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Henry Darger
Self-taught and working in isolation until his death in 1973, Henry Darger realized an elaborate fantasy world of remarkable beauty and strangeness, through hundreds of paintings and an epic written narrative. Angel-like Blengins with butterfly wings, natural catastrophes, innocent girls, and murderous soldiers all appear in Darger's scenes, which are reproduced in this book in double-page and gatefold spreads. In the volume's introductory essay, Klaus Biesenbach examines the radical originality of Darger's art, including his use of collage, incorporation of religious themes and iconography, and frequent juxtaposition of innocence with violence. An essay by Brooke Davis Anderson illuminates Darger's source materials and techniques. Michael Bonesteel puts Darger's life in the context of his work and selects key texts to accompany the illustrations. The book also includes for the first time the text of Darger's History of My Life,A" the artist's autobiography. The only book of its kind, Henry Darger offers an authoritative, balanced, and insightful look at an American master.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
13 people are currently reading
251 people want to read
About the author
Klaus Biesenbach
42 books3 followersBiesenbach founded Kunst-Werke (KW) Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin in 1991, as well as the Berlin Biennale in 1996, and remains Founding Director of both entities. Under his artistic and executive directorship, KW and the Berlin Biennale were started as self-inventive initiatives and are now federally and state funded institutions.
Biesenbach joined MoMA PS1 as a curator in 1996; the museum's director Alanna Heiss had hired him part-time while allowing him to maintain his directorship in Berlin. In 2004, Biesenbach was appointed as a curator in the MoMA's "Department of Film and Media". He was named Chief Curator of MoMA's newly formed 'Department of Media, in 2006, which was subsequently broadened to the Department of Media and Performance Art, in 2009, to reflect the Museum's increased focus on collecting, preserving, and exhibiting performance art. As Chief Curator of the department, Biesenbach led a range of pioneering initiatives, including the launch of a new performance art exhibition series; an ongoing series of workshops for artists and curators; acquisitions of media and performance art; and the Museum's presentation in 2010 of a major retrospective of the work of Marina Abramović—with whom he was formerly romantically involved.
Biesenbach joined MoMA PS1 as a curator in 1996; the museum's director Alanna Heiss had hired him part-time while allowing him to maintain his directorship in Berlin. In 2004, Biesenbach was appointed as a curator in the MoMA's "Department of Film and Media". He was named Chief Curator of MoMA's newly formed 'Department of Media, in 2006, which was subsequently broadened to the Department of Media and Performance Art, in 2009, to reflect the Museum's increased focus on collecting, preserving, and exhibiting performance art. As Chief Curator of the department, Biesenbach led a range of pioneering initiatives, including the launch of a new performance art exhibition series; an ongoing series of workshops for artists and curators; acquisitions of media and performance art; and the Museum's presentation in 2010 of a major retrospective of the work of Marina Abramović—with whom he was formerly romantically involved.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 13, 2015
Henry Darger, recluse, artist, obsessive, crazed man-child, is one of the more intriguing figures I've encountered in my limited exposure to "outsider" art. Darger was an outsider in several ways. Socially, he was a recluse, choosing to spend most of his non-working hours (working as a dishwasher and janitor in different hospitals through his adult life) working on a history, of sorts, of a series of wars and events in a world whose only visitor was Darger himself, until he requested to be admitted to St. Augustine's Home for the Aged in 1972, about a year before his death. The man assigned to clear out Darger's "trash" was stunned to find a 5-decade-in-the-making collection of art and writings that the old man had left behind.
Darger was obsessive, crazed, even. This becomes clear upon reading both the essays about him contained in Henry Darger and in his own autobiographical writings, a section of which is contained in the book in the form of facsimiles of his own typewritten manuscript. Darger had suffered several tough breaks in his younger days, his mother died giving birth to his sister, who was immediately put up for adoption, he was an antisocial young man and was institutionalized at the Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children upon the death of his father. Three times he ran away from the asylum, finally succeeding in his escape by walking most of the way from central Illinois to Chicago, where he disappeared into anonymity until the year before his death.
