Visiting The American Folk Art Museum is like going to your crazy Aunt Mildred’s for a meatloaf and potato dinner. Her living room is a kitschy, hoarder’s delight. How and when did she have time to collect an original Kewpie doll? Why does she have such a large rubber band ball? Why in the world would anyone want these soda cap robots, Jesus woodcarvings, tobacco shop Zouaves, Abraham Lincoln whirligigs, Amish quilts, and paper cut lamps? Is that an aluminum deer head that I see? Boy, Aunt Mildred is really weird.

The museum is like a scrapbook and longitudinal study in American crafting. There are hints of high art, but mostly instances of low art. The curatorial staff, with their explanatory labels, was constantly questioning what past Americana obsessions can be counted as real collectibles or real art and which were merely put in the annals of the bygone strange. The overall museum vibe was very innocent and a bit naïve. Usually buttons, spoons, thimbles, plastic bags, and bits of carpet do not a museum make. However, it was nice to be challenged as to one’s current concept of “what art is”. Too often museums rest on the conventions of yore. The American Folk Art Museum lingers on the precipice of high art and low art, sometimes balancing the tight rope perfectly. A continual question that kept reoccurring on all floors of the museum was, “Are self-taught artists conscious of themselves as artists?” Morris Hirshfield, whose piece The Artist and His Model (1945) was on display, definitely seemed to interact with the zeitgeist of his art world. For example, try comparing any one of his painting to a Henri Rousseau. Although Hirshfield is considered an outside artist and naïve painter, his images have hints of early surrealism. Thomas Cole’s famous landscaping work and light play for the Hudson River School is renown in the art world, yet Thomas Chamber’s landscape art is not. They do not differ all that much except for the fact that Cole is displayed at the National Gallery of Art and Chambers is displayed as outsider art in The American Folk Art Museum.

The museum also attempts to breakdown preconceived notions about self-taught artists; they are not all hermits, they are not all rural, they are not all obsessive compulsive. Yet, some of them on display really are all of the aforementioned; the stereotype persists for a reason. Henry Darger, known for his fantastical, “Alice in Wonderland” type scenarios, wrote a 15,145-page, single-spaced fantasy manuscript called 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. He also produced several hundred illustrations to accompany the story, modeled after coloring books and various advertisements from his day. His mental health was questionable. He seemed to exist in the realms of the unreal, but so too did J. R. Tolkien, John Tenniel, and Madeleine L’Engle who are now considered greats. During his life time his art was never art, yet posthumously, critics have decided to define it as such. The museum has even created a Henry Darger Study Center in 2001.

As famed cultural critic Dave Hickey argues in his seminal work “The Invisible Dragon”, beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Hickey states, “These people [museums] were setting themselves up as guardians of public taste. My argument was, basically, beauty allows us direct access to art without public oversight.” Although The American Museum of Folk Art is still an institutional gatekeeper, it is taking a step in the right direction, which seems to be away from the patronage system of Michelangelos and Monets.

**********

Keren Veisblatt, TC ‘11

This is the part of our blog series 30 Museums in 28 Weeks. Through CUarts’ Passport to New York program, Columbia students get in free to 30 museums in the city. We will attempt to visit every single one of these museums before the end of this academic year and share the experience here with you. 30 museums. 28 weeks. That’s a lot of culture. Check out our progress here.

The Illustration program, Parsons the New School for Design presents…

Filming Henry Darger: A special presentation by Mark Stokes, director of a new feature-length documentary film on the outsider artist Henry Darger. Mr. Stokes will shows clips from his upcoming film and discuss his research, discoveries and adventures in Chicago!

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 6pm
Parsons The New School for Design
Kellen Auditorium,
66 5th Avenue (between 12th and 13th Streets)
New York, NY

[Image credit--Henry Darger: At Jennie Richee. At shore of Aronburg Run river storm comes up anew (Detail) © Kiyoko Lerner.]

Beth Frey’s sensibility reminds me of Henry Darger.  They share a vivid fantasy life using young children as a motif.  The resemblance ends there.  Frey can actually draw and Darger traced his young characters from catalogues.

The child characters in Frey’s drawings are cherubim in nature, floating around in their chubby little bodies climbing on things.  Mostly they appear curious, just like real children trying to learn about the world.  But as you look closer, some of the children are engaged in puzzling activities.

Children are gathered in circles.  Others wear animal masks.  Some are blindfolded.  Superstition, masquerades and torture come to mind, but you’re really not too sure.  It’s just a feeling you get.  But it is unsettling.  Mostly because menace is only suggested but not quite realized.  Danger is close by but not yet doing any harm to the children.

Black and white characters that best resemble puppets quietly play the part of menace in the background.  If you don’t look closely, you might not notice that a seallion (a lion head with a seal’s body) is being stabbed by the black and white characters. Through it all, the seallion continues to smile and look cute as if he does not have a knife plunged into his side.  In this world, cuteness is a slave to evil and innocence is always in jeopardy.

I am not enchanted by Frey`s sensibility. I barely liked children`s books when I was a child and don`t like anything to do with harm coming to children, but I`m surprised by how intrigued I am by these works.  The restraint used to create tension, the unsettling clash of cultures, and the seeming sincerity of style and execution held my attention and hasn`t really let go.

