TOLERANCE

by Chris Mars (Illustrator)

Chris Mars' painting style, examples of which graced all of his album covers, is marked by nightmarish landscapes and grotesque, distorted figures. He draws inspiration from his older brother's struggle with schizophrenia. "...From my hands, my mission: To free the oppressed; to champion the persecuted, and the submissive; to liberate through revelation the actualized Self in those proposed by some to have no self at all. It's in every single one of us, somewhere underneath that word on our chest. In my hands, my version: All art is political in some sense, be it through conformity, reflection, propaganda or rebellion. My paintings are rallies and trials, photographs of a moment when Truth was made public, and Mercy known. Question why a villain is villainized, a victim martyred. Ask why a group is demonized, and the motives for control. See for yourself what the truth looks like in your hands. Dig it up and hold it for a while. This work you see, it's my Truth. But please don't take my word for it."

"Minneapolis artist Chris Mars is living proof that F. Scott Fitzgerald was dead wrong when he said there are no second acts in American lives. Though famous in the 1980s as the drummer for alt-rock heroes The Replacements, Mars eventually left the music world behind entirely to focus on the visual arts, now specializing in stunningly evocative, macabre portraits."

-The Onion A.V. Club.

Genres: Art

100 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Horror DNA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genius usually stems from a combination of madness, intelligence and incredible talent. In the case of painter Chris Mars, the talent is undeniable and his personal experience dealing with the mental illness of his brother does the rest. A self-taught artist, Mars creates by pulling demons from the dark depths of the cruel, incomprehensive world his sibling had to endure as a schizophrenic in the 1960s. As for intelligence, that important and elusive element, the artist dissects modern society in order to construct a critical visual discourse that rival that of any cultural critic. In Tolerance, a veritable tour de force, horror, sadness and darkness meet in truly brilliant ways.

You can read Gabino's full review at Horror DNA by clicking here.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad faces with large watery eyes, their skin pale as clown white or mime makeup; mutilated forms swaddled in bandages with the blood seeping through the muslin; weird piscine creatures being pulled from polluted streams that front neighborhoods that look like industrial wastelands. Also, lots and lots of creatures with pointed caps, or pointed heads. Are they dunces or microcephalics?
Artist Chris Mars (formerly a drummer for the rock group The Replacements) certainly has his idées fixes, which are always compelling and many times disturbing, but not in the way an initial reading might lead one to believe. Many times his disfigured, skeletal and frightening forms appear, on closer inspection, to be the victims of the outwardly normal creatures sharing canvas space with them. Many of these cruel figures are doctors or men of the cloth (or are at least clothed in lab coats and hospital gowns.)
And the colors—the colors are perhaps the most impressive and memorable part of the paintings. Mars favors grey-golds and rusty reds, mixed with oxidized greens and moonlight whites. His work recalls everything from childhood Halloweens to staring deep into a pond and being equally intrigued and frightened by what one sees in there. I especially like the weird and flaming orange color he adopts in the canvases he began painting around 2003. It’s more intense and vivid than his pumpkinlike orange; it’s almost like lava, and in terms of the palette I think it’s called titian.
My only complaint was the text included by Mars. It’s fascinating to read about how his brother’s schizophrenia influenced his art and worldview, and his rage at political incompetence and corruption are also understandable. That said, the inclusion of this text imposes a literal stultifying interpretation on images which I would prefer to interpret for myself. Sure, I can still kind of do that after reading what Mars has to say about his own work and what inspired it, but I’ve never been a fan of authorial intent or heady analysis of initial inspiration, even in my own work. And the work here is certainly strong enough to speak for itself. And this is a beautiful book, worth checking out for those whose favorite holiday is Halloween, and those who see beauty in the supposedly hideous and frightening, and vice-versa. Recommended.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like his most obvious predecessor, H.R. Giger, this former Replacements drummer and current creep-master really seems to enjoy living inside that "dark intestine" (Ted Hughes quote). But rather than giving us monstrous futuristic biomechanics, Mars focuses on an almost medieval sense of bodily decay: limbs falling off, red-rimmed eyeballs not quite in their sockets, flesh that looks like that trophy nose in Ghirlandao's Portrait of an Old Man with a Young Boy. Sometimes his composition are Bosch or Brueghel style agglomerations of various Hades-walkers taking up the entire canvas, others are more conventional "portraits" dominated by a detailed, hideous grey-pallor face, often quite recognizable behind the skull tectonics and misapplied cosmetics. (If anyone should be commissioned to paint an Official Portrait of Mark E. Smith, Chris Mars is the guy.)

Much of this is motivated by a lefty political anger that I can totally get with. My only problem in this collection is that Mars is allowed too much room to explain his paintings with words, e.g. "'Puppeteer' pictures a man who has created a duality of self in order to be accepted [rakka rakka rakka:]." This is especially irritating in the works devoted to "mental illness" -- Mars's annotation can make his oeuvre look more like art therapy than Art. So I reluctantly took a star away for that. Otherwise, a beautiful, hideous book.

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my fav living artists.