Darger hardly mentions his own art in his autobiography. But his art is what fascinates me about the man.
I'm not much of an artist. I like to draw, but I'm not great at it. Writing is my creative outlet.
I have a great deal of respect for those who toil over their visual artwork, and toil Darger did. His works were vast, some of them twelve feet wide, multimedia compositions using carbon pencil tracings of cartoons, watercolors, and collage, all mashed together in a style unique to the man. His drawings record the events of several wars in which the "Vivian Girls," quasi-angelic young girls, assist a child-slave uprising against their adult masters, who are in the midst of a war among themselves. Time is cyclical, though, and attempts to provide a timeline from one painting to the next are problematic, at best. Geography is also laden with difficulties, though Darger did draw maps that make Tolkien's seem uncomplicated, even cursory, in comparison. There is no plot, per se, and though key characters might have unique names, it is frankly difficult to distinguish all but a few key players from one another.
If this sounds like a mass ball of confusion, that's because it is. Darger's own autobiographical sketch is fraught with issues - geography "slips", portions of incidents repeat themselves in other incidents, and the autobiography ends in a thousands-of-pages long (no one seems to know exactly how many) narrative about a tornado named Sweetie Pie that sweeps the midwest with destruction (fires and toxic smoke, as well as the "normal" damage one would expect from a super-tornado) ending only when Sweetie Pie is put on trial.
Yes, on trial . . .
Confused yet?
And yet, there is an underlying unity, a crazily-sewn thread that seems to tie all of this together, the essence of the man Henry Darger. This is what I admire so much about the man and his work - it is so uniquely his. He didn't create for any audience, received no financial remuneration for his work (though all indications point to his work being worth quite a lot of money), he was never lauded for his work during his lifetime - he simply did what he was possessed to do, create an imaginary world in which he lived for five decades, only coming out to visit our world for the necessity of a job that paid the bills.
The man was absolutely insane.
I admit it - I am more than a touch jealous of him, and terrified that, if things had been just a little different in my life, I might have, through my own creative endeavors, become like him. I find this tug between jealousy and horror not just a little invigorating.
Sometimes, towing that line between the sane stability of a family and a day job and the wild excursions my imagination takes while I am locked away writing is a tough thing to do. And while I don't anticipate losing hold of my sociality and reason, as Darger did, still, I feel a sort of affinity to the man.
Then I look at his art, which has a decidedly dark twist to it, and I feel a sense of revulsion at the many depictions of disemboweled, crucified children, along with the representations of adults strangling young girls, and I realize that I just can't relate.
I am paralyzed by ambiguity.
Why, then, does this book not receive my highest rating? Simply put, in the introduction, Biesenbach's pomposity knows no bounds. He engages in academic grandstanding that stretches the limits of believability, attributing other artist's motivations to Darger when there is no evidence that this was the case, though he does cite several instances where artists do explicitly acknowledge Darger's influence, as well. Still, Biesenbach's opening essay could easily have been cut in half, and the book would have been much better for it.
Let the art speak for itself!
But don't let my distaste for Biesenbach's essay stop you from reading this beautiful book. Be warned that there is a dark patch in the middle, and those who can't stomach some violence and gore will be hard-pressed to contain their unease - though Darger's art is mostly about children, this is NOT a children's book! These are the strangely-structured dreams of a disturbed mind, in all their horror and beauty, and I recommend them highly.
Darger was obsessive, crazed, even. This becomes clear upon reading both the essays about him contained in Henry Darger and in his own autobiographical writings, a section of which is contained in the book in the form of facsimiles of his own typewritten manuscript. Darger had suffered several tough breaks in his younger days, his mother died giving birth to his sister, who was immediately put up for adoption, he was an antisocial young man and was institutionalized at the Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children upon the death of his father. Three times he ran away from the asylum, finally succeeding in his escape by walking most of the way from central Illinois to Chicago, where he disappeared into anonymity until the year before his death.
