Who’s the strangest artist? Most extreme? Marina Abramović? Salvador Dalí?
Chris Burden’s work included being shot with a rifle, and being crucified to a VW Beetle. He worked in other media besides pain, but those were the ones that put him on the map in his early career.
Giger is up there somewhere. There’s another that does these weird post-impressionist-look scenes with grotesquely distorted bodies and young girls torturing bugs and so forth - can’t dredge up the name but it’s something like Pourmeyrol. Look sort of normal at first and the more you look, the more disturbing it gets.
Do you know what outsider art is? There are museums devoted to it. Once, years ago, a bunch of us Straight Dopers went to visit such a museum as a group:
Not the strangest, but possibly the most famous for being strange.
Stay away from Henry Darger. His shit still gives me nightmares.
Gustav Moreau, Fernand Khnopff, Otto Dix, Max Klinger, Alfred Kubin, Felicien Rops, Jan Toorop, Odilon Redon are a few of my favorite creators of bizarre imagery.
I would never hang a Kubin or a Dix on my wall. Moreau is pretty enough that the Ukulele Lady allows framed reproductions of some of his portraits of femmes fatales: Salome, Cleopatra, and Delilah hang in our pad.
Pick up a book on the Symbolist period of the late 19th century.
Also, check out the Ten Dreams gallery online.
Surrealism is fine. It’s Gilbert & George’s work I can’t relate too: Shit As Art.
Hey! Darger is one of my Outsider favorites! The inside of his head was clearly a very confused, lonely place and seeing his art helps me remember that we are all worthy of respect no matter our station in life.
A noble sentiment. If only he hadn’t had that creepy fixation on strangling little girls.
In his paintings, I mean. He was never convicted in real life.
He was never charged with a crime in real life, either, btw. Or suspected of one, AFAIK. And I don’t recall any fixation on strangling little girls; what are you referring to?
He was rumored to have something to do with the 1912 murder of little Elsie Paroubek in Chicago, which led to his obsession with her photograph and subsequent creation of the Vivian Girls, putting himself in the role of protector.
I attended the first major Darger exhibit in New York in the 1990s, and the primary image I took away was the Glandilinian soldiers and officers throttling every prepubescent girl (some with penises, some with horns) they got their hands on. Purple faces and protruding tongues lovingly depicted.
I don’t believe you could see that, either, and not remember it. Were the shows you saw censored?
(And NO, I am NOT googling any god damn images!)
As far as I can remember, he was not rumored or suspected in Elsie Paroubek’s death at the time it occurred; such speculation came about only after his death and his work was discovered. And such speculation and rumors depend on no actual facts at all, as far as I can tell. Do you have any facts that cause you to believe these to be true in any way?
I’m curious as to how you come to use the descriptor “lovingly”. I’ve seen much of his work and the fact that you would use the words you use to describe them and what you believe, with no facts, to be Darger’s intent and mindset when creating them is, frankly, kind of disturbing to me.
Snowboarder Bo: This could be a very interesting and informative thread, and the two of us are running it right off the rails.
ALL of Darger’s art was painstakingly constructed; that such a large chunk of it was of grown men choking little girls to death – yes, they are the BAD GUYS, but bleargghhhh, my GOD – is OBJECTIVELY disturbing, not a sign of pathology on my part.
Send me a message if you want to continue this, okay?
“This article is in the process of being revised. The target completion date is June 1, 2011.”
I think I found my new internet home!
Really? Link works for me…
Yep. Still works for me.
Wasn’t there a theory about Walter Sickert being Jack The Ripper?
It would have been TOTALLY worth it. I love his paintings.