A drawing by Daniel Johnston (picture courtesy Daniel Johnston Belief, all others Maya Pontone/Hyperallergic)
I used to be in my second yr of faculty once I first heard concerning the different folks artist Daniel Johnston. It was the autumn of 2017, two years earlier than his loss of life, and a classmate I appreciated needed to point out me a music. 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 in contrast to 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 additionally 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 Assume, I Draw, I Am, on view at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn by 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 identified to supply 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 1000’s of authentic artworks comprising the Daniel Johnston Belief, which is managed as we speak 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 advised 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 towards villainous figures. These embody 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 artistic output was his major type of resistance towards 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 identified to have lower off throughout a psychological breakdown. (Johnston, for the document, was identified to have had bouts of violence throughout the worst of his psychological sickness and was institutionalized a number of instances, as explored totally in Jeff Feuerzeig’s 2005 documentary, The Satan and Daniel Johnston.)
The satan is a operating 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 operating tangent is Johnston’s harrowing fixation with the satan — a worry stemming from his Christian fundamentalist upbringing that was magnified by psychotic sickness. This paranoia is illustrated in an amusing drawing depicting the heavy metallic 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 embody portrayals of girls with flipped bob hairdos. These are juxtaposed towards eerie, reductive, and limbless feminine varieties, 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 mentioned.
Many works embody portrayals of girls with flipped bob hairdos alongside juxtaposed towards eerie, reductive, and limbless feminine varieties.
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 All the time (2023), which provides an intimate view of the final years of Johnston’s life and the speedy aftermath of his loss of life.
On the June panel, Foster described Johnston’s creativity as “manic obsessive,” versus being purely intentional. “You couldn’t have stopped him,” Foster mentioned. “It was just going to come out one way or another.”
Or, as Johnston’s highschool pal 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 a lot of 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 artistic output is his major type of resistance towards his psychological demons.
The works characteristic recurring characters invented by Johnston alongside references to comedian books, music, unrequited love, and different matters.
