Naked Promotion
... in which Ashley recommends an extraordinary book.
As usual, I find myself overwhelmed by the nimble productivity of master illustrator J. Daniel Abel and humbled that he has once again released a collection of his works that far outclasses my own published scrawls. Jealous though I am, I have no hesitation in devoting my meager interwebs real estate to endorsing his latest book, Naked Souls. This gallery of drawings continues Jay’s chronicle of those struggling, under-housed, and desperate citizens who come more and more to represent the baseline of America’s clientele.
It’s a moving document of modern times and a must-have collection of vivid and inspiring drawings. It also, owing to Mr. Abel’s generosity, features an introduction written by me, which I reproduce below in a further effort to explain the importance of J.D.A.’s artistic contributions and the cultural value of this book in particular.
There’s something about the squalor.
It appeals to a certain breed of artist, I suspect, because we’ve chosen a life of perpetual near-poverty for ourselves. Despite all warnings from the gr’ups that we’d end up working at the Dollar Tree, we were determined to become paint-flinging, beatnik vagabonds, embracing the unfurnished life. We survive on the hors d’oeuves at art show openings and filch toilet paper from Wendy’s. We’ve named all the silverfish.
And so, the images of bleak despair among the peasant class both attract and haunt us. We feel an unmistakable kinship. The addiction and illness, physical distortions from a life of labor, the unsanitary conditions, ramshackle housing upcycled from our cultural refuse - the squalor. Somehow, it has called to us since we first grokked Al Jaffee’s trash piles and puke puddles in MAD magazine. We were soft, air-conditioned children then, doodling scars and skin rashes on the presidents in our history books, somehow hard-wired for humanity’s uglier truths.
The advancement of civilization is a Mardi Gras of ironies. We erect futuristic glass and steel monuments to human achievement and then use them as galleries for Dorothea Lange’s Dust Bowl destitutes. Consider our Renaissance masters, who, when not rendering gym-abs Jesus for their papal benefactors, spent their free time filling sketchbooks with poxed, lame, and perpetually sloshed denizens they spied in their urine-soaked hamlets. Consider our great novelists, from Welty to Steinbeck, consistently portraying lower-class individuals spouting high-minded philosophies. Or Hollywood’s Oscar bait, starring noble-savage mental defectives, rescued from the squalor by white saviors who “thought we were teaching Bimbo, but it was really Bimbo who was teaching us.”
Charlize Theron wows the critics by convincingly eating Ramen.
The documentary drawings of J. Daniel Abel do not lionize the homeless life as many artists, intentionally or not, have historically done. This largely owes to his particular way with line and tone, straddling brutalism and elegance as it consistently does. His naked souls radiate a desperate energy, as if their world is bustling with neurosis that can find no peace. The environments he brings to life both attract and haunt us. I recognize and envy the power of Abel’s stylistic attack because, though I am also prone to depicting the street-dwelling locals in my own community, my drawings look more like a pitch for a hilarious new Hanna-Barbara series. It makes a difference how you lay it on the line.
Somehow, Abel manages to craft artwork so undeniably appealing while, if anything, viciously amplifying a dark reality we’d rather avoid by binging Gilmore Girls. The lives of these people, as is clear from J.D.’s stark portrayals, are exhausting. With or without addiction as a guiding force, one is always moving, always a hundred dollars short of stability. Cops and ex-husbands must be avoided, newer and (hopefully) safer shelters sought. And no, for those driven to the streets by chemical needs, the jones is not going to fix itself. Every day is a new plan of action, its rewards depleted by sundown. Had to sell the boots to pay for the bootstraps.
I’m honorably quoted elsewhere in this book as stating that America’s tent-city downfall is a feature and not a bug of the Great Experiment, and I do believe that’s true. The struggling men, women, and miscellaneous featured in Naked Souls are not merely suffering a New Deal gone bad but ruthless exploitation by our economic overlords, workfarm bosses who don’t even have the decency to whip the underlings themselves but have learned to market their suffering as a series of stock trades. It’s another of those industrial-strength ironies: America’s homeless and working poor feel forgotten, but their misery is being tracked and harvested every moment. They’re not forgotten at all.
And neither are you or I. As you can see here, Mr. Abel has drafted my likeness to accompany this forward, signifying my direct relation, aesthetically and spiritually, to the other Souls herein. Destitution is not just for cart pushers and underpass campers anymore; it’s for you and me, our paths to prosperous employment digitally hampered more each day, our “credit score” (read: debt dependency) touted as our most admirable feature. Our phone scrolling has turned us from customers to commodities. We’re all getting the squeeze and not by accident – not by some mismanagement of accounting practices or our failure to fully embrace the glorious Work Ethic. The system is a vast, mechanical, screwdriving machine, working exactly as designed, and we’re all getting … that’s right!
J. Daniel Abel’s work in dignifying the downtrodden with his masterful drawings is not just noble, it’s necessary. The squalor’s tide is rising.
Ashley Holt
Read more about Naked Souls from the author himself and order here.
Well, what a surprise this morning, as I wash down stale coffee cake with industrial strength caffeine.
Thanks Ash.
Most of the characters in this grim little book speak for themselves and Mr. Holt, who is by far the sharpest tool in the great online big-box, astutely took note of several key points in his fine intro. He asserts, correctly, that there is not one scintilla of idealization in my artistic DNA. He seems to think I was born with defect and he's right. He then notes that I declined to put great philosophical verities into the accounts of sad social throw-aways. Equally correct. None of these people are Diogenes. It stinks real bad under a bridge since there's no bathroom. That's about as insightful they it get, or need to get. I let my 70 odd frames of graphic art say most of what needs to be said.
Late empire, feel-good America has no stomach for this kind of book. It's already rocketing to the bottom of America's worst-seller list, but when "I'll Have What She's having" and "Super-Italian" is at the top, I may live with honor in America's other the vast, endless tent city - 21st century indie publishing.
JDA