Frances Muldoon
Advisor: Laurel
Sparks
May 9, 2014
Outside the Everyday
The work of Henry Darger and Dasha
Shishkin
Contemporary Artist Dasha
Shishkin’s drawings leave the viewer somewhere between dream and nightmare, feeling
horror and pleasure, attraction and repulsion. It is this dichotomy of bubble
gum pink and severed limbs that help to make Shishkin’s work so utterly unique.
One is hard pressed to find an artist who may be compared to her work however, outsider
artist Henry Darger, may fit the bill. His exiting linear landscapes containing
the now famed nude little girls in many cases acting as grown men, or soldiers create
a similar feeling of unease and duality.
Throughout this paper I will examine
Dasha Shishkin’s Dark Angel of Projectile
Vomiting
as well as Henry Darger’s At Wickey Sansinia They fight
their pursuers still nude. Through the examination of
these two pieces I will discuss the similarities and differences of their work
in terms of visual information such as color, composition and materials as well
as conceptually, including the characters and themes the artists are dealing
with.
My interest in these two artists
stem from their use of line and their ability to create unique and disturbing worlds,
which at once repel, and draw the viewer in. This is a feeling I strive to
reach in my work. Additionally the visual aspects, reoccurring characters and
pallet draw connections to my own studio practice.
Dasha Shishkin is a Russian
born artist who lives and works in New York. Her vivid and unique style of
painting has brought a great deal of notoriety. It is Shishkin’s bright lurid
colors, thin delicate, at times faltering lines and severed yet contented
female bodies that grabbed my attention immediately. In Dark Angel of Projectile Vomiting (2011) all the aspects I find
most intriguing about Shishkin’s work are brought together into a massive orgy
of color, blood and cartoon.
Dasha Shishkin
Dark Angel of
Projectile Vomiting, 2011
Mixed
media on mylar
30
x 42 inches
76.2
x 106.7 cm
(Zach Feuer Gallery)
The characters of Shishkin’s world have been described as “mutant
creatures with human limbs and distorted features” (Bronson ). Among the many interesting distortions are the
phallic shaped noses present on what otherwise appear to be women (give or take
a limb or breast) whose skin color ranges from yellow to blue to some figures who
are the colors of the walls or background.
These patterns in the background meld together on floor, wall, objects and
people, creating confused action, a disturbed euphoria (Bdadmin).
Henry Darger is one of the
most recognized of Outsider artists. A janitor and dishwasher by day, it is his
secret nighttime activities, which have captured the imagination and
fascination of so many, myself included. (Mcnett) Darger was never formally trained as an artist, but rather
traced images of people, mostly little girls, “trees, flowers, birds, mountains
and clouds – from books, magazines, comics, children’s books and other sources”
(Johnson). Using carbon paper he was able to transfer
these images into his paintings, creating elaborate worlds for himself (Johnson). Many of Darger’s
watercolors were created to supplement his epic novel The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Know as the
Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the
Child Slave Rebellion (American Folk Art Museum).
Henry Darger, At Wickey Sansinia They fight their pursuers
still nude, 19” x 37”,
Collection of Angela and Dale Taylor,
© Kiyoko Lerner,
courtesy Intuit: The Centre for Intuitive and Outsider Art
One of the many watercolors
to grab my attention is titled, At Wickey
Sansinia They fight their pursuers still nude in which little girls in bows
and curls run around with guns in what appears to be a battle scene. Stranger still, the little girls are not only
naked and carrying guns but some appear to have androgynous body parts, some
girls appearing to have small penises. This all creates confusing and seemingly
disorganized landscape, similar to Shishkin’s work.
The general
composition of both paintings can be seen as quite similar, characters are
spattered thought the picture plain creating chaotic atmospheres. Although the
horizon line in Darger’s At
Wickey Sansinia They fight their pursuers still nude creates a small rest bit
from the chaos. In Shishkin’s Dark Angel of Projectile Vomiting there is no such resting
place for they eye. Every available surface contains a pattern, a person or a
well-placed splotch of paint.
Shishkin has a very
unique way of painting; in fact she does not refer to it as painting at all. “I
don’t consider them or call them paintings but drawings, because that is what
they are to me — colored-in drawings” (Marconi). Shishkin works on both sides of “translucent Mylar,” (Bilsborough) often times creating the
linear drawn images on one side and once dry flipping the Mylar over, filling
the lines in on the back with ink and paint (Bilsborough). Mylar has become a
standard material in my work this semester allowing for more in-depth
investigations into abstract shapes, paint ink and the reactions caused by
each. Recently I have begun to integrate drawings on paper and Mylar into the
lager painted pieces, at times tracing images directly from children’s books.
