tomgillespie2002
Henry Darger, an unassuming, reclusive janitor, working and living in Chicago, died at the age of 81. To his landlady and neighbours, he was a simple man, who rarely conversed with them, and died in 1973 a lonely man, with no family or friends to speak of. Before he passed in a nursing home, a neighbour visited him, telling him that he had seen Darger's work, and was deeply impressed. He replied: "It's too late now." His landlady, Kiyoko Lerner, entered Darger's small flat to clear it and found, to her amazement, rows of manuscript, along with hundreds of accompanying paintings. The book, a fantasy world constructed over decades, was over 15,000 pages long, and completely unique to the unknown inner world of the man.Darger had created a totally specific world, titled 'The Realms of the Unreal', that told the story of the Vivian girls, and their adventures during many Christian-led wars, the Glandeco-Angelinnian War, caused by the child slave rebellion. The paintings, constructed with various mediums and methods, illustrated this fantasy world, using collage, ink and paint, and he collected images, xeroxing many particular images over and over, to portray his beloved Vivian girls. With no exterior life, and a lack of social skills, Darger had lived completely within this inner world, where he kept intricate details and charts detailing the events in the "realm", and documented the wars - including names, dates of soldiers deaths, the costs of each of these wars: immensely detailed, impeccably assembled.Whilst the actual reality of Darger's life is difficult to portray - only three photographs of him exist - he did begin a diary of his life after he retired. His life was one of desolation, separated from life, he was a devout Christian; he seemingly never had a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, but wanted deeply to have children. Many of the images he left behind hint at a man, whose asexuality, seems to be more about naivety. Often, naked little girls are portrayed in the paintings as having penises. This could point to a complete lack of knowledge of gender difference. However, without any actual input from the man, it is difficult to fully understand, and we can only speculate - it would be easy to accuse the man of unnatural desires, but I think this may be a cruel conclusion.Jessica Yu's film is constructed of interviews with the few neighbours (I can't say they knew him, as clearly no one did), and a narration by Dakota Fanning - Larry Pine also recites passages from the Darger diary, expressing his inner desires. Visually, Yu uses Darger's paintings, animating the figures, and constructs a narrative largely connected with the stories in the book. It is an incredibly touching, disturbing, enlightening and beautiful story, but one which is tainted by many insidious conclusions and speculations. I saw this about five years ago, and it never really left my mind. The opportunity to watch it again filled me with questions as to whether it would touch me quite as much. It's hard not to be moved by this story. After all, Darger created one of the most colossal, detailed, and epic pieces of outsider art that I have ever encountered. A portrait of a damaged, complex person, who never really had the opportunity to share his body of work, until his death. Posthumously, his work is now displayed for the public. In 2001 the Henry Darger Centre was opened in The American Folk Art Museum in New York.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com
T Y
I had no idea what this was when I clicked 'play' in Netflix. I'm extremely glad I watched it. Henry Dargers life follows the same narrative pattern as Joseph Cornell. Outsider artist Henry Darger originally disturbed me because his work involves such troubling topics. Best to steer clear I thought. Instead, this clever, compelling documentary was so excellent it forced me to reassess Darger. It is extremely inspiring to see what an arrested mind, mired/grounded in a seemingly unpromising but very specific & limiting milieu (1950s Catholicism in Chicago) could accomplish. The early moments showing the work itself, leaves you tantalized as to an explanation of his technique to overcome his lack of an artistic background; it soon follows. The interiority of Dargers effort and psychology is truly impressive. The toiling over a life's work for personal goals is humbling. My only problem with the documentary is that I found the first 45 minutes so exhilarating, that the rest of it couldn't compare and just seemed to linger there taking up space. But perhaps that just means there's more to get out of it, next time I watch it in a few months. The approval of hipsters is an irritating coda to the piece.What great luck that Darger's work (like that of the Philadelphia Wireman) was saved by those who stumbled across it. What a good omen to stumble across it on New Years Day.
Seamus2829
With the recent focus on outsider art,somebody must have figured that Henry Darger was a natural. Darger was a janitor and well known introvert for years. What was not known (at least until after his death in 1973),was that Darger kept a series of stories & paintings, as a continuing account of a realm of fantasy that only Darger could relate to. Vast volumes of paintings & text were found in the cramped apartment that he lived in for years (he had little family & had less than no use for the company of other people). Jessica Yu's film attempts to tell Darger's story (with extracts of his writing read by the likes of Dakota Fanning,and others). This film is a "must see" for anybody with an interest in art (especially outsider art). As this film is independently produced,it carries no MPAA rating,but does contain a bit of mature subject matter (mainly in the way of some of his paintings depicted that has nudity).
Oslo Jargo (Bartok Kinski)
This "documentary" is a blatant attempt to contribute to and fester the 'myth' of Henry Darger, a reclusive, backward man who concocted a trite and repetitive story (18,000 pages) filled with extreme inconsistencies (his "Christian" army is involved in bloody warfare - tenets of Christ were those of a pacifist, etc) and sadomasochistic tendencies. It seems he lived in his own sullied world, formed mostly by an extreme fascination with children and the sufferings of Christ (he had upon his wall 13,000 representations of crucifixes). His landlords found his room after he died, stuffed with innumerable articles of junk, stacks of wet papers, hairballs, empty bottles and yet, being artists and entrepreneurs themselves, they hatched a theme to create Henry Darger as a genius of 'outsider art', their attempts succeeded, Darger's immature works, mostly traced drawings, slapped on with some vivid color schemata, in every sense lacking any cohesive aesthetic, have sold for millions now.The room itself was photographed, cataloged and inducted into the 'folk art' hall of fame. Darger was seemingly a lunatic, at odds with his warped Christian conditioning and society itself, he would hide in his room for hours on end, lusting after children and cut out articles and trace faces onto pieces of toilet paper (he was poor). There's no doubt that he holds some fascination for us, mainly because of his weirdness but eventually even that is usurped by the painstaking tediousness and forcefulness of accepting such unworthy levels of art into our consciousness, as this documentary begs us to do.Since he is dead, he can not speak for himself, and thus, his 'myth' is assured, bringing the curious to worship at his feet and sell his works for staggering prices.
