A pretty unusual and interesting review. Give it a read.
by Andrew Berardini
Dasha Shishkin
SUSANNE VIELMETTER LOS ANGELES PROJECTS
6006 Washington Blvd , Culver City, CA 90232
April 7, 2012 - May 12, 2012
Henry Darger, R. Crumb, and George Grosz all found themselves, elbow-to-elbow, drinking hard at the same shitty bar.
“Ach!
This place is such a stinking pit of depravity!” said Grosz. “Nothing
but the most nauseating perverts and prostitutes, corpulent capitalists
assfucking priests and army men. Disgusting.” He growled and then took a
deep draught of his golden beer, licking the foam off his lip. A roach
crawled up to a splash of wet beer on the bar and Grosz brushed it off
with a resigned sigh.
“I
know, isn’t it great?” said Crumb, barely looking up from the napkin
where he was inking a self-portrait of thick legged ladies walking all
over him as he cooed with pleasure.
Darger,
heavily sweating, nervously wiped his hands on his shabby janitor’s
uniform, sniffed twice making his bushy mustache bristle, and continued
drawing pictures of little girls and their coming war in the pages of
his worn notebook.
“It
makes me puke. Blah. Especially the prostitutes, makes me so angry. All
of my pictures, I want to draw the prostitutes, though some might call
them wives, in squelching orgies with all the rich, stupid profiteers,
with brutality, clarity. All of the grotesquerie of this terrible
shithole.”
“I
mean, I think girls are sexy too George, but they are just cum
sinkholes for rich guys,” Crumb said as he cross-hatched the true
roundness of one of his stomping women’s plump derriere.
“Magic... must be protected...” mumbled Darger, making the sign of the cross.
“All I see is the corruption. They are all dripping with poison. Most of the women I draw are prostitutes.”
The bartender, slowly polishing the long bar with a soft white rag, chimed in, “And what really do any of you know about women?”
“Too much,” replied Grosz.
“Not enough,” replied Crumb.
“Women?” replied Darger.
The bartender laughed a ringing laugh, pouring a long tall shot of whiskey.
“That’s sort of what I thought,” she said, drinking the shot with languid precision.
“It’s
not that I don’t think you guys aren’t all fantastically talented, but
girls have their own way of being gross, bestial, sexy. We have our
perversions and sufferings, self-inflicted and imposed. We, like you,
can sketch them out, slashing each line, with each of us pouring out our
own weird visions. Perhaps it’s time ladies got to pour out their own
bizarre, elaborate fantasies and nightmares about our own bodies, men’s
too if we feel like it. Purposeful in task, we can paint them with candy
and wash them in acid. Vulnerability as both a weakness and a
tenderness.”
Darger
sniffed again, and went back to his notebook. Grosz slowly ran his
finger over the rim of his glass mug. The bartender set her glass upside
down on the bar. A neon sign buzzed quietly somewhere in the
background, the soft susurrus of a distant jukebox turned down low.
“So,” R. Crumb cleared his throat. “What are you doing later?”
“Sorry,” said the bartender throwing the soft white rag over her shoulder. “I’m not so easily pinned down.”
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