Darger utilized tracing as well. It appears as thought the tracing was done
first to create a linear scene and that watercolors were used to fill in these
lines, rather than to paint or create a new picture or image. This is a
similarity shared by Darger and Shishkin as well as myself.
Concerning color
Shishkin and Darger do differ. Shishkin employs a powerful yet playful pallet
ranging from nearly neon to warm fleshy pinks, which at the same time fits and
differs from her subject matter of sexual, deformed women like creatures.
Darger’s colors are of a more muted pallet, which may have also had to do with
the paper he drew and painted on. Due to the expense of art materials Darger generally
created paintings on both sides of the paper (Prokopoff.) This is similar to
Shishkin who utilizes both sides of Mylar, drawing on one side and using paint
to fill in the lines on the other.
Concerning the
themes, characters and concepts addressed in the work of Henry Darger and Dasha
Shishkin it is obvious that both have strong and unique imaginations, allowing
them to create unique worlds of otherness where reason and sense are occasional
visitors, not the norm.
Henry Darger created several
hundred watercolors as a supplement to his books “many of them illustrations
for The Realms of the Unreal” (Prokopoff.) In contrast, Dasha
Shishkin’s drawings were not created to illustrate any previously written text
but to be stand-alone works of art. In a 2010 interview, Shishkin described her
inspiration as coming from “the process of work and is in the work itself.
“What if” appears once again and is the general subject matter at the moment” (Marconi). I find my
own art hanging somewhere in the balance – while I often begin work with a set
idea I never strive to illustrate that idea exactly. But rather to find and
give a hint or impression of that thought, which hopefully leads to another
thread or idea and another.
Lastly, Shishkin
and Darger share one strange similarity previously touched upon – the fact that
the majority of the subjects painted resemble women or young girls. However,
the odd part is that these women and girls have phalluses. In Darger’s At Wickey Sansinia They fight their pursuers still nude as in much of his other work,
this is quite obvious. The little girls run about naked with guns, small
penises between several of their legs. A very strange addition to the subjects
Darger traced. In Shishkin’s Dark Angel of
Projectile Vomiting the phalluses take the shape of long and upturned noses. On
closer inspection, the clouds of smoke emitting from the creatures cigarettes
are also phallic in nature. Once more my work aligns, however much more subtly,
throught my work one may find shapes or lines resembling breasts or phallic shapes.
The dizzying
work of Dasha Shishkin and the strange and mysterious work of Henry Darger have
many commonalties, including their exiting compositions, use of mainly female
subjects, who both mysteriously and strangely have male or phallic attributes,
and of reoccurring or seemingly reoccurring characters. While their color
palettes, materials and reasons for creating the work differ, the commonalties it
seems out way the differences.
Bibliography
Bdadmin. "Dasha Shishkin." BeautifulDecay
Artist Design. Beautiful/Decay, 30 Nov.
2009. Web. 13 May 2014.
Bilsborough, Michael. "Dasha Shishkin." Continuing
Education Blog RSS. N.p., 11 May
2011. Web. 9 May 2014.
Bronson, Ellie. "Putting the Gore into Phantasmagoria:
Dasha Shiskin at Zach Feuer."
/ Artcritical. Artcritical, 03 June 2011.
Web. 10 May 2014.
"Dasha Shishkin: Desaparecido." Zach Feuer.
N.p., n.d. Web. 9 May 2014.
"Henry Darger | American Folk Art Museum." Henry
Darger | American Folk Art
Museum. American Folk Art Museum, n.d.
Web. 11 May 2014.
"Dasha
Shishkin: Desaparecido." Zach Feuer. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 May 2014.
Johnson, Ken. "An Insider
Perspective on an Outsider Artist." The New York Times. The New
York Times, 17 Apr. 2008. Web. 10 May 2014.
Marconi,
Gio. "Interview: Dasha Shishkin | Artinfo." Artinfo. BLOUIN
ARTINFO, 31
Mar. 2010. Web. 9 May 2014.
Mcnett,
Gavin. "“Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal” by John M.
MacGregor." Saloncom RSS. SALON, 23 July 2002.
Web. 10 May 2014.
Prokopoff,
Stephen. "Henry Darger." Henry Darger. Carl Hammer Gallery,
n.d. Web.
10 May 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment