Mary Church: the American Picasso? Part 1

In this two part series, I’ve gathered ten paintings (five in Part 1) done by Picasso from the year 1888, when he was eight years old, until 1906, when he was 27 years old, which is the age at which the American Hypermodern artist Mary Church committed suicide, in January of 2019.

We begin with this 1888 painting done by Picasso at eight years old. It is awkward, clumsy and immature. And very uncertain of itself.

These two cartoon sketches were done by Mary Church in 1998 when she was seven years old. They are done in a comic book style that is already publishable quality. By contrast with Picasso’s painting above, the style is very certain of itself and very inventive.

In 1895, here is what Picasso is painting at age fourteen, Picasso’s Father Wrapped in a Blanket. It shows promise but no genius yet. And no originality.

In 2004, meanwhile, Mary Church is fourteen years old and in the eighth grade when she paints Buildings of Solitude (a rare example of her titling her own work, as I have given most of them their current titles, and that was done with her permission when she was still alive). This painting shows a great deal of originality and promise. The boldness of giving the sky a green color while painting the ground blue is already amazing. The painting has an almost Van Gogh quality about it of hallucinogenic intensity. Not bad for a fourteen year old kid.

This ink drawing, done by Mary Church at age seventeen, and which I have entitled Marsyas in Denim, is the critical turning point. In the sketchbook in which this drawing occurs (about a third of the way in on page 33 of 134 pages) there is nothing at all like it in the pages leading up to it, which have a mostly girlish simplicity about them. But not here. This is done with deadly serious intensity and for the first time in her art, shows her complete and total mastery over detail. And there are a lot more like it in that particular sketchbook, which I have entitled Columbarium (and which I will release soon in full color hardcover with newly hi-rezzed images).

This is what Picasso was doing in 1898 at age seventeen, Face in the Style of El Greco. Picasso, thus far, has been merely recycling dead European iconotypes and stylistic cliches, such as Impressionist imitations. Church, by age seventeen, meanwhile, has already invented her own bold, unique and very inventive art style.

This is 2008, from the same sketchbook as Marsyas on page 103. I have entitled it Columbarium (as well as the sketchbook itself) and here I think it is obvious that Mary Church has pulled into the fast lane and left Picasso in the dirt.

And this is from Columbarium, as well. I have entitled it Cadaver. It easily rivals the previous sketch for its hyper-detailed execution. Berni Wrightson, with his illustrations for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, could not have done a better job.

In 1899, meanwhile, when Picasso is eighteen years old, he has not yet found an original style, and keeps reiterating worn out European iconotypes, such as in Portrait of Josep Cardona.

Back in 2007 when Mary Church is still in high school, she is creating art in a unique and visionary style and naively weaving her way through various mythological themes. This one is from a sketchbook which I have entitled Flowergoddess from around the same time as Columbarium. It is a lovely and beautiful evocation of the myth of the dying and reviving flower god (Frazer’s Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Dionysus), only in this case, it is a goddess because the original myth of the descent into the underworld was that of Inanna’s descent through the seven gates in Sumerian literature.

Here is Picasso in 1901 still stuck in repeating Impressionist styles. This one is known as Bullfighting Scene. He is 20 years old.

This is Mary Church in 2007, her freshman year of high school, creating a very large ink drawing which I have entitled Atrocity. This is a rare example of her signing her name, which she does at the bottom as “Mary Church” and then writes in the astonishingly early date of “07.” This is a ferociously original work of art. It is a snapshot of the dismantled and deconstructed transcendental signifieds of Western metaphysics. It is an example of what I have called Art After Metaphysics.

And then here is Biomechanical Giant, probably from 2008 or so in her junior year at Gibbs High School.

Bye bye, Picasso.

But stay tuned for Part 2, in which we track their careers up to the age of 27, when Mary Church dies (technically, she had just turned 28 a few weeks earlier).