Darrel Ellis’ ‘Regeneration’ at the Milwaukee Art Museum

Darrel Ellis’s exhibition, “Regeneration,” on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum through January 14, 2024, takes viewers on a complex journey into the deepest recesses of one human’s identity as processed through those around him. The show reflects on the nature of how an identity endures in memories and imagery. And with all this going on, the show somehow has enough in its tank to broach a larger discussion about the art world’s responsibility in maintaining custody of artifacts and the historical narratives they represent. 

Ellis began his practice as a child in the Bronx in the 1960s before coming into maturity along the electric avenues of downtown New York during the East Village Scene of the early 1980s. By all accounts he was a fixture within it, and the exhibition features two reworked portraits of him, one originally taken by Peter Hujar and the other by Robert Mapplethorpe. Ellis took these portraits and reproduced them in ink washes in a fashion typical of much of the production on display at MAM. Supporting text from the exhibition notes that Ellis’s only significant recognition from the moment was his inclusion in Nan Goldin’s 1989 exhibition about the AIDS crisis, “Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing,” an inadequate, unfortunate, and paradoxical pathway to posterity. 

Interestingly, while the exhibition aims to rediscover Ellis’ artistic legacy, his work reflects an ongoing effort to locate a sense of identity within his own familiar context. Ellis’s father died at the hands of a police officer in 1958, the same year he was born, and much of his work bears the marks of his intense search for presence and permanence through images of humans close to his soul but absent in other ways from his life. 

Fertile Margin

This tendency places his work in a fertile margin between the heady theory of the Pictures generation and the emotional tenderness of the East Village artists. Emerging almost exclusively from stockpiles of family photos, Ellis’s reworked, washy photo-based compositions toggle between celebration, erasure, and distortion. 1983’s Family Party presents a lively ink-and-charcoal reimagining of a boisterous family party, with cheerful smiles emphasized by loose and expressive mark making.

This and several other works in the show exhibit Ellis’s penchant for joy and celebration only to establish the depths of the more touching and traumatized images. Works such as Untitled (Laure on Easter Sunday) and Untitled (Mother) bear the direct removal of faces by blocking-out with added marks. These examples frustrate the viewer’s natural urge to enter the emotionally charged spaces, and they thus become a metaphor for the artist’s own destabilized memories. 

His distorted works might be the most visually alluring of what’s included in the show and connect us to his deep passion for art history, namely the works of Bonnard and Vuillard and other atmospheric painters of the late 19th century. The most fetching of these might be Untitled (Mother’s Bedroom), a somber and impressionistic scene of a bedroom inhabited by two loosely painted and somewhat mournful figures, backlit by a window and a glowing television. It’s somewhat haunting, banal, and hopeful all at once

Scores of works make up this extraordinary show, all contributing piece-by-piece to a reflected image of Darrel Ellis’s fleeting and fractured understanding of his own identity. Organized by the Bronx Museum and sparked originally by a monographic biography produced by Visual AIDS, this exhibition assists Ellis-the-searcher in posterity, helping to relocate his place in art history. Witnessing Ellis’s search for meaning-through imagery forced me to think of other tragic examples from the era, most notably David Wojnarowicz.

That this occurs alongside a clear push by major institutions to reimagine the integrity of their own histories makes for a compelling and timely story. Especially at a time when preoccupations around identity have descended into the consciences of many young artists who’ve been increasingly flattened and disarmed by media. Hard to imagine anything more worthwhile at the moment than to witness an artist who’s been pulled from this coil in his prime, from the teeth of a political and existential struggle that happened within the very furnace of identity art … and then to get his due on top of it. 

Listings: November 5 – 11

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Kohl’s Art Studio: Celebrating Lois Ehlert
• Sunday, November 5, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Discovery World

• Milwaukee Maker Fair
• Sunday, November 5, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
• Sunday, November 5, 2–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD)

• Wisconsin’s Memory Keepers: A Local Archive and Collections Panel
• Tuesday, November 7, 6 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Group Therapy (Men): Black Space at MAM
• Wednesday, November 8, 5:30–7 p.m. (Reservation Required)

Racine Art Museum

• Artist Fellowship and Emerging Artist Recipients Panel Discussion
• Wednesday, November 8, 6:30-8 p.m.

Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD)

• Pao Houa Her, “Freshly Cut Plastic Flowers: The Hmong-American Dream”
• Wednesday, November 8, 2023, 6 p.m. (Reservation Required)

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Gallery Talk: “Art, Life, Legacy”
• Thursday, November 9, 12-1 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Publisher Talk: Remembering Lois Ehlert
• Thursday, November 9, 6:15–7:15 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Play Date with Art: We Love Lois: Celebrating Lois Ehlert
• Friday, November 10, 10 a.m.–12 p.m.

Warehouse Art Museum

• “PAUSE/CONNECT” Closing Reception
• Friday, November 10, 4-7 p.m.

James May Gallery

• Asana and Art
• Saturday, November 11, 9-10 a.m.

Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA)

• Second Saturdays
• Saturday, November 11, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Kohl’s Art Studio: Celebrating Lois Ehlert
• Saturday, November 11, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Story Time in the Galleries: Celebrating Lois Ehlert
• Saturday, November 11, 10:30–11 a.m.

Scout Gallery, MKE

• Art Sale and Market
• Saturday, November 11, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Charles Allis Art Museum

• Storytime at the Allis: Indigenous Day
• Saturday, November 11, 1–3 p.m.

OS Projects

• Opening Reception: Christine Forni and Jennifer Mannenbach, “Thresholds”
• Saturday, November 11, 1-3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

• Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
• Saturday, November 11, 2–3 p.m.

Saint Kate-The Arts Hotel

• AIR Time: Art & Studio Tour with Anwar Floyd-Pruitt
• Saturday, November 11, 5:30 pm