The De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, East Sussex, is holding this exhibit, which includes works by Darger, between January 27 and April 15, 2007: “A Secret Service explores ideas and expressions of the secret through the work of sixteen artists and groups, some from the mainstream of contemporary practice, others from more marginal positions, spanning a period of almost a hundred years.”

Inner Worlds Outside

The Whitechapel Gallery in London is holding this exhibit, which includes at least one Darger watercolor, between April 28, 2006, and June 25, 2006. “Inner Worlds Outside now explodes the myths surrounding Outsiders, showing the parallels between Insider and Outsider Art, and the impact of unknown Outsiders on some of the greatest artists of the 20th Century.” (Thanks Kas)

A bigger problem than MacGregor’s speculations is his focus. He defends his psychiatric approach with the argument that Darger’s vast writings constitute diagnostic material as exhaustive as anything that could be provided by a living patient. But while Darger’s biography (and psychobiography) may be interesting enough, and they do shed some light on his work, it’s the work that really matters. To his credit MacGregor weaves Darger’s own writings and pictures through his text, but his relentless psychologizing quickly ceases to illuminate Darger’s breath-taking private world. Instead, they encase it, and the biography ends up obscuring the art, as happens so often with outsider artists.

MacGregor himself offers a far more interesting, and non-clinical, interpretation at the end of the book, leaving the reader wishing the previous 11 chapters had been similarly enlightening. “The Realms is an obsessional presentation of the reality of evil, an endlessly elaborated vision of hell on earth,” he writes. “It was, in part, a desperate and terrible question addressed to a passive and silent God,” a God in which Darger had absolute belief. As MacGregor describes it: “Where is God. Why does God allow these things to happen? How far can he be pushed before he will intervene?”

If Darger was attempting to outrage god into reacting, it makes sense that he would create the most awful scenes he could imagine — the gruesome, explicit torture of little girls that still outrages audiences today, whatever its effect on God. Retreating into psychiatry is the easy way out. It reduces Darger’s most profound, if disturbing, imagery into its lowest possible denominator: psychopathology. Of course Darger could have been pathological AND extraordinarily sensitive to the problem of evil. But MacGregor’s single-minded prosecution of Darger’s lust-driven sadism does not mesh with the far more engaging, and ultimately convincing, portrait of a man at war with God.

MacGregor, in a moment of insight, puts it best himself: “Nothing in Darger’s psychic content is either unique or inhuman. Everything we encounter in The Realms of the Unreal is also encountered in human history and in the human mind in extremis.” As he notes, “the tortures Darger invents … bear a striking resemblance to those used in the martyrdom of saints.” More to the point, “pathological sadism and murderous rage” is a prominent characteristic of the century in which Darger was writing. It would be hard to minimize the effect of the horrible devastation in the Civil War just a few decades before Darger was born, the Great War that he had just lived through, and World War II, which was looming as he wrote his saga and which preceded much of his artwork. In the end, Darger’s admittedly sadistic fantasies can be read as naïve (and naively inappropriate) attempts to capture the all-too-real horrors of the human condition as well as his immense rage at his own stunted life.

Because Darger happens to be weird, however, this content in his work constitutes a symptom rather than a subject. It is MacGregor himself who writes that “The tendency to engage in clinical reductionism … could have seriously obscured for the reader Darger’s astonishing uniqueness as a personality and an artist.” He obviously believes he resisted that tendency by waiting some 650 pages before discussing a literal diagnosis (autism, specifically Asperger’s Syndrome). But reductionism is present throughout the book and explicit in his own statements: “All of these narrative-constructs, however objective they may initially appear, are reflective of subjective psychological content, shifting moods and elemental drives.” Or put another way, “The flow of content in Darger is controlled, not by the logic of the narrative, but by internal necessity.”

Perhaps MacGregor was overwhelmed by Darger’s massive work. The reader is “buried beneath an avalanche of overwhelmingly obsessive and oppressive detail,” he writes. The reader of Henry Darger In the Realms of the Unreal may be forgiven a hint of the same feeling. It is testimony to the quality of MacGregor’s scholarship that his reductionist psychology often contrasts with richer and more revealing insights about the man and his work. Despite that, and the pleasures afforded by the numerous reproductions, it is a chore to make it through this book. The lack of an effective editor is apparent from a text that is far too long and lazily argued to make its own case effectively.

