Without a doubt, Mark Vinci is one of the great painters of the American
sublime. Or to be a bit more succinct, his work comes after and comments
on the long history of artists who have trafficked in ideas that are related to
sublimity and national identity. But of course, these definitions are not a given, which is
where Vinci’s art helps us to recalibrate how these ideas intersect, collide and push off
of one another over the course of the last few decades, and even the last few centuries.
Toward this end, we can say that Vinci’s art practice provides us with a window onto
three distinct mutations in what the sublime means with regard to our changing notions
of “Americanness”. The best way to understand these shifts, beyond assessing a series of
theoretical departures in Vinci’s own practice as an artist, is by situating these moments
alongside the three major definitions of the sublime provided for by Immanuel Kant,
Edmund Burke and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe.