"Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger" Exhibition
American Folk Art Museum
This event has ended.
There is a long history of academically trained artists drawing inspiration from self-taught artists and thus freeing themselves to think in unexpected ways and on their own idiosyncratic terms, almost in defiance of what they were taught. "Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger" examines the influence of Darger's remarkable and cohesive oeuvre on eleven such artists, who are responding not only to the aesthetic beauty of Darger's mythic work-- with its tales of good versus evil, its epic scope and complexity, and even its transgressive undertone-- but to his unblinking work ethic and all-consuming devotion to artmaking. This exhibition demonstrates Darger's pervasive influence on the contemporary art discourse and how an examination of the work of self-taught artists is essential for a full understanding of art history.
[Image: Justine Kurland “Battlefield” (2001) Color photograph 30 x 40 in. Courtesy of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.]
Media
Schedule
from April 15, 2008 to September 21, 2008