An editor might also have toned down MacGregor’s dubious hyperboles. References to uniqueness in the history of art and to the longest piece of imaginative prose ever written beg for rebuttal, since this book offers no proof that they are true. Yes Darger’s output is singular, but so is any great work of art. And yes The Realms is long, but did MacGregor really survey world libraries and manuscript repositories before declaring it the longest ever (a claim already being repeated as fact by journalists whose highest authority is the first clipping they happen to see)? In the end the book reads something like a disillusioned spouse running through the flaws of their mate. You know there is a good deal of detailed truth underlying the claims, but you take the exaggerations and harsh judgments with a large grain of salt.

Henry Darger In The Realms of The Unreal
By John M. MacGregor
Delano Greenidge Editions, New York, numerous black-and-white and color reproductions, 720 pages, 2002. ISBN-0-929445-15-5

Darger: The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Art Museum
By Brooke Davis Anderson, with an essay by Michael Thevoz
American Folk Art Museum and Harry N. Abrams, New York, many color plates, 128 pages, 2001. ISBN-0-8109-1398-4

It is testimony to Henry Darger’s isolation that his most extended intimacy with another human being probably happened after he was dead. We now have the fruit of that intimacy: John MacGregor’s authoritative 720-page study Henry Darger In the Realms of the Unreal.

A Canadian art historian and psychotherapist who made his name with his 1989 book The Discovery of the Art of the Insane, MacGregor spent a dozen years wrapped up in Darger’s voluminous writings and art — and in his actual living space, on Webster Avenue in Chicago. His fascination with Darger and awe at his genius obviously kept him engaged, but also fed his unease at Darger’s weirdness. While raw artistic talent made Darger’s work magnificent, his life, its troubles and eccentricities, made what he did with his talent problematic. On the one side is beauty. On the other is not just odd behavior but abject horror.

Darger’s pictorial accomplishments, which mix delicate innocence with extreme violence, have been widely known for years. Now, with this book and Michael Bonesteel’s Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings, his written work is finally gaining similar exposure. The texts provide important context for the pictures while representing an immense achievement in their own right — physically, in their thousands of pages, and intellectually, in their originality.

MacGregor presents the writing in small doses via numerous excerpts, making them somewhat more approachable than the longer passages in the Bonesteel book. Both books demonstrate that Darger’s writing, though not as immediately appealing as his pictures, contains the same flashes of creative fire. Even with his unpolished grammar and often-childlike descriptions, Darger displays great clarity and invention.

“Only now, after he is gone, is the richness of his being unfolding in the world, in ways and to an extent he could never have imagined — and never desired,” MacGregor writes. The recent publication of not two but three books, also including Darger: The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Art Museum, is the ultimate revenge of “Crazy,” as he was dubbed in his youth.

MacGregor ascribes a “near hallucinatory intensity” to Darger’s creative process that could be taken to corroborate that label, but there also is a self-awareness and lucidity that may surprise those whose understanding of Darger pigeonholes him as an eccentric loner. Among other striking excerpts:

Jean Dubuffet, možná nejvýzna?n?jší francouzský malí? druhé poloviny dvacátého století, se zabýval systematickým sb?ratelstvím tohoto ?istého a nezkaženého um?ní, jež nazval l’art brut, um?ní v surovém stavu. Podstatou je absence zažitých kánon? a formalistních prvk?, naprosto svobodná tvorba prostá p?ehnané estetizace podle m??ítek stanovených historiky um?ní nebo sm??ováním st?edního proudu. Jen tehdy, je-li ?lov?k zbaven ot?ží p?edvídatelného, je schopen vyjad?ovat se p?evratným zp?sobem, posunout um?ní o kr??ek dále. Art brut je tedy synonymem nového a p?ekvapivého, spole?enstvím nesourodých osobností, které spojuje jen snaha vytvo?it sv?j otisk na papí?e, malí?ském plátn?, skulptu?e nebo asamblážovaném objektu.

Nenajdete ve spole?nosti mnoho lidí schopných pracovat v um?ní bez vlivu okolních výtvarných podn?t?, proto nejvýrazn?jší díla pocházejí z rukou pomatenc?, blázn?, sexuáln? frustrovaných lidí. Možná do všech vyjmenovaných skupin by se dal za?adit i Henry Darger, zt?lesn?ní šílenosti a utajovaného zla, král infantility a brunátného násilí, vládce bolesti.

Darger m?l pohnuté d?tství — poté co jeho matka zem?ela p?i porodu Henryho sestry a otec jej shledal nezvladatelným, umístil jej ve v?ku osmi let do sirot?ince. V dosp?losti pak m?l Darger pov?st podivína, vybíral z popelnic komiksy a ilustrované ?asopisy a po ve?erech vysedával ve svém byt? pono?en do usilovné práce. Teprve po jeho smrti v roce 1973 vydal byt sv?dectví o ilustrované sáze o více než patnácti tisících stránkách, kterou podivný sta?ec za sv?j život vytvo?il.

