Exhibitionist: 1 Journal, 1 Depression, 100 Paintings
Jun 2025 · Catapult
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321
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About this ebook
From acclaimed designer and novelist Peter Mendelsund, a deeply personal reflection on depression and the redemptive power of art, interspersed with 100 original paintings
In the early days of the pandemic, Peter Mendelsund and his family traveled up to a secluded New Hampshire farmhouse to weather the chaos. There began his journey through a crippling and seemingly intractable depression—which differed in degree but not in kind from episodes that have recurred periodically throughout his life—that brought him to the brink of suicide.
Relief came from an unlikely source: painting, something Peter had never contemplated doing before. And yet it became the thing that may very well have saved his life. Bleakly funny, profoundly moving, and—against all odds—truly inspiring, Exhibitionist is not just an account of a mind thinking through its own suffering in real-time, and of the author’s reckoning with his father's tortured legacy; it's also the story of the birth of an artist, and a portrait of an artist at work.
In the early days of the pandemic, Peter Mendelsund and his family traveled up to a secluded New Hampshire farmhouse to weather the chaos. There began his journey through a crippling and seemingly intractable depression—which differed in degree but not in kind from episodes that have recurred periodically throughout his life—that brought him to the brink of suicide.
Relief came from an unlikely source: painting, something Peter had never contemplated doing before. And yet it became the thing that may very well have saved his life. Bleakly funny, profoundly moving, and—against all odds—truly inspiring, Exhibitionist is not just an account of a mind thinking through its own suffering in real-time, and of the author’s reckoning with his father's tortured legacy; it's also the story of the birth of an artist, and a portrait of an artist at work.
About the author
PETER MENDELSUND is the author of seven books, including the novels Weepers, The Delivery, and Same Same and the nonfiction works What We See When We Read, Cover, and The Look of the Book. He is also a renowned cover designer and the creative director of The Atlantic.
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