1651. Then there was the advantage of his being psychotic, which is not an indispensable trait for the outsider artist, but certainly a great benefit. Adolph was encouraged by his warders to draw, and was given full sheets of blank newsprint to work on. He was also provided with a pencil about once a week which, having nothing else to do in solitary confinement, he managed to use down to a tiny stub in a few days.
1652. All his life he covered sheet after sheet of newsprint with dense and elaborate patterns and figures operating under the rule of “horror vacui,” which is a fear of any empty space. The term horror vacui is not quite accurate however because it is his subtle juxtaposition of intricate line patterns with small areas which are nearly blank, combined with a overall underlying patterns that are constantly becoming skewed, that give the work its awkward charm.
1653. One can see that he endeavored to create works that had an underlying rigid geometry, and yet his rigid geometry would constantly veer off in a way that must have baffled him, like a horse that has its own idea about where it wants to go regardless of the intent of the rider. More than anything else, that distorted geometry is the key to his work in that it directly expresses his plight: a man who, regardless of the efforts he made all his life to do a certain thing, found himself constantly condemned to do the opposite.
1654. The drawings he made are like the crimes he committed, because in his mind, like Frankenstein’s monster when he encountered the child, he means no harm but his inner corrupted geometry leads to a catastrophe.
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