We recently saw an interesting documentary, In the Realms of the Unreal, about the artist Henry Darger. We first saw Darger’s work on the cover of local musician Mark Schwaber’s CD The Killing Card – the cover has a dark, post-apocalyptic scene with little girls running from a background of flames, smoke and explosions. The artwork is striking and strange. We assumed it was the work of a local artist. The liner notes credited Henry Darger, At Sunbeam Creek. We were intrigued, so naturally we went online to find more information about the artist.
Darger lived 1892-1972 in Chicago. A quiet recluse, his enormous body of work was discovered by his landlord, Nathan Lerner, shortly before his death. After his death all of his work and belongings entered into Lerner’s possession.
Darger’s artwork is a mix of line drawing, tracing, watercolor, and collage. All of his art seems based on his 15000-page novel, Realms of the Unreal – a good vs. evil war story in which the heroes are the “Vivian Girls”, young often nude little girls who represent all that’s good, pure and holy. The novel seems to be semi-autobiographical, filled with anecdotes from Darger’s own childhood woven into the fantastical story.
Darger’s work is considered “Outsider Art“. Outsider Art (also called Art Brut or Visionary Art) is art created by untrained artists, outside the mainstream, and often by people who don’t, or didn’t, consider themselves artists. Much outsider art has an obsessive quality – pieces that are enormous, or intricately detailed, sometimes one piece is a lifetime’s work.
The documentary about Darger (In the Realms of the Unreal) was tough to follow, but fascinating nonetheless. The filmmaker may have been trying to mimic Darger’s writing, by drifting the narrative in and out of reality, blurring the boundaries of fantasy and reality, so the viewer is left wondering what is fact and what is part of Darger’s fantasy.
Art note: New York City has an Annual “Outsider Art Fair” in January, as part of The American Folk Art Museum’s Outsider Art Week. Darger’s work is always among the most popular there.
In 2000, Kiyoko Lerner (Nathan Lerner’s widow) donated Darger’s manuscripts to the American Folk Art Museum, which established The Henry Darger Study Center, “to foster open inquiry and multidisciplinary research into the life and work of the Chicago artist,” and recently announced a Henry Darger Fellowship Program.
