“Dark Art is….dark. Although it sounds utterly redundant to say, the point must be made that Dark Art conveys something dark to its audience. [...] What this ‘darkness’ is remains a complex question, although I personally lean towards a psychological framing, with anxieties, desires, and implications of the ‘Shadow’ being reflected through the cultural focus of the subject, communicated through colour, composition, and mark making.” - Michael Cunliffe

I like this description, written as part of a fantastic essay about Dark Art by Michael Cunliffe, read it here

Dark art, at least to me, is about recognising that life is complex, it’s about honouring, acknowledging and in turn relinquishing our individual and collective suffering.

Dark art is intrinsically tied with existentialism.

The subject or psychological nature to the work is more important in the definition than the overall aesthetic.

For example

- Louise Bourgeois used architectural drawings to depict loneliness and feelings of jealousy.
- Henrik Uldalen uses cool colours and dark tones to create a sombre mood, and leaves out critical information that feels like loneliness.
- Ben Constantine uses superbly bright colour to depict his very unsettling and macabre imagery.

Personally I have always loved the contradictory nature of communicating something dark through beautiful bold colour. 

Life is complicated, and nothing is black and white. I feel accepting and existing in contradiction is what life aims to teach us over and over, but that’s another story.
Humans are equally capable of some of the most beautiful and most abhorrent things imaginable. 

This complexity is at the heart of dark art.

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

–Carl Jung

WHY DARK ART IS IMPORTANT

It’s not unusual to hear that many “negative” emotions can cause you to smile or even laugh.

Emotions like awkwardness, shock, mourning, sadness, fear, or even anger can cause some people to fall into hysterics. 

What is this experience?

Often when we are overwhelmed with an intense emotion, our brain floods us with the opposing one to help you gain control. To put it simply, this is the body’s way of restoring balance.

There is an interesting phenomenon known as “cute aggression” which is the feeling of “It’s so cute that I want to crush it”. 

I remember trying to explain this feeling to someone once, I said something along the lines of “it’s so cute I kinda wanna crush its tiny rib cage!”

This person looked at me like I was a psychopath...

The cute animal is never at any actual risk, but the sensation was always fascinating to me. 

I have always been someone who laughs when things are really serious. Despite being guilty of having a dark sense of humour, I think it’s because I feel things so deeply that my body seeks to alleviate the awkwardness or stress to regain balance.

This is where I feel I would be remiss not to mention the value of black comedy in pop culture. 

I don’t mean ‘dark for the sake of dark’ comedians, of which I think it’s so dark it becomes safe. 

I mean truth telling comedians that are unafraid to go to dark places… such as Dave Chapelle, Doug Stanhope, Joe Rogan, Louis CK, Bill Burr, Maria Bamford, Amy Schumer, Ms. Pat, Rosanne Barr, Whitney Cummings, Bryan Callen - the list goes on.

Tig Notaro did a whole hour about how she had cancer and might die, it was absolutely hysterical. 

This is what empowerment looks like, taking back control after suffering something whether minor or completely devastating is an incredibly important tool. 

When we experience something traumatic, it can cause us to feel totally lost. This is when art is no longer a luxury, it becomes a necessity. 

Art is where we can turn to make sense of the sad or scary things. The big stuff that we all experience at one time or another. 

“People need art in their houses. They don’t need ‘Bed Bath and Beyond’ dentist-office art. They need weird stuff”

–Ezra Croft, art shows producer (@crazyezra)

DARK SURREALISM Vs. DARK VISIONARY ART

In terms of the ethos and popularisation of Dark Art, it would be pretty uncontroversial to call out H.R. Giger and Beksinski as major lighthouses of the movement.

The legacy of these masters runs deep through the veins of contemporary dark artists.

Giger has been quoted as taking inspiration from his nightmares, which is not unlike the original surrealists.

The differences between what you could claim as Surrealist vs. Visionary aren’t major.

Dark Surrealism leans more towards a kind of reality-based non-reality, and Visionary art tends more towards the abstract and geometrical.

Visionary art is more than just ‘art made by people who take drugs’.

Visionary Art about raw emotion, the ineffable, the spiritual and the sublime.

It aims to promote intuition and healing, to make the unseeable seen and to nurture connection to all those who are open to it.

The western world has, by and large, lost its way, this kind of art is about illuminating the pathway back ‘home’.

On a single psychedelic journey, one can feel the full spectrum of a lifetime’s experience condensed down to just a few hours.

From the highest highs to the lowest lows, total elation to complete despair.

These experiences never leave you, and they become injected into the art you make, consciously or not.

My personal artistic journey is about finding the most effective way to recognise and articulate my emotional language, process my life’s experiences and deliver the message in the most powerful and universal way I can.

That’s what I’m really into, it’s not about being dark for me, it’s about harnessing the power and potency of art.

