Grounded in the belief that modern painting should merge abstraction and representation to best reveal the underlying order of the universe, Lee Mullican made drawings and paintings that synthesized Surrealism, American abstraction, and Native American geometries. Mullican’s paintings are a uniquely West Coast exploration into abstraction; one that is grounded in content, full of mysticism and connections to the transcendent. Through a close exploration of nature and the prehistoric past, Mullican focused on finding new meanings through formal problems of composition, color and mark making. He created a unique method of applying paint to the canvas with the thin edge of a printer’s knife, building up the surface with textured, fine lines—a technique he referred to as striation. Always a seeker, Mullican culled influences from a wide range including his job as a topographer during WWII, from which he developed a mapmaker’s bird’s-eye perspective, to Surrealism’s automatism, to Zen Buddism and later from his studies of the tantric art of India, finding a kinship with the conflation of concepts of outer and inner-space.

In Untitled (The Owl), 1949, which is exemplary of Mullican’s strongest work from the late 1940s, the artist explores this fusion of interiority and exteriority, both physically through space and through the unconscious psyche. The merging of these spaces in a formal sense is reflective of Mullican’s dual interest in the terrestrial landscape and its mythology, as well as in the unknown cosmic space beyond. The artist’s philosophical and psychological interests—such as his interest in Jung and his friendship with Alan Watts—fueled this desire for dimensional exploration through formal means. The composition is centered on a spiky, glyphic figure that hovers between abstraction and figuration. In this richly textured world, the bird’s eye and the mind’s eye are one, with outer space and inner space conflating and commingling on the striated surfaces of the picture plane.

Exhibition History:
James Cohan Chelsea, Lee Mullican: Cosmic Theater, March 7 - April 20, 2019

Publication History:
Lee Mullican: Cosmic Theater, Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2019