Beth Frey’s hand written business card lists the following underneath her name: visual art, illustration, children’s workshops and tall tales.  She crosses out tall tales which reads like a pretty bang on artist’s statement to me.

The Illustration program, Parsons the New School for Design presents…

Filming Henry Darger: A special presentation by Mark Stokes, director of a new feature-length documentary film on the outsider artist Henry Darger. Mr. Stokes will shows clips from his upcoming film and discuss his research, discoveries and adventures in Chicago!

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 6pm
Parsons The New School for Design
Kellen Auditorium,
66 5th Avenue (between 12th and 13th Streets)
New York, NY

[Image credit--Henry Darger: At Jennie Richee. At shore of Aronburg Run river storm comes up anew (Detail) © Kiyoko Lerner.]

When dealing with outsider art, respect is due. Nay, respect is essential. But so is egalitarianism. The danger has always been to treat the savants and unexpected genii of the outsider world with something other than the same deference usually saved for normal artists. It is, of course, only the market’s imposition on the fruits of artistic labour, and the artist’s heed of its overbearing weight which differs between those artists slave to it and those removed from it…

And it is in this light that I approached three recent cultural exponents of the outsider cause: the opening of the new Museum of Everything in Primrose Hill, the Koestler Trust’s 2009 Art By Offenders, Secure Patients and Detainees exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall, and a wonderful opportunity to see Mr Daniel Johnston performing at the splendid Bloomsbury Ballroom.

Firstly, the Museum of Everything. Just around the corner from the tea rooms, bistros and cocaine residue of this illustrious corner of NW1 lies a treasure trove of outsider art – the collection of filmmaker James Brett – which has been promoted to the public as not only “London’s first ever space for artists and creators living outside our modern society”. The result is less than respectful.

The curatorial decision seems to have been to make the space, you know, kooky, like these kooky fellas on show. All slanted walls, badly drawn name signs and cobbled together display rooms both using and enhancing the space’s industrial backwater ambience. Unpainted/badly painted walls, breeze block walls and jutting out wires and bricks make for a space knowingly different… but not outsider. A gallery space doesn’t have to go this far to mark itself as distinct from the white space of the contemporary gallery. Indeed, one of the most celebrated and complete collectiosn of Outsider Art – the collection of Mr Art Brut himself, Jean Dubuffet, in Lausanne – is a perfect embodiment of this. At no point does this gallery impinge on the work it is celebrating, but rather takes a back seat letting the Dargers, the Scotts and the Gills take over. Similarly, the Whitechapel’s Inner Worlds Outside exhibition of a few years previously fully respected these works by placing them alongside their contemporaries illustrating the interaction of the arts in recent history outside of a framework potted with distinctions. The Museum of Everything seems to knowingly plays upon its difference from contemporary art at a time when the latters’ association with money and greed threatens to devalue it further than the market itself has managed.

As such, I left this new museum dejected, even having seen a wonderful collection of artists all worth noting and celebrating. The calligraphic meanderings of Dan Miller, for example, 

Dan Miller

or the troublingly post-propaganda Soviet ramblings of Alexandre P. Lobanov 

Alexandre P. Lobanov

On a more positive note, however, the museum’s decision to ask noted artists to write about its exhibitors was a fantastic one, and one which salvaged some sort of favour in my eyes. I was particularly fascinated by not only the speakers they chose, but the apparent linkages. Jamie Shovlin’s relation to Charles AA Dellschau’s stunted historiography, Tal R’s appropriate evocation of Judith Scott’s luxuriously colourful abstractions, and even Pete Townsend’s celebration of the extraordinarily powerful drawings of Donald Pass.

Donald Pass, untitled, 1984

 

I encountered similar problems at the Royal Festival Hall attending the 2009 Koestler Trust exhibition. Again, the work was fascinating and, at times, truly exceptional, not to mention largely devoid of the clichés and inanities of contemporary frieze-art. And, in fact, the exhibitions’ place on the Spirit Level of the RFH is well chosen and well-curated – by inmates of two women’s prisons as it turns out. Unfortunately, the Southbank appears to then kick itself in the foot by repeatedly failing to advertise the work sufficiently. In none of the flyer stands, of which there are many, can be found leaflets promoting this exhibition, and on encountering the few works which sit on the main concourse, you would be hard pushed to realise their were more works to be found downstairs. Such a wonderful opportunity to see the work and minds of these artists deserves better.

Particularly noteworthy were two works, one by an inmate from HMP Brendon, Bucks listed only as Michael entitled Is Masculinity Inevitable?, and another anonymously exhibition by an inmate from HMP Shotts, Scotland entitled Yours Sincerely, The Tabloid Press.

Is Masculinity Inevitable? , Michael, HMP Brendon, Bucks

Is Masculinity Inevitable? (detail)

 

Yours Sincerely, the Tabloid Press, Anon, HMP Shotts, Scotland

 

Both – though not necessarily proficient in high-art terms – exhibit a developed ability with their materials, whilst picking apart some of the more interesting questions which must reoccur within penal institutions. Masculinity is presented shot through with metaphors both expected and ambiguous, from matadors to molecular science, history lessons through to contemporary history. The result is a seeming meditation on the complexity of the human condition, exemplified in a way the tabloid press would be hard pressed to believe never mind appreciate. The second work, subsequently, embodies a more immediate and impassioned response to the Paparazzi’s approach to the accused and their families: slobbering, scrupulous and stoic in their hounding and, impressively, with more than one face as the sky curdles and surroundings haemorrhage.

