Anyone familiar with this guy? Possibly the best-known “outsider artist” in America and Europe today?
A brief bio: Henry Joseph Darger was born in Chicago in 1892. Four years later his mother died during childbirth. When his father became unable to care for him, Henry went first to a boys’ home and later to the Lincoln Asylum in downstate Illinois. After his father’s death, he ran away to Chicago where he lived the rest of his life, working as a janitor, dishwasher, and bandage roller in three local hospitals. By night he wrote his great unfinished novel, In the Realms of the Unreal, and later created the artworks for which he is best known. He died in 1973.
The Museum of American Folk Art here in Manhattan had a major exhibition of Darger’s artwork about two-three years ago. I went to see it after reading about him in the TIMES.
I found it curiously repellant and disturbing. The lonely work of an extremely odd guy who spent most of his day (when he wasn’t working at menial jobs) in church. Huge watercolor murals of little girls, painstakingly traced from newspaper ads and children’s books, some sporting horns, butterfly wings, and male genitalia. An enormous disjionted manuscript about a society where children are enslaved, and about their uprising against sadistic military masters.
Even though I came away from the museum feeling like I needed to wash my eyeballs and brain with Clorox, it’s been impossible to shake the images. Now Rizzoli has published the first book containing not only reproductions of Darger’s paintings, but excerpts from his manuscript.
The Museum of American Folk Art in NYC has announced the acquisition of 22 paintings, complete manuscripts, and extensive archive of sketches, tracings, maps, and source materials of Henry Darger!
The largest manuscript is the complete 12-volume, 15,000 page novel The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.
Combined with the four Darger paintings the museum already owns, this makes it the largest repository of Darger material in the world. The other contender is the Art Brut Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Due to the furious maelstrom of interest this thread has whipped up among the Teeming Millions, I’ll check in frequently through the night with updates!
I may have to start seven or eight other threads in various Forums across the Board in order to explore all the exciting ramifications!
“The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion?”
Henry Darger, famous obscure Chicagoan, returned from the grave today to protest the New York Folk Art Museum’s acquisition of his journals, manuscripts, and artwork.
“This was my private wanking material!” Mr. Darger commented. “I certainly didn’t mean for thousands…well, dozens…of people to stare at it in a museum display! I mean, my god, how fucking embarrassing! It’s little girls, for chrissake!”
After speaking to reporters, Mr. Darger went to church.**