Art critic and artist Ken Johnson will discuss a selection of horror movies in which the main character is an artist. From the perspective of an art critic, rather than a film critic, he will address questions such as, what is an artist in popular consciousness? What makes the artist and the sorts of things artists produce ripe for horror? A short answer would be that the artist’s cultivation of creative imagination, and susceptibility to irrational fantasy, makes him or her particularly attractive to demonic forces arising from the depths of the unconscious or invading from non-ordinary dimensions. As Goya’s famous print declaims, “The Sleep of Reason Breeds Monsters.”
The lecture will address what these movies get right about art and artists, and what (as they more often do) they get risibly wrong—akin to what a scientist might have to say about science fiction.
The primary subjects will be:
“A Bucket of Blood” (1959)
“Color Me Blood Red”
“Deep Dark”
“Velvet Buzzsaw”
“Hereditary”
Please note these are live events – they cannot be downloaded and watched later, so please be sure you are available at the time and timezone the classes are being offered in before registering.
Ken Johnson grew up in Maine and graduated from Brown University in 1976 with a B.A. in art. He earned a master’s degree in studio art with a concentration in painting at the State University of New York at Albany in 1977. For the next five years he worked as a technician in the painting department of an art conservation laboratory operated by the New York State Department of Historic Sites in Waterford, NY. In 1983, he started writing art reviews for the Albany Times Union newspaper and for other local publications in the Albany, NY region where he lived from 1977 to 2001 (in Troy from the early ‘80s on). In 1987 he began writing articles on contemporary artists for the now defunct Arts Magazine, and a year later he moved on to Art in America magazine for which he wrote reviews and articles regularly for the next nine years. In 1997 he began writing reviews for The New York Times, and continued to do so until September 2006, when he took a job as the chief art critic for the Boston Globe. After a year in Boston, he returned to New York and to writing art criticism for the Times, continuing to do so until October 2016. In 2011, his book “Are You Experienced? How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art” was published by Prestel Books. In 2013, he began producing an online comic called “Ball and Cone” (ballandcone.tumblr.com). “Ball and Cone” was listed among “Notable Comics” in “The Best American Comics of 2016.” (see here http://on-panel.com/BAC2016/index.html) Now he devotes most of his time to painting: https://www.instagram.com/ball_and_cone_/?hl=en
He has lived in Flushing, Queens since 2001.