Darger hardly mentions his own art in his autobiography. But his art is what fascinates me about the man.
I'm not much of an artist. I like to draw, but I'm not great at it. Writing is my creative outlet.
I have a great deal of respect for those who toil over their visual artwork, and toil Darger did. His works were vast, some of them twelve feet wide, multimedia compositions using carbon pencil tracings of cartoons, watercolors, and collage, all mashed together in a style unique to the man. His drawings record the events of several wars in which the "Vivian Girls," quasi-angelic young girls, assist a child-slave uprising against their adult masters, who are in the midst of a war among themselves. Time is cyclical, though, and attempts to provide a timeline from one painting to the next are problematic, at best. Geography is also laden with difficulties, though Darger did draw maps that make Tolkien's seem uncomplicated, even cursory, in comparison. There is no plot, per se, and though key characters might have unique names, it is frankly difficult to distinguish all but a few key players from one another.
If this sounds like a mass ball of confusion, that's because it is. Darger's own autobiographical sketch is fraught with issues - geography "slips", portions of incidents repeat themselves in other incidents, and the autobiography ends in a thousands-of-pages long (no one seems to know exactly how many) narrative about a tornado named Sweetie Pie that sweeps the midwest with destruction (fires and toxic smoke, as well as the "normal" damage one would expect from a super-tornado) ending only when Sweetie Pie is put on trial.
Yes, on trial . . .
Confused yet?
And yet, there is an underlying unity, a crazily-sewn thread that seems to tie all of this together, the essence of the man Henry Darger. This is what I admire so much about the man and his work - it is so uniquely his. He didn't create for any audience, received no financial remuneration for his work (though all indications point to his work being worth quite a lot of money), he was never lauded for his work during his lifetime - he simply did what he was possessed to do, create an imaginary world in which he lived for five decades, only coming out to visit our world for the necessity of a job that paid the bills.
The man was absolutely insane.
I admit it - I am more than a touch jealous of him, and terrified that, if things had been just a little different in my life, I might have, through my own creative endeavors, become like him. I find this tug between jealousy and horror not just a little invigorating.
Sometimes, towing that line between the sane stability of a family and a day job and the wild excursions my imagination takes while I am locked away writing is a tough thing to do. And while I don't anticipate losing hold of my sociality and reason, as Darger did, still, I feel a sort of affinity to the man.
Then I look at his art, which has a decidedly dark twist to it, and I feel a sense of revulsion at the many depictions of disemboweled, crucified children, along with the representations of adults strangling young girls, and I realize that I just can't relate.
I am paralyzed by ambiguity.
Why, then, does this book not receive my highest rating? Simply put, in the introduction, Biesenbach's pomposity knows no bounds. He engages in academic grandstanding that stretches the limits of believability, attributing other artist's motivations to Darger when there is no evidence that this was the case, though he does cite several instances where artists do explicitly acknowledge Darger's influence, as well. Still, Biesenbach's opening essay could easily have been cut in half, and the book would have been much better for it.
Let the art speak for itself!
But don't let my distaste for Biesenbach's essay stop you from reading this beautiful book. Be warned that there is a dark patch in the middle, and those who can't stomach some violence and gore will be hard-pressed to contain their unease - though Darger's art is mostly about children, this is NOT a children's book! These are the strangely-structured dreams of a disturbed mind, in all their horror and beauty, and I recommend them highly.
August 28, 2015
Henry Darger is an almost mythical figure. The lonely old man, the dishwasher ignored and hated in his daily life, who went home at night to the secluded paradise of his room, where he laboured over beautiful artworks that no-one would ever see. Darger is the ur-example of the 'outsider artist', a working class hero, an almost-saint who cared so little for worldly glory that he never even tried to seek it. It's hard to believe that he was even a real person.
