Mike Wrathell

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Michael Robert Wrathell, (born June 13, 1961 in Detroit) is an American artist and writer. Wrathell founded The Ultra-Renaissance Art Movement in 1981, which includes other Michigan artists Tom Marchione, Glen Perice (sometimes Glen Paris); Toledo, Ohio artist Roy Zornow; Minnesota artist Brently Comstock (sometimes known as B. W. C.); and Michigan-transplant in Los Angeles, Jim Pasque. The Ultra-Renaissance was largely inspired by Devo, Andy Warhol, and Dadaism.

Wrathell's art touches on many important topics of our age, including the Iraq War, 9/11, Orwellianism in our media, love, and a host of others. His art is in private and public collections, as well as two films.

A documentary about Wrathell and his art called The King of Pluto won an Award of Excellence for its director, Sheila Franklin, at the Berkeley Film & Video Festival in 2004, and was also screened in New York City and Indianapolis. Wrathell's art is in private and public collections around the United States. Bouche Bar in Alphabet City, NYC has on display "Thought Police Tribunal" which won a Director's Recognition Award in the 8th Annual Contemporary Art Juried Online International Art Exhibition in 2006, hosted by Upstream People Gallery in Omaha, Nebraska. Wrathell has a cameo and some of his art, including a collaborative "shang" with Brently Comstock aka B. W. C. are featured in an independent film now in post-production in Indiana called W, or Strange Things Begin To Happen When A Meteor Crashes In The Arizona Desert.

His favorite quote[citation needed] that introduces his art movement to the world comes from Italian Renaissance writer Pico della Mirandola, "Ignorant of how to yield to them, let us compete with the angels in dignity and glory."

Like Dada, The Ultra-Renaissance was created by the artists of the movement themselves, not like Impressionism, whose name was coined by a French art critic who coined it based on a name of a painting by Claude Monet. The Ultra-Renaissance was coined by Mike Wrathell and the other artists of the Movement have ralllied behind it. It is Mr. Wrathell's belief that to lump every artist after the Pop Art Movement as a "modern" artist or a "post-modern" artist is very lame and that it is truly notable for an artist to create a viable art movement. To say that any art movement after Pop Art is not notable is to possess an indefensibly hostile attitude toward the future of art. Art must evolve and it is artists who ideally will lead it, else entropy and atrophy will take their toll on art itself. The Ultra-Renaissance's goal is to create an ultimate rebirth of the human spirit that will lead us out of our current mental morass with its religious differences, political impasses, and other international disputes that are leading Humankind to a bitter end if we do not embrace the principles of love and rebirth.

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