Original Sin: The Visionary Art of Joe Coleman

by Jim Jarmusch (Contributor), Harold Schechter, Harold Schector (Contributor)

Joe Coleman, visionary art

Genres: Art, Art History, Nonfiction

130 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

James R. "Jim" Jarmusch is an American independent filmmaker. Jarmusch is a major exponent of independent cinema, particularly that of the 1980s and 1990s.

Reviews

[Spider the Doof Warrior · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually read this book in college. Because I'm obsessed now with becoming a painter I was trying to remember this painter. His stuff is beautifully gruesome and very intricate and also educational. I'd buy this book but I really want the big thick huge book of all of his paintings coming out next year so I can really look at these things up close in a book which is the closest I'll get to actually seeing one at this point. You'd need a magnifying glass. Spectacular!

[♥ Marlene♥ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think one of the most expensive books I bought for myself. Never regretted it.

[Kitap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coleman's paintings are like anti-icons, spiritual portals that draw the gaze unflinchingly toward what Kurtz called, "The horror! The horror!" Vibrant color, painstaking detail, and a graphically realistic style provide access to a deeper, darker, more awe-full reality than that which most inhabit by (usually unspoken) consensus. To say that these images are difficult to contemplate would be understatement, yet their very real dark beauty and power, like that of a black hole, to magnetize and pull in the viewer, make them, and the horrors about ourselves, about our species that they present, impossible to ignore.

"Coleman isn't simply an artist who moved from low means to high art means. His deft use of bright colors, minute details, and graphic emphasis, as well as his combinations of image and text, suggests that the strongest precedence for his art is the illuminated manuscript. It is with this in mind that the viewer should look at his modestly scaled acrylic paintings on masonite. The difference is that the illuminated manuscripts were based on sacred texts, while Coleman collapses together both the sacred and the profane." - John Yau, p. 37

"His attention to all kinds of detail embodies as well as echoes his awareness that the world is undergoing continual, unavoidable change, that torment and mortality are an inevitable part of the process of living. The news he tells us is discomforting: We cannot escape our past (our fate), and the best we can do is confront it head-on, look at it in the eye." - John Yau, p. 38

"Society purges itself by sequestering, isolating, condemning or executing those who threaten its illusions, but it finds it more difficult to bear responsibility for the injuries it thrusts on those who are helpless. This is the hypocrisy Coleman addresses in his paintings." - John Yau, pp. 40-1

"Beneath our skins, his art seems to say, we are nothing but bone, blood, and corruptible matter. But if we keep digging further, there is the hope--even the faith--that we will discover something infinitely greater: the redemptive power of the soul." - Harold Schechter, p. 118

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those people who love the painting of Heironymous Bosch, Coleman's work is not to be missed. He paints w/ single-hair brushes w/ a magnifying viewer over his eyes. This might as well be a description of the way he views the world at large. Many of his paintings are portraits of historical figures whose lives inspire him. Their centered portrait is surrounded by a border of details from their lives. The subjects he chooses are usually desperately unhappy & violently driven - killers such as Carl Panzram, anti-slavery militant John Brown, 'outsider artist' Adolph Wöllfli, etc.. Every painting is created to make the world SEE these people. At a technical level alone, Coleman ranks as a 'master' & shd be appreciated by everyone as such - regardless of whether they find his subject-matter disturbing.