Here is the world of the penal outsider, stripped of dignity and attempting to claw some back in paint and pen. Rather than working “outside our modern society” as, supposedly, are the outsiders of the Museum of Everything, here we find men and women working AS A RESULT OF modern society, or so they seem to say… There are few declarations of dissatisfaction with the results of their choices, and their position in society, but dissatisfaction with society – civilization in Freudian terms – abounds. The confines of the RFH appear an appropriately cultured and Liberal surround to showcase such views within.

And so finally to the admirable and incredible Daniel Johnston, whose surroundings at the Bloomsbury Ballroom appeared the perfect final resting place of my week of outsider art: triumphant, elegant and perfectly social. Here was a setting neither outside nor aware of its relation to culture.. this was HIGH culture, and brazenly so… and Daniel Johnston shone in the spotlight bearing all his fragility and fears as a badge of pride. 

Daniel Johnston w. David Tatersall of The Wave Pictures.

 

Starting off with just a guitar like a babe-in-arms for company, Daniel walked on stage nervous and awkward. He played a few songs to rapturous applause, and for the moment, I was uneasy. I am a big fan of Johnston’s music, but the response seemed almost out of kilter with the reality of Johnston’s rickety attempts at renditions. What’s more, I couldn’t hold in the feeling that the applause lay somewhere between appreciation and encouragement, and the awkward patronising sound of pity…

Yet as time went on, Johnston grew in stature. Never relaxed, but certainly enjoying himself and allowing himself a joke or two, songs such as Living Life and Bloody Rainbow, sung with accompaniment, were joyful and enchanting, and the final rendition of True Love Will Find You in the End couldn’t have been better judged.

And it was with the accompaniment of support band The Wave Pictures for this and indeed the last five or six numbers that Johnston truly came into his own. Their enjoyable brand of indie lounge rock sloped away behind him, providing the occasional glimmering solo, and most memorably a crunching and riotous embellishment of his track Rock N Roll, as Johnston yelped over the guitars his lyrics about how rock n roll, and more specifically the Beatles gave him something to live for as a young man with extreme Bipolar disorder. And as he screeched

        That Rock N Roll, it saved my soul

 one couldn’t help but feel glad it had, and that it was doing the same for a room full of people.

 **

In the Wave Pictures’ accompaniment of Daniel Johnston I witnessed the most disarming spectacle of the week. Three young musicians clearly alongside a hero, a hero with extreme difficulties who had to leave the stage to collect himself more than once during the concert. Yet playing alongside him they appeared to experience all the joy one would expect of such an opportunity. Almost goading each other on to rock out more heavily on Rock N Roll, they enjoyed every second of their evening with him, and so did he it appeared.

Similarly, the inmates given the opportunity to show their work by the Koestler Trust, and those invited to curate the exhibition, were treated with nearly all the respect due to them as artists standing alone.

Yet in the Museum of Everything, we have the ability to witness the work of some of the most interesting and truly wonderful artists of the last century or so, celebrated endlessly since Dubuffet and Hans Prinzhorn first acknowledged the proffers of those working “outside of society” decades ago, presented as the misfits hundreds of people have worked painstakingly to put an end to… it’s a disappointing rendition of an inspiring collection, and a continuingly important insight.

Here is how I got to make the Tumblewraps:

(“Spangled Blengins, Boy King Islands. One is a Young Tuskerhorian, the Other a Human Headed Dortherean”
Collage, Carbon Tracing, Pencil and Watercolor by Henry Darger)

“Art, by its very essence, is of the new, we expect art to uproot us, to unhinge doors. When the pompous platforms of Culture are erected, and awards and laurels come raining down, then flee as fast as you can, there’ll be little hope for art. If art did exist here, it’s already gone by now, it hurried off for a change of air. It’s allergic to the air of collective approval.”

- Henry Darger

In 1972, the art critic Roger Cardinal brought forth into the culture a new, working English descriptor synonymous for Jean Dubuffet’s “art brut” (raw art or rough art) in his book, “Cultural Conditioning”. The new coinage became “outsider art” and would henceforth yoke the necks of untrained and self-trained artists alike as a wretched, dead, stinking albatross to be cheerfully lugged up mountainside while pushing a boulder. Such Sisyphean toil serves only as a crippling stigma to the artist who deserves to be treated as a brother or a sister in the community despite their lack of academic/aesthetic programming. This only benefits the so-called “Creative Class” who were already born into considerable wealth and monied tourists to throw their pennies at the freak show and laugh. It was no mistake that Dubuffet focused his art brut attentions on insane asylum patients. Dubuffet was the son of a well-to-do wine merchant and received his early studies at the prestigious yet revolutionary Académie Julian in Paris. As much as Dubuffet was a great champion of a more primitive, yeomanlike approach in his own work, he was afforded a certain position at the social expense of non-academic artists.

More to the point: if one artist is an outsider, then, we are all a bunch of outsiders. Welcome to the club.

(“Still a sorry saint…” One of only three known photos of Henry Darger, possibly the last. Late 1960’s, early 1970’s. Lincoln Park neighborhood. Chicago, Illinois.)

