Fifty From My Fifties: Essays 2015-2024

50 Essays, Dirges, Stories, Screeds and Reviews. A survey of Mat Gleason's writing 2015-2024. The earliest essay here was published a few months after he turned fifty and he began the book's latest essay a week before turning sixty. The book is divided into five sections:

NARRATIVES: Gleason doesn't just write art reviews. Sometimes we drive with him to the gallery. In one review we learn more about the parking lot of an art venue than the art on display. He meets Ellsworth Kelly at an opening and is thrust into a spat about Norman Rockwell. Art abounds in his life and it is life he writes about here.

PORTRAITS AND REPORTING: From an essay covering a Raymond Pettibon drawing at auction to ranking Chris Burden artworks in an essay originally published the day the artist passed, Gleason's perch as the outsider's insider creates engaging essays that transcend the ordinary thinkpiece when one can uncannily hear him raise his voice in ink alone.

REVIEWS: The bread and butter of any critic, Gleason delves into art as motive, judging art stars like Barbara Kruger and Jason Rhodes with a contempt reserved for convicted criminals while celebrating the glory of deserving underdog creators be it photographer Tabitha Soren or Expressionist legend Philip Guston. A lengthy takedown of Josh Kline, a darling of the jet-set art world is labeled: The Worst Museum Exhibit I have Ever Seen.

ESSAYS AND FORWARDS: The author is an in-demand writer as a champion for hire, singing the praises of established
legends such as the LowBrow painter Robert Williams as aptly as he presents introductions to emerging studio-toilers like Abel Alejandre. One artist, the punk-inspired Brian Tucker, had his museum show cancelled and Gleason's catalog essay here leaves one unsurprised but slightly in awe of the painter anyway.

GOODBYES: The final section is the most poignant as the writer captures memories of the dearly departed in his life, from relatives not known beyond his immediate family to historical personages like the Chicago Seven's Tom Hayden and the art world gadfly Charlie Finch. If the dead live again, it is at the tip of Mat Gleason's pen.