Nobody’s Savant: The Mythic Fantasy of Autistic Genius
I knew I had to write this the moment I left the cinema. I felt so confronted by Nobody’s Sweetie, a documentary about the legacy of abstract painter Dale Frank (b. 1959), diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in his sixties. I am also an abstract painter, diagnosed with ASD at age sixteen, and now in my thirties. Any connection I have with Frank could appear arbitrary—I have never met him, I have no insight into his identity or experience, and I do not claim to speak for him. Still, I feel I have something at stake in the conversation about his legacy.
Exclusive to the Magazine
Nobody’s Savant: The Mythic Fantasy of Autistic Genius by Nunzio Madden is featured in full in Issue 3 of Memo magazine.
Get your hands on the print edition through our online shop or save up to 20% and get free domestic shipping with a subscription.
Related
Collaboration has become a buzzword among contemporary art’s cultural bureaucrats and market operatives.
The Tennant Creek Brio transform mining maps, dead TVs, and frontier wreckage into new cultural claims—rejecting imposed “otherness” and forcing the settler gaze into confrontation. If their art is a shock, who’s really being unsettled?
“It is no longer my face (identification), but the face that has somehow been given to me (circumstantial possession) as stage property.” — Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, Omnicide: Mania, Fatality, and the Future-in-Delirium