The exact month and day have been debated for years, but according to all reports, Henry Joseph Darger, Jr. was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 12th, 1892. On June 2nd, 1917, toward the end of World War I, Darger filled out a draft registration card for the U.S. Army. He listed his birth date as April 17th, 1892. From the time he was a young boy until he was aged seventy-nine years, he exhaustively amassed the great vernacular fantasy work, “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”. At 15,145 pages, he collected volumes of his writings by re-using old telephone books which also displayed hundreds of his delicate illustrations depicting his asexual girl-boy warriors, The Vivian Girls. Henry Darger died the day after his eighty-first birthday on April 13th, 1973. His landlords, Nathan and Kiyoko Lerner came across Darger’s monumental work moments before his death. Nathan Lerner, himself, was a professional photographer whose images appeared in The New York Times for many years. Immediately seeing the profound depth of artistic merit in his volumes, the Lerners took charge of Henry Darger’s estate. Nathan Lerner died in 1997, making his widow, Kiyoko Lerner, solely in charge of both estates. The Artists Rights Society is the United States copyright representative for both Henry Darger and Nathan Lerner.

(“At Jennie Richee – Vivian Girls Are Sent By General (Emperor) Vivian Their Father To Seize A Certain Enemy Plan” Carbon Tracing, Pencil and Watercolor by Henry Darger)

To give an encapsulated overview of the life and work of Henry Darger would extend beyond a couple thousand words, and I don’t want to wear you out with my spin on all what has already been said in tribute songs by Sufjan Stevens and Natalie Merchant, a well-researched article on Wikipedia, and the extremely fine 2004 documentary, “In the Realms of the Unreal” by Jessica Yu. Nor will I bother to speculate on the layers of his eccentricity and mental illness. Preferably, I wish to give my interpretation of how his art effects me, and as I opined in the beginning, what an abomination of a title “outsider art” is in describing the work of poor, dormant geniuses.

During his lifetime, Darger, who worked as a low-paid hospital janitor for sixty-plus years had his manic obsessions. He combined his devout Catholicism with his defending love of children, Christianity, and The Civil War. For Darger, his novel was a true labor of love. He did it for only himself, though in the narrative, he leads the observer to believe that he was a protector of these children who were very real to him. Essentially, The Vivian Girls were his friends. Darger had no desire for financial gain from the adventures of these characters.

Henry Darger imbued his child warriors with what he perceived to be the Spirit of the Holy Ghost. It’s very effective, for the “girls” seem to levitate off the page, to float entirely on their own. They individually appeared to be capable of all that was miraculous… and were pretty handy with bow and arrow in mortal combat. I leave you here, my friends. Something to think about.

Martin Ramirez came to the States from Mexico in 1925 to earn money for his family working mines and railroads. Unfortunately for him, as for so many others, he made it just in time for the depression. Homeless and unable to communicate, he was picked up by the police. He was labeled a catatonic schizophrenic and put into a psychiatric hospital, then a tuberculosis ward, closed off from the larger world for almost half of his life. Ramirez was a small, frail man who found refuge from the violence of the ward under tables, painting.

He used matchsticks dipped in the melted wax of crayons to draw and made his own paint pots out of scrounged oatmeal, formed and baked on the ward’s heaters. He used paste made of bread or potatoes and saliva to adhere magazine clippings to discarded paper and used tongue depressors for rulers. From these meager supplies and in a place few would say was ideal for fostering creativity, he made art that surpasses much of what today’s inflated artists can crank out with the best tools and most pandering art crowds in their corner. Still, for all this backstory, his work isn’t remarkable because he was diagnosed as schizophrenic or because it came from beneath a table in a mid-century psych ward but because, simply put, his work is remarkable.

Both his work and his ways remind me of Henry Darger. They both created for their own sake with the simplest of means. For the reclusive Darger it was simply that no one knew he was creating anything at all despite his 15,000 page book and grand two-sided, mural sized illustrations — a world to which he retreated almost entirely. Ramirez, in many ways, was a victim of his time and perceived illness. While he chose not to speak, he was separated from the word by a system, not a choice. He created knowing his hundreds of paintings were going to disappear from the sight of everyone, himself included. It was common practice for patients’ art to be confiscated and burned and his were no exception. That is until Tarmo Pasto came along. Pasto was an artist and psychologist studying mental illness and creativity. He was the first to take seriously Ramirez’s paintings and began saving them from destruction. He organized gallery shows and garnered an impressive amount of exposure for the work. As with most artists — whether by luck, tradition or good timing on the part of the seller — the works made no real money until five years after Ramirez’s death when Pasto sold them to an artist and his dealer to put his son through med school.

Since the explosion of interest and monetary value, many once lost works have been discovered, most having been stored in bundles in a state fitting of something just above garbage, tucked away in garages and forgotten corners. In an all-too-typical turn of events, now that he’s gone and famous, people are engaging in legal battles to determine ownership and sales rights regarding his work, even against his relatives. When he was just a mental patient, all Pasto had to do was be the man between an artist and a burn pile.

