While traveling the mediterranean as a young artist, Richard Dadd smoked a water pipe for 5 days straight with a group of Arab men he had just met. The resulting psychotic episode, murder and dismemberment of his father, and subsequent institutionalization is one of the most sensational stories in the chapters of art history....which is why it's so strange that today's art audience seems to be completely oblivious to this fascinating tabloid scandal. After his imprisonment, Dadd worked primarily on only two paintings for the rest of his life. One painting took 5 years to complete, the other took 9, and was still considered unfinished by the artist. These two paintings, however, are unrivaled in all of art history for their obsessive beauty. I'm fascinated by the manner in which human sickness and suffering is not only the most universal and resonant theme in art, but is in fact a condition, that when experienced in its extremities, can produce, through the sacrifice of selfhood and sanity, the most utterly beautiful and amazing paintings that man has ever laid brush to.
I'll be discussing Glenn Brown next....
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