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Certainly it is possible to discuss the Stern's art in formal and art historical terms, perhaps making connections with earlier modernist interests in retrieving the world of childhood as an alternative to adult regimentation and loss of creative imagination. This was a characteristic of the surrealist agenda, and it also is encountered in the work of Paul Klee and others whose work Stern's figures may bring to mind. Such a romantic view of childhood, however, is not shared by Stern. In fact, her memories tend to fall on the darker side. Drawings such as School Lunch , Dance, Contagious, Bully, and Substitute Teacher all evoke decidedly unpleasant and stressful aspects of the primary school experience, a major site for Stern's unromanticised reflections upon her childhood. In fact, virtually all of these drawings betray in aggregate a world that adults should be grateful they have survived and left behind. Most of us will be reminded of events so painful at the time that we wished we could disappear, or at least move far away to another city or town to escape lives made miserable by unsympathetic, capricious teachers and hostile classmates. Melissa Stern remembers this and reminds us that the typical playground, for many of us, was a dangerous and unhappy place. Her response to it was sometimes nervous laughter at the oddness and darkness of the experience. It is this element of humor that children invariably understand; “they get it,” Stern points out. This, of course, is the opposite of the sentimental and nostalgic view of revisionist adulthood.
In considering Stern's drawings and seeking an approach that would reveal their unique character, I decided that to focus heavily on stylistic and related characteristics would be misleading. It is true that modernism placed a special value on primitivism and naivete as signs of expressive authenticity, and the uninitiated might mistake Stern's drawings as participating in this phenomenon. They would, however, be wrong. Her art is sophisticated in its awareness of fine art and the various available means of expression and in its objectives. She has made a conscious decision to align herself with two of her great enthusiasms, non-Weste rn and outsider art.
Among the variety of artists whose work she has admired are Giotto, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Max Beckman (whom she describes as her “all-time hero”), Clemente, Susan Rothenberg, Basquiat, Ray Johnson, Anselm Kiefer, and anonymous photographers of carnival and circus performers. She professes to be “deeply moved” by the work of Northern California clay sculptor Robert Brady. One might also draw comparisons to Jean Dubuffet and Art Brut, but that too would miss the point. Whatever figurative and stylistic similarities may exist, I believe the meaning of Stern's very original imagery is to be found in the premium she places on memory as a means to an expanded understanding of the self. With this in mind, I opted to examine the work from a psychological perspective, seeking meaning in the artist's history and emotional life. And I decided to go directly to the source to gather the information I needed.