Hopper, Crewdson ... Darger
![](http://gregcookland.com/journal/uploaded_images/picCrewdsonWomanAtVanityBlog-783774.jpg)
Here’s my review of “Drawing on Hopper” at the Williams College Museum of Art, a show that demonstrates the influence of painter Edward Hopper on photographer Gregory Crewdson.
![](http://gregcookland.com/journal/uploaded_images/picHopperMorningBlog-713437.jpg)
Crewdson admits to many influences, but one he doesn’t usually mention is the late Henry Darger, who is coming to seem a preeminent inspiration for art today.
At first it sounds a bit strange to say this about a Chicago janitor who secretly made giant, wild narrative pictures about little girls with penises fighting the Confederacy – or some such lovely nonsense. (Hmmm, I wonder why he didn’t tell anyone about his art before he died?)
![](http://gregcookland.com/journal/uploaded_images/picAhistoricChan-757981.jpg)
And Darger’s influence is easily detected in all the high-school-notebook-doodle-style art around these days. See Providence’s C.F.
![](http://gregcookland.com/journal/uploaded_images/picBrodell-770542.jpg)
It’s here, as an eccentric-narrative artist, that Crewdson fits into the School of Darger.
The rise of the School of Darger indicates a longing for passion, for myth, for hand-made, for color, for hot flashes, for messiness. For all the wonderfully human stuff that has mostly been driven out of the avant-garde art since abstract expressionism.
“Drawing on Hopper: Gregory Crewdson/Edward Hopper,” Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Oct. 12, 2006, to April 15, 2007.
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