Andrew Edlin Gallery Pays Tribute to 20 Artists the World Nearly Never Saw
Plenty of now-iconic artists spent their lives in total anonymity, their work recognized only after death, sometimes buried under decades of neglect. “Afterlife,” curated by Paul Laster at Andrew Edlin Gallery, gathers more than 50 works across various media by 20 international self-taught “outsider” artists, primarily discovered posthumously under extraordinary circumstances.
Now recognized as one of the most significant self-taught artists of the 20th century, Henry Darger (1892-1973) spent his days as a Chicago hospital janitor and dishwasher. In secret, he produced a 15,000-page fantasy novel following seven young princesses who rebelled to end child slavery, illustrated with 300 large-scale watercolor and collage paintings—which Darger’s landlord only discovered, buried under years of accumulated trash, in his one-room apartment shortly before his death. Six watercolor and pencil works by Darger appear here, including a two-panel double-sided battle scene and portraits of his “Vivian Girls.” Another story is told through the work of the anonymous Philadelphia Wireman, who left behind 1,200 tightly wound, wire-bound sculptures found abandoned in an alley. Vivian Maier (1926–2009) documented 150,000 street photographs while working as a Chicago nanny; the negatives surfaced only after a storage locker auction. Grant Wallace (1868–1954) produced visionary portraits he claimed were based on telepathic transmissions from spirits and extraterrestrials.
These are just a few of the stories waiting inside “Afterlife”; each artist is a world unto themselves, each discovery as improbable as the work itself. “Afterlife” is on view at 392 Broadway in New York until April 25th. —Gogo Taubman