New Daniel Johnston book ft. Lana Del Rey, Phoebe Bridgers & more released, Brooklyn art exhibit opening

The late Daniel Johnston is the subject of a new book and art exhibit. The book, Daniel Johnston: I’m Afraid of What I Might Draw, was put together by Electric Lady Studios general manager and co-owner Lee Foster, and it’s out now via Rizzoli. It features contributions from Lana Del Rey, Phoebe Bridgers, Karen O., Jack Antonoff, Jim Jarmusch, beabadoobee, Dev Hynes, and Raymond Petibon, and sales of it will benefit the Hi, How Are You Project.

“What I came to love about Daniel’s art and music is the impulsiveness and imperfection of it all,” Foster says. “He considered his audience, surely, but the work was never overcooked to accommodate anyone. These were his heartfelt feelings, and what is left on the page are Daniel’s simple truths—mistakes and all. He could be precise in his message, but he was never precious in his expression. ‘Better done than perfect,’ as the saying goes.”

The exhibit, Daniel Johnston: I Think, I Draw, I Am, opens on June 7 at Pioneer Works and will be on display through August 12. It’s being billed as the “largest solo presentation” of his work to date, featuring over 300 of his drawings. Here’s more from the description:

I Think, I Draw, I Am embraces the maximalism of Johnston’s artistic output and explores many of the recurring characters, themes, and stylistic tropes that appear throughout his drawings. By placing works from different years and periods in dialogue with one another, viewers can appreciate his idiosyncratic iconography, which combines the apocalyptic imagery found in religious texts such as the Bible with his encyclopedic knowledge of superhero comics. Though intensely personal, Johnston’s storytelling regularly revolves around fundamental clashes between good and evil. It’s a dynamic further expressed by the way he alternately frames his characters in a heroic light or an evil one. Redemptive figures like Captain America, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Jeremiah the Frog—which is perhaps the most emblematic one within his work—are pitted against sinister ones such as Lucifer, Satan, and Vile Corrupt, Johnston’s sinister, multi-eyeballed version of Jeremiah the Frog.

Johnston’s expansive world of appropriated or invented characters is regularly accompanied by simple yet emotionally penetrating inscriptions about life, love, regret, and anxiety. These descriptions not only provide us with his inner world’s depth of feeling, but also speak to experiences and emotions more universally felt. Likewise, his drawings’ unique graphic style is immediate and freewheeling rather than carefully planned or precious. This impulsiveness remains approachable, humorous, and relatable, a distinctive trait of Johnston’s that, ultimately, provides proof of Foster’s larger observation that “If [Johnston] could think it, he could draw it.”

“He was not drawing these things to entertain us,” Dick Johnston, Daniel’s older brother, who also contributed to the book, told New York Times. “He was drawing to entertain himself. He was real and earnest, and these are his moments in time. You get what an experience was for him.”