November 19, 2006
Henry Darger
He's been mentioned in comments, but we have never really talked about this sad proponent of outsider art.
He wrote more than 15,000 pages about the Vivian Girls, and painted watercolours of them. His imaginary world is full of adult violence against children. Was he really "a repressed serial killer", as his biographer has claimed, or was he simply "a man at war with God"?
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I've never bought the "repressed serial killer/pedo" line with Darger. If he was of that nature, he would have acted it out. He had the opportunities & was ignored enough to do it. There's no evidence of that. There's no law against thought, even twisted thought. He was just deeply, deeply weird. Much of what he wrote & drew was not any weirder or more disturbing than the output of some of the Surrealists, for instance, although he beats everyone in sheer volume.
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I should also note that to me the thing that stands out is that he wanted to save the Vivian Girls, not subject them to violence. The violence enacted against them was more something that he was horrified by & wanted to warn against, imho.
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fascinating. I wasn't really aware of him or familiar with his works. people get so freaked out when an artist chooses to really explore the darkest parts of their own/humanity's psyche, but it is there. is it not more honest to express it? to explore it? than to repress and deny and fear it. that is what creates a serial killer IMHO. people find his work disturbing because it holds up the darkest of mirrors...not to him but to all of us.
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Billy Corgan has the largest private collection of Darger artwork