Devil May Care
The first major UK exhibition of Daniel Johnston’s art is a graphic display of his obsessions with both darkness and colour
Words Lauren Strain
It can be difficult to separate the music and artwork of Daniel Johnston. Listening to his raw, thumped piano, you picture those bright inks; in the boggle-eyed, tactile drawings, you hear that quivering voice. But a retrospective currently on display at Newcastle’s alt.gallery - the first UK outing of such a large body of Daniel’s creations - reminds us that visual art was his primary method of expression.
Today, we know Daniel as a mischievous man with a shuffling stage persona; for his love of fast food; and his gift for composing the surreal images and fond songs that have earned him a cult following and collaborations with, among others, Yo La Tengo, Jad Fair and Sonic Youth. Thanks to Jeff Feuerzeig’s compassionate and unflinching 2006 documentary, The Devil And Daniel Johnston, we also know him as a severely troubled manic depressive prone to bouts of violence; as a chain-smoking 46-year-old who lives (out of necessity) with his parents in Texas; and a frustrated individual acutely conscious of his own condition.
Wonderfully, the arrangement of these selected works - chosen from over two decades of material, including early cassette sleeves and rare 7” record covers - succeeds in balancing his many personas with a singular personality. Where there’s a delightfully tender wit to some sketches, there’ll be a lurid, horrifying chaos present in much of his coloured material. Satan Is Dead (1981) portrays an exhausted man spread-eagled across a sofa, the words ‘UNCONTROLLABLE APATHY’ scrawled and capitalised above his crumpled form.
Bridging these two extremes are pieces that demonstrate an astute and self-deprecating awareness of his bipolarity. Untitled (Man On Train Track) (1982) and I Pray For The Day When Everything Will Be Okay (2005) are disturbingly self-explanatory. Elsewhere, bodies are garrotted like salami and mocked men hang their heads in real despair. Others have crater-like holes in place of brains. His is a universe where good does battle with evil; where Technicolor dreams are offset by stark stabs of black lines; where recurring characters are both comforting and eerie (see Jeremiah the Frog, famous for his appearance on Kurt Cobain’s torso, and a periodical obsession with leering ducks, respectively).
This thoughtful collection of moving outsider art casts the native Californian’s work in a light as uplifting as it is upsetting: amidst simple scenes and hellish monsters, we marvel at the world’s ambiguous beauty through his eyes and our own.
daniel johnston
It’s A Beautiful Life
alt.gallery 61/62 Thornton Street, Newcastle upon Tyne
Until November 10
