Henry Darger anyone?

[timpaatkins]

I dont know if anyone had heard of him but I just thought Id post a recommendation for this strange and deranged artist.

I clipped this from amazon:

The voluminous works of Henry Darger were discovered after his death in 1973 by his landlord in a crowded and almost derelict apartment on Chicago's Northside. Among the piles of newspapers, magazines, and hundreds of balls of twine were scrapbooks made from telephone books and an entire lifetime of creative work. Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings is an amazing window into the extraordinary world of this outsider artist.
In order to escape his unhappy childhood in a mental institution and his reclusive adult life, Darger created his own salvation in the form of an intricate fantasy world of drawings and stories revolving around a set of little girl heroines, with vivid watercolors and collages of children engaged in battles against their enemies.

The images are violent and strange, yet they achieve a fragile beauty. His work has taken a long time to gain attention in part due to his disturbing "obsession with little girls ... as hermaphrodites with small penises--and worse, a significant number of works that graphically depicted the strangulation, evisceration, and wholesale slaughter of children." Beyond the graphic nature of the artwork is a story that intertwines religion, superstition, loneliness, and bravery. This remarkable book offers the chance to take a journey through the life, mind, and creative process of a true artist, and it includes entries from his personal diaries and chapters from his fictional saga, "In the Realms of the Unreal." --J.P. Cohen

I had the good fortune to see an exhibition in Stockholm about 2 years back, and its truly is a fascinating story. Knowing the history and actually seeing his collages and paintings left a hefty impression in me, and i just thought Id share it with you guys.

Here is a link for some background, which I recommend you read first:

http://www.saraayers.com/darger.htm

And here are some pieces, most of witch I saw at the exhibition.

http://www.hammergallery.com/Artists/darger/Darger.htm

[loomer]

thanks for the post Tim. I don't like everything done by Darger but I do like some of his works alot and find some to be very elegant.
You should check out the work of James Jean who is influened by Darger :
www.jamesjean.com
You can especially see the influence in his "Recess" series. And he can draw.

An interesting fellow indeed...and despite what people are saying now, I'm not entirely convinced his obsession with young kiddies was so innocent. However, I still enjoy many of his works.

[timpaatkins]

Yea, I dont really consider him an "artist" per say, I just think his story is really fascinating, he was a proper nutjob. I mean he did them for himself, never intending them to be art, just stuff he did to keep from ... well some scary stuff probably. Thats whats so incredible, its really like delving in to a madmans cronicles and mind. Its difficult to explain...
And thanks for the link to James Jean, I can def. see the Darger Influence, very cool!