Fa uns dies, voltant per la barra d’enllaços del bloc de l’Agustín Fernández Mallo, vaig anar a parar a un article que el propi autor de Nocilla Dream va publicar l’any passat a El País Semanal.  L’article es diu «La oscura vida de un pintor marginal», i el podeu llegir aquí mateix. El seu protagonista és Henry Darger, un tipus absolutament peculiar que, entre altres moltes rareses, va passar-se els darrers quaranta anys de la seva solitària vida consagrat a escriure i il·lustrar un llibre que, a la seva mort, tenia més de quinze mil pàgines. El llibre (prenc aire) es titula La historia de las niñas Vivian, en lo que se conoce como los Reinos de lo Irreal, sobre la Guerra-Tormenta Glandeco-Angeliniana causada por la rebelión de los Niños Esclavos, i el seu argument és gairebé tan llarg de dir i tan difícil d’explicar com el seu títol. Els dibuixos i aquarel·les que l’il·lustren, igualment abundants, són pròdigs en nenes nues amb gran ales de mariposa que pateixen tota classe de turments a mans de soldats adults armats amb bayonetes.

La història de Henry Darger és molt, molt interessant, i ho és tant per ella mateixa, com pel que té de símbol o de resum gairebé perfecte d’allò que els entesos en diuen «art marginal»: aquesta mena particular d’art creat per tot un seguit d’individus aïllats, outsiders, sovint autodidactes i moltes vegades malalts, que des de fora del sistema composen una obra literalment pura, no tacada per cap dels condicionants que llastren la creació dels artistes que podriem dir «convencionals». El resultat dels seus esforços solitaris és allò que avui dia ens sembla gairebé impensable: un art concebut des de fora de les exigències del mercat. 

Al seu article, Agustín Fernández Mallo posa alguns exemples més d’aquest tipus de creadors. Així, parla de Ferdinand Cheval, un carter francès que va trigar 33 anys a construir-se, pedra a pedra, un palau de somni (o més aviat de malson) que avui dia té la consideració de patrimoni cultural del seu país; i també de David Nebreda, un fotògraf madrileny diagnosticat d’esquizofrènia que viu completament aïllat a casa seva, no es medica ni té relació amb cap altre ésser humà i és autor d’una obra tan personal com absolutament perturbadora; i, com no, també parla del gran Daniel Johnston.

Jo no em veig amb cor de resumir en un parell de paràgrafs ni la vida ni la personalitat de Daniel Johnston, aquest cantant i artista naïf que pateix uns gravíssims problemes mentals i que viu obsessionat amb el Diable, s’identifica plenament amb el Capità Amèrica i amb Casper el fantasmet i es va fer famós gràcies a una samarreta seva que en el seu moment va lluir Kurt Cobain. Podeu llegir aquest article sobre ell, i mirar-vos els vídeos que l’il·lustren, i després podeu buscar una còpia de The Devil and Daniel Johnston, una pel·lícula documental sobre el nostre home que es va filmar l’any 2005 i què és una meravella. Jo la vaig veure ahir, i encara estic amb la boca oberta de tot el què vaig escoltar, veure i sentir en ella.  

Us deixo amb un parells de vídeos amb actuacions de Daniel Johnston, i amb el tràiler de la pròpia pel·lícula. I si voleu sentir la seva música en CD, nosaltres a la biblioteca en tenim un que es diu, molt johnstonianament, Discovered Covered – The Late Great Daniel Johnston, i què, a més de dinou cançons cantades pel propi DJ (que a la portada apareix mirant-se la seva pròpia tomba), ofereix divuit versions de les seves cançons gravades per gent com Eels, Beck, Death Cab for Cutie o (atenció) el mismíssim Tom Waits.

You know, sometimes I just have had it. I would just like to drop my keyboard, grow a beard, and lock myself up in a mansion for a couple years. But then reality dawns on me, I’m not BATSHIT insane. After the jump, the tale of a crazy dude who probably puts all authors ever to shame.

JANITOR CRAZY: HENRY DARGER

Readers of the site would agree, that if Chris-Chan could be associated with any well-known person from the past, it would be this guy. Coming off as just your creepy, run-o-the-mill janitor, Darger had secretly been developing a fantasy epic, titled In the Realms of the Unreal, that spanned over 15 gigantic volumes, being roughly 15,145 total pages. His entire life’s work was not discovered until shortly after his death, when his landlord decided to clear out his apartment.

The story told of a war in the future by pseudo-confederate soldiers and little children. That’s just a rough cut of what this work of art holds. He also included several drawings detailing the epic battles and scenes from the text. Most peculiar was the fact that some of the girls were naked, with them having penises. Many believe that Darger had never seen a woman nude, and was not aware of an anatomical difference between the two genders. Just goes to show you what life was like before porno.

Along with his tomes, there were several poems, drawings, and an autobiography, sufficiently titled The Story of My Life, which went on for about 206 pages until it completely went to crazy town turning into a 4,672 work of fiction about a tornado named “Sweetie Pie.”

A second, unfinished fantasy epic, entitled Crazy House: Further Adventures in Chicago, featuring 10,000 handwritten pages, was essentially a spin off of Realms. In a time that predated George Lucas, Darger had the franchise business plan down pat.

Since the discovery of his works, Darger has become a major symbol in Outsider Art, and his works of art go for the highest amount of money amongst all self-taught artists. It just gives me the chilling realization that one day, Chris-Chan’s work will be in the Smithsonian. ::shudder::

For more info, feel free to check out his Wikipedia article.

