Unreal
It has been snowing here, on and off, for days. Friday evening the snow came down at a record pace - till even the city’s army of salt trucks were outflanked.
By Saturday afternoon the back alley was over a foot-deep; the drifts along plowed streets and sidewalks often twice that high. God bless the people who go out there and shovel. It makes such a difference!
As the blizzard whirled and swirled, I walked with Seth first to get coffee and strudel, then to see In the Realms of The Unreal - a new, feature-length documentary about Chicago native and “outsider artist” Henry Darger.
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Relatively reclusive and unknown, Darger wrote three huge volumes (the largest 15,000 pages long) about a fantasy world where children battle cruel, heartless adults. In a series of small, cluttered rooms, he constructed a vast alternate reality in which the Vivian Girls (7 brave young princesses) lead an epic slave rebellion with equal parts goodness, grace and cheek.
Darger was an obsessive collector and archivist (he tracked the weather here for over 10 years, noting with painstaking detail how local weathermen failed to accurately predict it). He dug up newspapers and magazines from the trash, clipping images of children (mostly young girls) and pasting them over the pages of old telephone books. Later, he appropriated these images for use in his vast watercolor illustrations and collages.
The paintings (sometimes several feet in length) show his child-subjects in a variety of settings: frolicking with each other among strange plants and winged creatures, running through dark forests to escape evil captors, fighting alongside a few adult compatriots, choked, strung up and bleeding, and in chaotic melee…. scores of them gutted and expiring.
Especially odd, most of the children are naked, cherubic young girls who sport male genitalia. In the background - weather. Lightening, storms, billowing clouds.
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By “genitalia", I mean a sort of oddly-sketched, finger-like penis and tiny, featureless testicles… devoid of overtly sexualizing detail. Some have interpreted his work as the precursor (or result) of psychotic rage and murder… others contest this claim. But here, the subject is treated with much more distance.
On camera, various people speculate - but no one judges. Perhaps Darger didn’t know that girls were different from boys. He grew up in state homes (sex segregated) and led a life of (apparently) chaste devotion, working as a janitor and cook at local churches, and attending mass each day - often, more than once.
Alternately, could this combination of girlish innocence and boy body (along with “male qualities” such as fighting bravely, “riding the best horses", and “standing upright in the stirrups") be a reaction to his own childhood suffering at the hands of men? Or a desperate attempt to re-connect with his lost sister - who was adopted shortly after his mother died in childbirth, never to be seen again?
Whatever the reason, he created a strange world of hermaphroditic warriors, struggling against evil in the name of Christ. The eye-popping color and repetition of form is overwhelming to begin with. When combined with themes of flight, war, torture and peril - well, it’s pretty compelling stuff.
For the most part, the documentary eschews analysis of his technique or style - focusing instead upon the contrast between Darger’s real life and his fantasy world - his forgettable presence and unforgettable work. In parts, the works are digitally animated; elsewhere, characters from the paintings appearing in stock footage of Chicago streets. One wonders… did he see things that way, too? Did the pictures have a life of their own?
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There seem to be a lot of connections between Darger’s childhood struggle with authority, his lifelong struggle with obedience to God, and the furious battles his heroines fought. The work feels like a commentary - a processing of bitter resentments and heartbreaking disappointments. But for Darger, it was a private, internal dialog: only on his deathbed did someone tell him his work was beautiful. His response? “Too late now.”
Did he harbor hopes of recognition? That’s hard to imagine. And if he did, would that make a difference to us? Should art be made in consideration of others (as Seth said today: a gift you give to your audience)… or made in relative isolation, compulsively, because it must be? Is it better to make something so it can be consumed - or does that corrupt it beyond measure? Is Darger’s work “pure” because it was created “outside” our realm of appreciation?
As I said earlier, I’ve been having a lot of discussions about blogging and its potential as “art". Justin’s recent film-post generates particularly prickly comments about this - because while somewhat self-focused and arguably non-performative, it is also deliberately constructed and displayed for public consumption. Was that consumption something Justin considered, from the perspective of “what it gives” - or simply a compulsive archiving?
The fact that it is public makes such a difference. Because Justin has an audience, he is no longer “outside” - and therefore, subject to critical lenses that Darger never will be. Yet as a medium, the blog is “pulp” - which lends it an air of authenticity. Can something be both unconsidered and artistic? Or is the spontaneous (yet public) release of tensions just … a solipsistic waste of the “material” for greater work?
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Trekking home from the movie, Seth and I discussed this and other questions. At least, we talked as best we could, considering the weather. Snow flew at our faces, gathering and freezing on our eyelashes, crusting our shoes and pant legs. I slipped once and caught myself against a brick wall - tearing my leather gloves.
Once off the bus, I was struck by how unfamilar the city is during such weather. Mountains of white powder dulled every shape and sound. Entire streets faded from view, lamplight swallowed by the storm’s frantic particles. Unreal!
