A drawing by Daniel Johnston (picture courtesy Daniel Johnston Belief, all others Maya Pontone/Hyperallergic)
I used to be in my second 12 months of faculty once I first heard concerning the various folks artist Daniel Johnston. It was the autumn of 2017, two years earlier than his dying, and a classmate I appreciated wished to point out me a tune. On his laptop computer, he opened an album from September 1983 titled Hello, How Are You with a black-and-white cowl that includes a easy line drawing: a peculiar-looking frog creature with wide-open eyes hovering above his head and a gaping mouth formed like a Cheerio cereal. The character regarded as if it had been conceived by a baby, not not like the album’s whimsical songs referencing cheeseburger smiles and the expertise of strolling a cow.
The wide-eyed frog referred to as Jeremiah the Harmless is Johnston’s most iconic character, immortalized not solely by the artist’s home-recorded cassette album, but in addition a beloved brick mural in Austin, Texas; collaborations with mainstream footwear and attire manufacturers; and sought-after posters and t-shirts just like the one famously donned by late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.
This illustration is only a sliver of the huge visible lexicon that animated Johnston’s musical output and lifelong struggles with bipolar and manic-depressive dysfunction, as explored within the ongoing exhibition I Suppose, I Draw, I Am, on view at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn by way of August 10. Spanning greater than 300 marker and pen works on paper set to the soundtrack of Johnston’s songs, the present examines the recurring motifs, themes, and stylistic parts that seem all through Johnston’s artwork, which he was recognized to provide impulsively and obsessively.
The present was curated by Lee Foster, who co-owns Electrical Woman Studios and serves because the curatorial advisor for the Daniel Johnston Belief.
Displayed with out titles in similar wood frames, the drawings are pulled from the hundreds of authentic artworks comprising the Daniel Johnston Belief, which is managed in the present day by Dick Johnston, the artist’s older brother who additionally sits on the board for the Hello, How Are You Basis, a psychological well being nonprofit established in his honor.
“People caught on to this that Daniel was something …They didn’t know if he was going somewhere or not, but he propelled all kinds of people,” Dick Johnston instructed Hyperallergic.
Tinged with darkish humor, the drawings vary in tone and content material, however are inclined to revolve round comparable clashes between good and evil, hope and despair, and love and anguish, exemplified by heroic characters pitted in opposition to villainous figures. These embrace Johnston’s personal innovations, like a flying eyeball referred to as Fly Eye; Jeremiah’s foil, the multi-headed Vile Corrupt; and a hollow-headed boxer named Joe, which reemerges all through the drawings, providing commentary that alludes to the artist’s private inner monologue.
The present options greater than 300 drawings that provide a glimpse into the psyche of Johnston and his lifelong struggles with psychological sickness.
Curated by Lee Foster, who co-owns Electrical Woman Studios and serves because the curatorial advisor for the Daniel Johnston Belief, the Pioneer Works present is a glimpse into the dizzying psyche of an artist whose maximalist inventive output was his predominant type of resistance in opposition to his psychological demons. It’s a well-known storyline, akin to that of artists like Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, and Vincent Van Gogh. Johnston’s close-up marker portrait of the latter depicts the painter engrossed in a research of his mutilated left ear, which he’s recognized to have minimize off throughout a psychological breakdown. (Johnston, for the file, was recognized to have had bouts of violence through the worst of his psychological sickness and was institutionalized a number of occasions, as explored totally in Jeff Feuerzeig’s 2005 documentary, The Satan and Daniel Johnston.)
The satan is a working thread all through the present, as is psychological sickness.
Lots of the items include references to Johnston’s ardour for comics: Captain America, Superman, and different heroes make frequent appearances as redemptive figures. One other working tangent is Johnston’s harrowing fixation with the satan — a concern stemming from his Christian fundamentalist upbringing that was magnified by psychotic sickness. This paranoia is illustrated in an amusing drawing depicting the heavy steel band Metallica, a bunch he was satisfied was satanic; on this vein, he portrays the band’s drummer as a skeleton.
Unrequited love can also be a thread all through the drawings, lots of which embrace portrayals of ladies with flipped bob hairdos. These are juxtaposed in opposition to eerie, reductive, and limbless feminine kinds, and one work that merely facilities on the top of a blonde-haired girl whose physique is substituted with a human foot. “I’ll just turn and walk away, never return,” she says in floating speech bubbles.
Throughout a panel occasion at Pioneer Works in late June, Dick Johnston recalled their father’s characterization of those fascinations. “My Dad would say, ‘He believed in the idea of love, but he couldn’t execute it … It was an unreachable thing, and he idolized it in such a way that he made it unreachable,’” Johnston stated.
Many works embrace portrayals of ladies with flipped bob hairdos alongside juxtaposed in opposition to eerie, reductive, and limbless feminine kinds.
The present aligns with the discharge of a e-book centered on the late artist and his legacy. Authored by Foster, Daniel Johnston: I’m Afraid Of What I Would possibly Draw (2025) displays on 4 a long time of Johnston’s paintings and options essays by artists who’ve been impressed by his work. It comes after the publication of photographer Jung Kim’s Daniel Johnston: Is At all times (2023), which affords an intimate view of the final years of Johnston’s life and the quick aftermath of his dying.
On the June panel, Foster described Johnston’s creativity as “manic obsessive,” versus being purely intentional. “You couldn’t have stopped him,” Foster stated. “It was just going to come out one way or another.”
Or, as Johnston’s highschool buddy defined within the 2005 movie: “He never sits and thinks, ‘What am I gonna do?’ He just grabs something.”
Tinged with darkish humor, the drawings are inclined to revolve round comparable clashes between good and evil, hope and despair, and love and anguish.
There are numerous allusions to unrequited love, a topic that can also be a central focus of Johnston’s music.
A detailed-up marker portrait of the painter Vincent Van Gogh within the top-left is a harrowing parallel to Johnston’s personal inner struggles.
The present is a glimpse into the world of an artist whose maximalist inventive output is his predominant type of resistance in opposition to his psychological demons.
The works characteristic recurring characters invented by Johnston alongside references to comedian books, music, unrequited love, and different matters.
