Henry Darger collage and water colour
Henry Darger collage and water colourI am uncomfortable with the label "Outsider Artist". I have seen a number of prolific and talented people lumped into the category of Art Brut or Outsider for a few years now.
Tonight I had the opportunity to consider some of the work of Henry Darger. I was lucky enough to see his work personally twice at the American Museum of Folk Art in New York.
Darger's dream like and heroic narrative works are challenging to view because they at first appear to reflect a naive and childish theme. They are really infused with a distressed sexuality
and a militaristic view of an unfriendy world described by horrifying armies of pretty little girls and bucolic landscapes. There is such a confusion in the violence soaked world portrayed in soft colours and grade one reader quality collaged and drawn and wispy water colour imagery.
His work was prolific and was saved for 30 years in a tiny apartment while he worked a grueling job at a state mental institution. The materials reflect a physical poverty and disadvantage but the work reflects obsessive vision and effort. Darger lived within this otherness and produced large collage painting drawings constructions. This work is not the contrived craziness that I see in so many current creative cliches. It is of Darger. It feels recognizable and almost comfortable at first. He means the stories he tells. He isn't having fun making the imagery but is compelled to create then conceal.
Perhaps my imagination allows me to remember drawing my distress at childhood experience and either scribbling over what I thought should not be revealed or hiding it in cracks in the wall.
I remember finding my own children's naughty drawings with the exaggerated naked bosoms and genitalia hidden behind things.
Darger's little girls often had a tiny penis. It has been suggested that the girls were not some reflection of pedophilia but of an alter ego for himself where he led armies of good and evil.
Perhaps...but the imagery is distressing because it really seems to be so innocent. Only there are thousands of them and many of them are very large.
And no one saw them when he was alive.
Tonight I had the opportunity to consider some of the work of Henry Darger. I was lucky enough to see his work personally twice at the American Museum of Folk Art in New York.
Darger's dream like and heroic narrative works are challenging to view because they at first appear to reflect a naive and childish theme. They are really infused with a distressed sexuality
and a militaristic view of an unfriendy world described by horrifying armies of pretty little girls and bucolic landscapes. There is such a confusion in the violence soaked world portrayed in soft colours and grade one reader quality collaged and drawn and wispy water colour imagery.
His work was prolific and was saved for 30 years in a tiny apartment while he worked a grueling job at a state mental institution. The materials reflect a physical poverty and disadvantage but the work reflects obsessive vision and effort. Darger lived within this otherness and produced large collage painting drawings constructions. This work is not the contrived craziness that I see in so many current creative cliches. It is of Darger. It feels recognizable and almost comfortable at first. He means the stories he tells. He isn't having fun making the imagery but is compelled to create then conceal.
Perhaps my imagination allows me to remember drawing my distress at childhood experience and either scribbling over what I thought should not be revealed or hiding it in cracks in the wall.
I remember finding my own children's naughty drawings with the exaggerated naked bosoms and genitalia hidden behind things.
Darger's little girls often had a tiny penis. It has been suggested that the girls were not some reflection of pedophilia but of an alter ego for himself where he led armies of good and evil.
Perhaps...but the imagery is distressing because it really seems to be so innocent. Only there are thousands of them and many of them are very large.
And no one saw them when he was alive.
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