a) are almost murdered themselves though they fight...

Henry Darger

a) Are almost murdered themselves though they fight for their lives typhoon saves them...

b) Vivian girls said Glandelinian tent,(n.d.)

Medium: Watercolor and pencil on paper

Dimensions: 55.9 x 223.5 cm

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/154040?

'Darger's artistic project, comprising a complicated and mysterious novel and hundreds of accompanying drawings, was discovered only after his death in 1973. While working as a janitor at a Chicago hospital, Darger spent decades inventing and detailing the kingdoms, warring factions, battles, histories, belief systems, and mythologies that make up the violent tale The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. The drawings illustrate chapters and events from the story, and are often composed in part from the massive archive of newspaper and magazine clippings, coloring and picture books, and advertisements that Darger collected in his apartment.'

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I had this work by henry darger in archives for several months, and now that I am looking at it again, I can't help but pull parallels to the world right now and how it always has been. its completely different, but seeing this massacre makes me think about the many George floyds that have died and that have not died. I cannot imagine living when every single day there is someone with a knee on your neck, the oppression and repression being a way of life. I have not experienced these horrors so I feel unjust speaking on them, but I feel a responsibility to at least stand for those who are suffering and educate myself as much as I can. I feel ashamed for becoming desensitized from watching these adversities from afar. well, what can I do? I felt this way, but I'm starting to see that nothing you try to do in support, even if it is just educating yourself, is trivial - it's my responsibility as a human who wishes for harmony in the world (which realistically, is impossible, I'm kind of contradicting myself here, but I have to try) to fight for it. it seems pathetic, but this is all the power I have right now as a mere twenty-two year old girl with all the privileges in the world, studying the arts overseas with a roof over my head and not needing to live paycheck to paycheck. I am extremely sad, angry, and horrified at myself and these injustices and how it dominoed into the societies we live in today. the guilt of not being able to do anything for these people is killing me... but this is not about me... I wish I knew what to say..

all artworks to a certain extent relate to the society we live in. I've seen some documentaries on darger and his work, how he's basically been living in isolation his whole life and was devoted to making his world come to life - via materials he would find in the papers, making collages and often making copies of the same girl figures to place in his illustrations. it is ingenious, the way his work sits in composition. the detail and disturbing themes, I wonder how that came to life in his mind.

this work below by makiko kudo has colours and a layout that I feel comforted by not because it is calming but because I feel it speaks to the chaos and darkness I feel surrounding the world right now.

even though this work specifically perhaps doesn't speak to the same things I think about (like darger's) it is making me think of these things. I feel that's one of the wonderful things about art. you can appreciate it in your own way. and I feel comforted by these works because they depict horrors or melancholy - they feel honest and truthful, like finally, a picture that I feel is saying something real, that I've seen or felt in some way or another.

http://tomiokoyamagallery.com/en/exhibitions/makiko-kudo-3/

うみのもの, 2011

oil on canvas, 130.0 × 162.0 cm

©Makiko Kudo

Makiko Kudo says that she depicts landscapes “that I have passed everyday but suddenly begin to shine.” Scenes that are perceived separately in reality are linked dynamically in dreams. When we wake up, the emotions we felt during a dream retain their intensity even if we cannot remember the details. This sensation is similar to what we experience when looking at Kudo’s paintings. The calculated and precise composition contrasts with the primitive brushwork, creating a chaotic sense of vibrant energy mixed up with vivid color. Girls and small animals are incorporated in the landscape. Luxuriant vegetation is unified with buildings that appear miniaturized and the scene is connected to fragmentary emotions.

Curator and critic David Pagel, in a review of a Makiko Kudo show, noted the similarities between her work and Monet’s water lilies, Rousseau’s dreamy realism, and Matisse’s Fauvism. Pagel concluded, “Her poignant works bring intimacy and introspection to the whiplash graphics of the anime generation. The paradox of being unable to escape a place that never really felt like home is Kudo’s great subject.”

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Artist Profile

Makiko Kudo

'In Makiko Kudo’s paintings, a mental image-landscape unfolds within which both things she encounters in daily life and the dream-like world of her imagination that have formed a single-harmonized entity. Her audacious compositions are over-brimmed with a sense of chaotic liveliness, dynamic yet detailed brushstrokes, balanced vibrant colors, and the multiple settings and perspectives which develop simultaneously within them. What she paints is the synthesis of things she herself has unconsciously witnessed in reality, the world she has personally experienced, and the beings around her that she shares her intimate feelings with. Kudo’s detailed bold brushstroke creates the superb orchestra of colors and forms, and her motifs released from memories and personal experiences give an impression that weighs on the hearts of the viewers, precisely as if we ourselves are experiencing a great undulation of sensitivity with our half-forgotten childhood memories.'