Image by Henry Darger

For a writing assignment in the fourth grade, I wrote “Samuel, You’re Special,” the story of a girl who lives on a farm in a poor village and struggles to feed and clothe her siblings.  One day she finds a worm that catches her fancy (don’t ask me why) and she takes him home.  She names it Samuel.  The girl sees what others cannot: Samuel is special.  The food she gives him, leaves and berries, becomes a feast of meat and elaborate side dishes on plates of the finest china, before her eyes.  She shares the meal with Samuel in delight.  That night, the girl puts Samuel in a little matchbox to sleep in and the next day she awakes to see the matchbox is a lavish king-sized bed.  (I didn’t specify whether she decides to share the bed with him.)  The following day, she finds her cottage is a mansion, her oat cart is a horse-drawn carriage, and her fields are lush and verdant.  They marry of course and ride away in the new carriage to happily ever after, but the twist is, Samuel remains a worm and the girl accepts it just as it is.

When I wrote this underwhelming story at the age of nine, I saw it as a protest against the fairy tales I’d been read as a child, where the frog, the beast, and the hedgehog conveniently turn into dashing Prince Charmings when the heroine falls in love with them.  Often in these tales, the heroine must even prove herself worthy of the unsightly creature before it metamorphoses into its true self.  But what if, after the girl has promised eternal devotion, the suitor reveals itself to be really just as it’d appeared, and the frog prefers to feast on flies and crickets, the beast continues to grunt, tear animals apart and rage, and the prickly hedgehog apologizes in a squeal for not being able to move its penis from the center of its abdomen—what then?  Could our heroine claim irreconcilable differences long, long ago and far, far away?

Granted, there is one notable difference between these lucky ladies who got a dashing prince when they least expected it and my own heroine, who really did marry just a worm: I never stated how the village girl and Samuel communicated their values, interests, and hopes.  Because I didn’t mention that Samuel spoke a language that the girl could understand, there was no way of their connecting on any deeper level than its making luxuries appear and her accepting them and allowing it to share in her spoils.  My fourth grade teacher was kind enough not to point out this flaw in my narrative nor did it occur to me till many years later that my village heroine was most likely a gold digger who was very greedy, lonely, and probably unfaithful after her grand marriage.

Still, I wonder, what if Jeff had possessed Samuel’s special knack for turning bread crumbs into feats and rags into gowns: would I no longer have cared if others saw me kiss him?  Would I have accepted my obligation to attend baseball games and bluegrass festivals?  Had he been independently wealthy (or attractive), would I have been less dismissive of him and allowed myself to forget the valid and recurring problems in our relationship?

[Continued here]

Darger’s private world centered around seven little blond moppets called the Vivian Girls, whose adventures include … But it’s a 23,000-page story, and while of course I always read every relevant source in the course of writing a review — and boy, was this one a doozy — it’s a bit involuted to go into in much detail. Actually, not even MacGregor has read more than a representative fraction of Darger’s writing, and it’s safe to say that nobody ever will.

-Gavin McNett, Salon.com review of “Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal” by John M. MacGregor

Darger’s main project was a book called “The Story of the Vivian Girls, In What is Known as the Realms of the
Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, as caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.” At 15,000 pages, it is by far the longest novel ever written. (The paintings are illustrations of scenes from the novel.) The book is chaotic, repetitive, and totally insane, but there are many astonishingly beautiful passages. A few years ago I had the crazy idea of editing Darger’s novel into a cohesive series of novels — modeled after, say, Frank Baum’s “Oz” series. I say editing, but it would be more like translating, since Darger’s text is extraordinarily knotty and difficult. With enough work, I felt that his writing would have huge popular appeal. Unfortunately the Darger estate didn’t like the idea[...]

-Nathaniel Rich, questions from Blake Wilson

I’ve been immersed in Henry Darger the last few days. I visited the Henry Darger room installation at Intuit Gallery here in Chicago last year, as well as the exhibition of some of his collages, and have been enamored by his work ever since. I love the muted colors, the fantastical creatures and all that can be read into his androgynous children vs. grown-ups storyline. The installation, too, as amazing– the piles and piles of ephemera, all the paints and art supplies, the feel of his tiny little room.

This week I worked on a custom order for Ben’s mom– 3 of the 7 Vivian Girls as a gift for his aunt. The Vivian Girls, if you aren’t familiar with Darger’s work, are the heroines of his epic story/paintings. They’re seven little girls, based on paper dolls and other advertising images, who battle evil adults who would enslave all the children of the world. Yeah, weird, I know. But awesome.

There were so many depictions of them to chose from, but I based my girls mostly on these paintings–

(Apologies for the spacing between the photos– it bothers me that this post may be just a giant eyesore.  Alas, I’m code-illiterate and don’t know how to make WordPress accept any html it doesn’t want to accept. )

1. Unknown (via sensitive); 2. Henry Darger (via creating in sleep); 3. “Untitled (Battle Scene During Lightning Storm.  Naked Children with Rifles),” Henry Darger (via American Folk Art Museum); “Ash Wednesday,” Anthony Goicolea (American Folk Art Museum); “Battlefield,” Justine Kurland (American Folk Art Museum).

More Darger here and here.

More from Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger here (via for me, for you).

