“It’scomforting to think you’re normal, and it does much to stay back the demons,because
“It’scomforting to think you’re normal, and it does much to stay back the demons,because being human comes with a price— history, imagination, fate, and theunexpected. On the other hand, you’ve got your Freaks, Geeks, and StrangeGirls.“These descriptions,used freely in the past, conceptualize social attitudes towards“things”, mostly real people, who were placed on display for theshock, revulsion, and/or amusement of observers who believed that theythemselves were normal, in fact, they were dead-sure of it. Words like freaksand geeks are now taboo. We’re not allowed to say them, though by not sayingthem the social history they transmit has not been erased entirely. Visual artforms more easily sidestep the caprices of language restraints, reflectingcultural undercurrents of the moment. One of these, the sideshow banner, unfoldsan eye-dazzling and outrageously literal panorama of America’s idea of freaksand geeks, not to mention the phenomena of “strange girls” and aparade of other extraordinary beings. A contemporary view of sideshow bannersalso provides an incisive backwards glance at the observers.“Thesideshow banner is no longer needed to hawk sideshows, but this genre ofmonumentally depicted freaks'n'geeks has resurfaced in a new context, waveringon the high wire of fine art/folk art, creating its own precarious balancingact in the process. Though you’re reading this in an art book of great flashand beauty, it’s important to realize that sideshow banners weren’t alwaysperceived as art. They emerged as cheap advertisement. They hung in the wind.They earned their keep. Once the show folded or the attraction bolted, theywere instantly obsolete as paintings (unless they were recycled for othershows), and were used instead for their value as tarps. They sopped up oilunder trucks; they were cut up for scrap, discarded.When thesideshow evolved beyond its traditional form and amusement parks like Chicago’sRiverview closed for good (1967), countless sideshow banners joined the flow oflost objects from our material culture, waiting to be rediscovered.Unsurprisingly, a handful of artists and a few collectors and dealers initiallygravitated toward orphaned banners, riveted by their visual and conceptualpower, recognizing in them an essential aspect of American painting that hadbeen predictably overlooked by the Big-top art World. Banners found their placein artists’ collections and were viewed as art, unqualified, for the most art,by art-world designations. They soon filtered from antique shops into artgalleries, presented first as folk art and more recently as outsider art. Nowthey’re in a different sideshow… modern American culture on the brink ofmillennium.“Sideshowbanners document an aspect of our culture that we don’t all want to face:people would (and will) flock like flies, they’ll pay good money to see freaks –aberrationsof nature and culture– representations of the grotesque, real or fabricated.Sideshows originally offered a glimpse at things the general public might notnormally encounter, such as erotica, exotica (generally people of color),animals from afar, hybrid creatures, and human artworks tattooed from head totoe –offering the folks a “museum quality” educational experience,and pretty cheap, right there at the edge of town. Soon the arena expanded andbig bucks were made by promoters who offered brief and isolated face-to-faceencounters with the human figure in all its contorted aspects, and otheroddities that exhilarated infrequently explored areas of the psyche. Compassionand etiquette, could be checked at the door, and an ocean of human flesh, forinstance, could be gawked at with complete social impunity.”*To Johnny Eck the Half Boy, Prince Randian the Human Torso, The Doll Family –Kurt Fritz, Frieda, Hilda und Elly Annie Schneider–, Sealo the Seal Boy, Fedor Adrianovich Jeftichew better known as Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, Peter Robinson the Human Skeleton, Joseph Merrick, the poor Edward Mordrake, and all the freaks, geeks and strange girls in the world who suffered the wickedness of the human demon.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC821Yvh8go“The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.” –Karl Kraus (1874-1936) Bibliothèque Infernale on FB -- source link