﻿Very often, the myth behind a specific artist becomes more popular, or more relevant,
than the artist’s art itself. Think of Vincent Van Gogh for example, or Fransisco
Goya’s reclusive life that lead him to paint his black paintings. It’s sometimes crucial to
understand certain elements of an artist’s biography in order to understand their art.
This is even more true for outsider artists. Outsider art is simply art that stems outside
of the art world, coming from self-taught artists who are not, and do not wish to be,
in contact with conventional art. To really explain the general appeal for outsider artists,
I prefer the French term coined by Jean Dubuffet: Art Brut, or Raw Art.
"Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses – where
the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere – are,
because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professionals.
After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, lived so
fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works,
cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade."
However, outsider artists often suffered from mental illness, from isolation
and alienation. Their art was, in many cases, only discovered after their deaths.
It’s the case of the man this video is about, Henry Darger.
On his deathbed, a couple of days before passing away,
Darger’s landlords made an incredible discovery in his apartment, the main one being a 15,
145 page manuscript for a book accompanied by hundreds of paintings and drawings.
However, before delving into Darger’s work, we need to take a brief look at his life.
The task of looking into his life is not an easy one as Darger lived absolutely
alone his whole life with the exception of one friend which he eventually lost.
What we do know of Darger is that he was born in Chicago in 1892 and that, at 4 years old, his
mother died after giving birth to a sister he’ll never know. Later, his single-parent dad, not
being able to take care of his son anymore, would be taken to St-Augustine’s Home for the Aged.
The young Darger was now at the Mission of Our Lady of Mercy, a catholic orphanage.
However, he was a disturbing child. He’d make strange noises with his mouth and would be
singled-out by other kids. He was then sent to the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children.
The Asylum was, as you may imagine, a terrible place, though Darger would develop fond memories
of it. The institution neglected children, abused them and some of the punishments they’d give was
forced labour, a way to fund the asylum. Darger tried to run away, three times. The first time,
he got caught, lasso’d and had to run back to the asylum dragged behind a horse.
However, in 1909, at the age of 17, his escape was successful. He was back in Chicago.
That same year, he started working as a janitor at a hospital where he also
lived. He would also start working on the manuscript I mentioned earlier.
The book’s title is: The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of
the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.
In Darger’s Realms of the Unreal, a battle between good and evil raged. On one side,
the evil non-christian Glandelinians abused and enslaved children. On the other side, the
good christian Angelinians sought to liberate the enslaved children. Both armies had their heroes,
or villains. On the evil side, General John Manly commanded, John Manly being a childhood
bully of Darger. On the good side, Darger would write himself as one of the generals in command.
However, the main characters were the seven christian sisters,
the Vivian Girls, whose adventures we follow all throughout the book.
The story is modelled around the American Civil War, tinted with christianity and
children’s liberation and it’s no doubt heavily influenced by Darger’s own experience as a child.
Darger was undoubtably troubled. When the young Elsie Parobeck was murdered,
Darger had kept her picture to include her in his book. She’d become Annie Aronburg, a child
laborer whose assassination by the Glandelinian Government would spark the war. However, he lost
the picture. Angered by the situation, he decided to pray to God to find it back. He even erected
an altar simply to find the picture. But God never helped him find the picture back. At that
point Henry Darger lost his faith. However, he still believed in God as he was angry with Him.
How could God allow what happened to him during his childhood? How could God allow child-abuse?
How could He allow the murder of the young Elsie Parobeck? What’s even the point of God
if he can’t help him find the small picture he had lost? The anger he felt at God would
translate in his book as the military general, he wrote as himself, joined the evil glandelianians.
A bit later, Darger would read, in a magazine, the story of a man going to Hell and suffering
for eternity. Darger wrote in his diary that it got him scared and made him believe in God again.
Whats most fascinating about Darger’s Realms of the Unreal is that he built a world
to escape his own. He wrote himself as a hero, he decried child-abuse which is what he hated most,
he even sometimes enacted his frustrations in his book because he was unable to do it in real life.
Darger’s art illustrates why we’re fascinated with outsider art. His drawings, his paintings
and the story he wrote, he didn’t do it for fame, he didn’t do it for money, though he struggled
financially all his life, he didn’t even do it to show it to other people. He made his art because
he wanted to, some can argue because he needed to. No art can be as honest and genuine as that.
We’ll end this video with Henry Darger’s last diary entry:
January 1, 1971. I had a very poor nothing like Christmas. Never had
a good Christmas all my life, nor a good new year, and now... I am very bitter but
fortunately not revengeful, though I feel should be how I am..."