually serving in World War II. After the war he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, received a Masters degree in fine arts at Northwestern University and began teaching in Madison in 1946.
Commercial Applications
His serigraphy classes were started at the behest of students interested in commercial applications of their art studies. Unhappy with the cumbersome printing presses of the day, Meeker teamed up with neighbor John McFee, an engineer, and invented the Meeker-McFee motorized etching press to more easily and economically handle silkscreen projects.
“Serigraphy works could be sold at a fraction of the cost of original artwork, making it a more democratic way to put art into people’s hands,” Reid says. “Along with fellow printmaker and Wisconsin artist Warrington Colescott Dean helped legitimize and promote printmaking as an artistic medium.”
“Myths and Legends” draws heavily on Meeker’s serigraphy, as well as exploring the artist’s interest in the classics, says Reid. “He was a voracious reader due in part to the fact that as a youth he damaged the sight in one eye,” Reid explains. Meeker was told that reading would help strengthen the eye, and devoured classical literature as part of that therapy. I have heard that he was a larger-than-life character who was drawn to larger-than-life literary characters,” Reid adds.
The curator also notes that Meeker favored characters that offered tremendous graphic potential, and exhibited no small amount hubris. In Greek mythology Icarus, the boy who crafted wings of wax and flew too close to the sun, is one such character that has appeared in Meeker’s work. “There is often a morality tale interwoven in his art,” Reid explains. “In this case, it might mean that if you fly too high above your station in life you’re going to suffer.”
For much the same reason, Meeker favored characters in masks and harlequin imagery. Women were also favorite subjects. “You will find the female form appears regularly in his work,” Reid explains. All of which brings us back to Athena, who embodies an almost emblematic introduction to Meeker’s work.
Dean Meeker: Myths and Legends will be on display through April 11 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend. It is one of a trio of concurrent exhibits designed to help MOWA celebrate its 60th anniversary.