Neskute?n? silná sm?s utrpení, deprese a lidské bezbrannosti provází celé jeho dílo, celé rozsáhlé soubory prací vytvo?ené v pr?b?hu tak?ka šesti desítek let. P?edkládá p?íb?hy k?ehkých blon?atých dív?in s malými penisy, které jsou stiženy hr?zami válek a mohutnými výbuchy, pronásledovány agresivními vojáky, bez slitování mu?eny, škrceny a k?ižovány, až pozvednou svými tenkými pažemi st?elné zbran? a postaví se krutovlád? na odpor… Motivy d?tského osamocení, pot?eby adopce a osoba zachránce — dokonalého kapitána Henryho Dargera — se navracejí v nekone?ných cyklech.

Jedná se p?evážn? o rozm?rné akvarely panoramatických formát? poslepované hned z n?kolika kus? papíru. Darger nebyl moc kresebn? zdatný, a tak obkresloval postavi?ky z dobových ?asopis? a ilustrovaných inzerát?, proto lze na mnohých kresbách vid?t jedno multiplikované t?lo. Obrazy v?tšinou doslova hý?í barvami, jásavá barevnost tak ost?e kontrastuje s pesimismem nám?tu a podtrhává jakousi podivn? vzrušující dekadentnost celého díla.

Henry Darger je zastoupen na výte?né výstav? Art Brut ze sbírky francouzského filmového režiséra Bruna Decharme, již uspo?ádala Galerie hlavního m?sta Prahy v Dom? U Kamenného zvonu a která trvá do 10. zá?í 2006 — rozhodn? stojí za vid?ní! Na výstav? se promítají i dokumenty, jeden z nich je celý o Dargerovi a krátkou ukázku m?žete shlédnout zde, na Amazonu je k sehnání n?kolik p?kných publikací a DVD. Já toho ?lov?ka prost? miluju.

Fue un escritor e ilustrador estadounidense de carácter reclusivo que vivió como un deconocido en Chicago trabajando en la limpieza. Fue al morirse que se descubrio su manuscrito fantástico de 15.143 páginas titulado “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”, acompañado con ilustraciones como estas que verán a continuación.

35 años despues de su muerte (y descubrimiento de su legado) su influencia es indiscutible en el mundo del rock, arte y la contracultura.

]]> http://www.henrydarger.info/el-increible-mundo-de-henry-darger.html/feed http://www.henrydarger.info/more-paintings.html http://www.henrydarger.info/more-paintings.html#comments Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:57:15 +0000 Admin http://www.henrydarger.info/?p=20

Indie rock band …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead have a song titled “Segue: In the Realms of the Unreal” on their 2006 album So Divided.

Neil Gaiman also references Darger’s work in a story contained in a Sandman collection, Endless Nights. In the episode called Going Inside, Delirium is saved from having gone too deep inside her own mind by five mentally challenged people and her guardian dog. One of the characters, an old man, is writing and illustrating a mammoth project that resembles Darger’s work very closely in the loneliness of his own house. However, the reference has to be considered inspirational rather than factual, as fictional details, such as the man punishing himself for not having written enough pages per day, are installed into the character’s story.

Philadelphia duo The Vivian Girls Experience take their name and image from Darger’s work.

Indie band Tilly and the Wall have a song titled Lost Girls which was inspired by Darger’s work.

Artist/Activist Paul Chan created an artwork in 2003 entitled “Happiness (Finally) After 35,000 Years of Civilization–After Henry Darger and Charles Fourier”

The band formerly known as Mazarin (now called Black Stoltzfus) has a song called “Henry Darger”.

Chicago theatre company Dog And Pony created and produced an original work, entitled “As Told By The Vivian Girls,” based on In The Realms Of The Unreal, and performed it at Theatre On The Lake, a theatre in the same neighborhood as Darger’s Chicago studio apartment.

The Vivian Girls were also namechecked by San Francisco guitarist Snakefinger (Philip Lithman Roth), an associate of the Residents, in his song “The Vivian Girls.” The song was also recorded by Camper Van Beethoven offshoot Monks of Doom on their 1989 LP “The Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company.”

Sufjan Stevens released a song titled “The Vivian Girls Are Visited in the Night by Saint Dargarius and His Squadron of Benevolent Butterflies” on his 2006 compilation album The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras from the Illinois Album.