]]> http://fawngrubbsya.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/art-out-of-mind-henry-darger-in-the-realms-of-the-unreal-by/ Fri, 08 May 2009 16:40:59 +0000 fawngrubbsya http://fawngrubbsya.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/art-out-of-mind-henry-darger-in-the-realms-of-the-unreal-by/

Henry Darger. When I think of him I feel like crying. His sacred little room

I just signed up for the Writer’s Almanac by newletter, since I can’t seem to listen to it on NPR in the morning at 8:30.  You can sign up for it online and today’s poem, by Tennessee Williams, is really, and sort of surprisingly, good.  Yesterday’s poem about blueberries was sort of underwhelming.  So here is today’s, you can read it with or without your best Garrison Keillor voice:

After you’ve been to bed together for the first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what’s your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do

sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.

You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course

there’s some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you’ve had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they’re telling you their life story, exactly as they’d intended to all
along,

and you’re saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?

Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that’s how people burn to death in hotel rooms.

“Life Story” by Tennessee Williams, from The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams. © New Directions, 2002. (Reprinted without permission, but nobody really reads my blog anyway).

I’m going to New York this weekend, and I think I’m going to go see the Henry Darger exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum.

I like him for so many reasons.  I love the Vivian Girls, I really like folk art, or course, and 1900s Chicago is one of my top historical time periods — mostly from reading Sister Carrie, William Cronin’s Nature’s Metropolis, and everything about the Columbian Exposition.  Darger’s story was really sad — he had a tough childhood and spent a lot of time in institutions, and as an adult, could never really get over it.  So in his own way, he devoted his life to protecting children, in part by writing the Vivian Girls, his super-fantasy heroines, into being.  All his famiyl was gone, but he did have a friend, one friend.

In all these writings of mine on the philosophies of asceticism, hermeticism, and the path towards earthly renunciation, I have always been somehow attracted to those men and women who embody in their lives such ascetic virtues.  Henry Darger seems to be among them.  I have followed his interesting story for some years now, and he is an enigma to me as well as countless others who are intrigued by his outsider art, and by his austere lifestyle.

Darger was a devout Catholic, who attended mass daily, lived simply, and wrote prolifically.   An upublished work several thousands of pages in lenght with hundreds of drawings, titled In The Realms of the Unreal.

If you are ever in a city or town that has his artwork on display please check it out.  Also, check out as much info as you can on him.  His wikipedia article has good and reliable sources.

Also, there is a wonderful documentary that is available about him for free to watch on Youtube:

De todas las extrañas y peculiares historias de arte, tal vez la más convincente sea la del artista y escritor Henry Darger, que tras su muerte se convirtió en uno de los ejemplos más sobresalientes del arte marginal.

Henry nació en Chicago en 1892, justo antes de su cuarto cumpleaños, su madre murió a causa de una infección producida por un segundo parto, una niña nacida que fue dada en adopción. Su padre un modesto sastre intentó llevar adelante a Henry pero la situación era extremadamente difícil y en 1900 fue ingresado en la misión de Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia, una institución católica para jóvenes.

Asistió a una escuela pública durante este periodo, y al parecer fue muy inteligente, con un interés muy particular en la Guerra Civil. Pero después de mostrar signos de problemas de comportamiento y por recomendaciones médicas, fue enviado al Lincoln-Asylum. El centro alojaba a 1500 niños, muchos de ellos discapacitados. No cabe duda que fue uno de los lugares que le marcó para toda su vida.

Tras repetidos intentos de fuga Henry escapó a los 16 años pero al conocer que su padre había muerto unos años atrás, su vida comienza a dar un giro de lo más irreal.

En 1930 se trasladó en un segundo piso, en la habitación 851 del W.Webster avenue, donde vivió una vida solitaria hasta su muerte en 1973. En esos 43 años asistió regularmente  a la misa católica incluso hasta cinco veces diarias. Su interacción humana era casi nula, su único amigo conocido William Shloder compartía el proyecto de fundar con Henry una sociedad protectora de los niños, pero nadie más sabía de la vida de Henry.

Inmerso en su propio mundo de lo Irreal comenzó compulsivamente a plasmar sus obras. Pintadas y recortes recogidos de documentos, libros y revistas encontradas, iban a incorporarse a sus extrañas y absurdas creaciones. Apenas dormía y cuando lo hacía era sobre su desordenado escritorio, su cama estaba completamente cubierta con infinidad de trabajos. En su pequeña habitación se apilaban todas las creaciones de este increible absorto ermitaño.

43 años más tarde se descubriría su fascinante labor secreta. Los caseros Nathan y Kiyoko Lerner se encontraron con todas sus obras después de su muerte, el 13 de Abril de 1973,  por suerte estos supieron reconocer la calidad de las obras y decidieron honradamente difundirlas.

Henry Darger fue uno de los artistas más prolificos del siglo XX. Hasta su muerte , todas sus obras eran desconocidas para el mundo. Entre sus muchas creaciones hay una con 15.000 páginas de manuscritos que se considera el trabajo más largo escrito de ficción.

Títulos como el Reino de lo Irreal que incluyen varios cientos de dibujos y acuarelas que ilustran el bello y loco detalle del artista.

Imaginar una creación de cientos de ilustraciones y escritos en miles de páginas con la única intención de nunca ser vistos por nadie. Ni se imaginaría Henry que sus obras estarían expuestas por todo el mundo y sería inspiración de grandes artistas del momento.