To just stick to painting still lifes or landscapes wouldn’t be telling the whole truth.

I am an expressive, energetically large person, I love chaos, I need to purge regularly and allow myself to be heard, otherwise my mind festers into something very destructive.

But Dark surrealism & Visionary Art are just terms I use to help categorise what I do, and my artwork doesn’t really sit comfortably in either of these definitions, although maybe somewhere in between both.

Art is expression, and categories are only useful for marketing.

I don’t think anyone should try to fit perfectly into a genre unless they have use for the limitations for some reason, Quentin Tarantino for example.

It’s my contention that painting should be like poetry. There needs to be some mystery. Making space for ambiguity and intuition in your practice allows for magic to happen.

There’s a lot of wisdom stored deep in your subconscious.

Although I think most artists are pretty open to engaging within the unknown, a key difference is that the more difficult emotions or experiences - that which are typically rejected or banished to the unconscious mind - are welcomed in dark art.

It’s a channel to process some of the more troubling aspects of your mind, a tool for allowing them to be heard; it’s about healing and clearing, not wallowing.

There are other sub-genres, such as Fantastic Realism, Magical Realism, and even Figurative Expressionism that I relate to, but I feel they’re all essentially pointing to the same truths.

“Art that arises out of the inner landscape, and is connected to our lived experience, illuminates the darkness and heals the soul”

- Daria Halprin

THE BEGINNING

As a person I’m optimistic, I am loud and always dancing and singing like an annoying lunatic around the house. I think this is partly due to my need to expend some of my ever present anxious energy, but in general I would say I am upbeat.

I read somewhere once that said a ‘good mindset’ to take is to assume the world is conspiring to bring you success… and strangely I have always kind of believed that.

I can also be very impatient, dismissive and kind of aggressive. These traits have long been a coping mechanism for handling upset or hurt feelings. Anger is a mask for other emotions, and for a long time I fooled myself into thinking I just had a bad temper. 

I know now that I am actually really sensitive, and can be easily hurt by things. This hurt mutates into anger because I didn’t know what being upset or sad looked like, and I don’t feel safe to feel those things.

This is what I express through my art, difficult emotions, and it helps me to process them.

I think the purpose of dark art is to confront these kinds of topics and give them the space to heal. 

“You have to feel to heal” and art is a safe place to let go and feel things. 

Getting to know your own darkness (or to use Jung’s word for the rejected self: The Shadow) is the only way to reclaim your autonomy, change your direction, and improve the relationship with yourself and others.

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

- Carl Jung

DARK ART IS REALIST

For my year 12 major art project I chose the topic of ‘myself’.

I remember thinking it could be construed as self involved, but in my eyes it was a short cut way to kind of do anything I wanted, since I could argue anything I did was all relevant to me in some way.

I think that year-long project has turned into something lifelong.

I look at a living master like Laurie Lipton and I am in complete awe of her ability to express the horror of politics, modern culture and the demise of human connection. Laurie will be remembered long after she is gone for her fearlessness and her commitment to reflecting the truth.

But expressing my experience of life through art is all I know how to do.

I see everything I make as a kind of self portrait, sometimes in a more abstract sense. It can be the suffering of others that comes through me, the embedded pain of ancestral trauma or even how I see myself in someone else. 

I always aim to empower my depicted subjects, I use their trauma and tragedy like badges of honour. 

It’s never about wallowing in life’s suffering, it’s about not ignoring what makes up more than half the story.

I think Dark Art in particular seeks to honour the reality of life.

It’s about release.

“Sometimes I watch tv and look around and think my artwork is the only appropriate response to this insane nightmare we are living in.”

–Chet Zar

THE INSEPARABLE NATURE OF DARK ART AND HEALING

External negative experiences will continue to happen to every human till the end of time. The strength is in choosing how to react. 

It can be incredibly freeing to decide to understand your monster rather than continuing to avoid it. Striving to intimately explore the difficult emotion or experience, a decision to feel it fully can paradoxically remove the power from it. 

As Jordan Peterson says, the more you ignore a problem the larger it grows, and in turn you become a bit smaller.

We all have to face our monsters, this is quite literal in the art of Chet Zar.

Art therapists working with war veterans are learning the power of artistic expression when treating the devastating effects of long term PTSD.

Dark art is not a luxury, during the long night of the soul this type of art becomes a lifeline. 

Making it yourself - at whatever level - is cathartic. The act of creation is about taking back the power, and illuminating your darkness. 

It can be as simple as swirling colours or as complex as deep diving into symbolism and the architecture of emotional response. Both will help you feel better, and the science is there to back it up.

Dark art is not about being shocking, and often is misconstrued for ‘horror art’, dark art is about healing and personal emancipation.

“Art has the power to render sorrow beautiful, make loneliness a shared experience, and transform despair into hope”

- Brene Brown

Written by Ash Darq, with special thanks to my editor Visaic
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