Más información y fotos en la web de Sara Ayers

también en Interesting ideas y en Wikipedia

Todas sus obras en Hammer Gallery

Sus obras llevadas al teatro en Chicago Tagere

El irreal vídeo de Henry Darger:

Painting by Henry Darger

“Do you remember a night in here where I sat down with you guys and you started talking to me about the tufts? Because I just wanted to come over here and tell you how offensive that was. Really not cool.”

It’s N, this goofy art kid who’s friends with Angry Mike from the Last Drop, a few years younger than me, prone to outrageous outfits and apparently, offense. I’m sitting in McGlinchey’s with four guys, drinking my porter out of one of those old-timey glass mugs that is covered in textured ridges that feel really satisfying under your fingers as you fondle it in between sips. And trying to figure out what this kid is talking about. “I said what that offended you?”

“The tufts?” he kept saying, in this very accusatory voice. Eventually I make him spell the word out for me. T-U-F-T-S. Yep.

“The college?” I want to know. My cousin went there, and that’s the sum total of my information about Tufts.

“No, the kind that sprouts from young boys’ chests.” N is about six kinds of pissy, hand on the hip, talking out of his neck. “And it was unbelievably awkward and offensive to me and I have thought of it every time I have seen you since then.”

“That’s offensive! That’s offensive!” my friend Ben heckles from beside me, pointing at N. I push his hand down and tell him to shut up because it has occurred to me that this is some kind of gay thing. N is gay, and he is telling me all of this like I see him and mutter “fag” under my breath, such being the depth and breadth of my casual insensitivity regarding homosexuality. “I don’t know what to say, N. That sounds extremely creepy and I certainly believe you that I said it, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I recall the night in question, because it was possibly the only time I have ever had a discussion of any length with N. I was at McGlinchey’s with my friend Matt K. and we started drinking at five o’clock. It was the kind of happy hour that ended up closing the bar down. Somewhere in the middle of it, we’d picked up N and had, I’d thought, a good old time talking about all the exciting things people talk about when they’re drunk, including, I guess, tufts.

“It was some book. I walked in here and sat down and you started telling me all about how I needed to read this book about tufts and boy scouts having sex with each other and it really kind of traumatized me.”

“Guy Davenport!”

“Whatever,” said N. “I think you should apologize.”

“I think you misunderstood me. I really like Guy Davenport. I was not telling you to read this book because I thought that boy scouts having sex with each other was something that you, specifically, would be into,” but I’m laughing as I say it because I am, as usual, absolutely sincere, but ever further breath I expend fixing this is only serving to make me look like an even bigger asshole. “I’m sorry,” I finally say. “I am so, so sorry.”

I am sorry. I’m sorry I ever told N about one of my favorite writers of all time ever, a writer whose expansive utopian ideal of what the world should look like includes boy scouts having sex with each other in a way that really grows on you after you get over the whole, “Oh my god, I’m reading very literate kiddie porn” thing. Having been over it myself for years, I forget that most people don’t want to sit down and have a discussion about anything even resembling the acceptance of pedophilia in polite company. They can’t even play nice on Guy Davenport’s wiki discussion.

I sent this email to my friend Erik Bader about Guy Davenport over a year ago:

I think my favorite thing about him this time around is that he
dictates every tiny detail of his utopian ideal. It’s not just a
Mondrian (only he spells it Mondriaan, and I swear he’s the only author I actually like MORE for being a pretentious fuck), it’s from Mondrian’s most minimal geometric period. They’re not just little boys’ underwear, they are made in Denmark and they are a pellucid blue and they are very small in a way that he implies only Danish underwear are. There are so many pairs of underwear in Davenport’s books. I wonder how he knows so much about them. Did he do a study on boys’ underwear around the world? He must have. But anyway, it’s not just a
room painted red, it’s a red that is from a specific place and time that means something. You could read the books and easily Davenport your entire life out. Go buy all the stuff he talks about. Go read all the books he namedrops. Go make all the food he talks about. I am strongly attracted to the way he makes it possible to go in whole hog for Brand Davenport. Plus, I like the brand itself. He really makes it seem like there is only one right way to decorate your home.

I am also enjoying, kind of, that while his male characters all seem to be these paragons of running triathlons and then going home to study the scriptures and then making some buckwheat crepes and fucking the shit out of someone nice, the girls are just kind of there to make the guys happy, and they are very cheerful about this. They don’t see it as being sexist on an intellectual level, nor are they frustrated by not having apartments that are as nice as the dudes’. But it’s not
like they’re dumb, either. They all have their own thing going on behind the scenes.

I also like how his characters desire to do everything, and they do not care if it furthers their career or makes them friends. They want to be into not only theology, botany, art, food, music, literature, athletics… but they also seem to have enough time left over for sex and the domestic joys. And they do all of it because they are curious, or because they feel like it, with no ulterior motives. It makes me wonder if they are living in 48 hour days, but ultimately, it’s an ideal that I approve of.

That’s what I have to say about that.

But, you know, fact of the matter is that some people are only going to walk away from this discussion with the word tufts and a sense that something distasteful has taken place. I’m never telling anyone about Guy Davenport again unless I am sure they are cool. And I don’t mean cool in the Man-I-love-children-NAMBLA-chatroom kind of way. By cool I mean what everyone means, which is, ultimately, sympathetic.