This volume, collected by Klaus Biesenbach, is an artistic appraisal, biography and reproduction of Darger's drawings and paintings. The quality of the reproductions is stellar: over 150 pages of huge, gleaming full-colour images sometimes spread over a fold-out page to fully represent the enormous (sometimes 12 feet) scale of the images. One couldn't ask for a better representation of Darger's work.
Exhibit One: On page 194 we meet a Blengiglomenean, or a Blengin for short, an angelic being of Darger's own invention; a female child with the wings of a butterfly. Her sullen face is framed by not only Judy Garland braids but two huge, curling ram's horns. She has a long, reptilian tail ending in what appears to be a striped beach ball. In addition to the phallic horns and tail, she also has a penis. Almost all the female characters in Darger's paintings do. The males in his paintings are never shown nude. Was Henry Darger transgender or non-binary? No one will ever know for sure.
Exhibit Two: On page 112 demonic soldiers butcher, hang and disembowel angelic children. It's obviously drawn by someone who doesn't really know how disembowelment works, but crude and inaccurate as the violence is, it's still horribly unsettling. A young girl is nailed to a cross by her feet with her abdomen cut open and her guts hanging loose: another appears to have intestines in the place of horns. Some believe these images are evidence Darger was a psychopath and possibly even a murderer. Others point to his devout Catholicism as an inspiration for such imagery. Not long ago, graphic accounts of the death of child saints were considered suitable bedtime reading in the nursery.
To put it mildly, it's hard to know what to make of Henry Darger. His art is childlike in style, but not remotely suitable for children. Sugary and bloodthirsty, almost aggressively innocent yet simmering with sexuality, every page burns with ambiguity. It's easy to read into these images a tale of innocence unwillingly tainted, of arrested development and PTSD. There is absolutely no doubt that Darger was horribly abused in childhood, spending most of his teenage years in an children's asylum. But I think it's important to take these images as they are; imposing a critical narrative of mental illness, gender dysphoria or psychopathy on Darger's art can only ever be speculative and will inevitably always be far more about the critic than Darger himself.
And for that reason, I found the written sections of this volume a let-down. Klaus Biesenbach's introduction was overly-long, pretentious and barely even about Darger's life or art. Pages are devoted to Darger's influence on the fine arts and the promotion of contemporary artists 'influenced' by him: simultaneously, there is a seemingly deliberate attempt to destroy Darger's status as an outsider artist. Paul Chan, a modern-day Darger admirer is quoted as follows:
I am not Darger. But I can ask, What if Darger had a G5 (computer) and an MFA, and were still alive?
This almost makes me angry. What is the point of writing about someone like Henry Darger outside of the context of the poverty, mental and physical illness, crushing manual work and social isolation that dominated his artistic and personal life? It feels like a gentrification of the imagination, an attempted colonisation of art.
Fortunately, Biesenbach prints Darger's own autobiography in full (though sadly there are no excerpts from his novels in this volume). Darger's written self-portrait is powerful and gripping, and just as ambiguous as his painting. He freely admits to being violent (including stabbing someone as a child), obsessed with storms and fire, arrogant, bitter and vengeful.
I am now past 65 years old, and I am still that way. Refuse me a favor, don't expect one from me.
You would say, what would I do if I had granted a favour first, then afterwards in asking for one, I would be refused?
Let that person watch out.
And yet he was kind to children, lonely, generous, self-deprecating. Darger describes himself as a religious zealot who would punch an icon of Jesus in the face when wracked by chronic illness, a child prodigy hated by his teachers and classmates, the boy who ran away from the asylum and became a dishwasher. So much about Darger's life and work can only ever be speculative, but one thing is certain: in today's world of fan art, web comics, guro, hentai and fairy kei, his art is fiercely contemporary, horribly relevant.
This volume, collected by Klaus Biesenbach, is an artistic appraisal, biography and reproduction of Darger's drawings and paintings. The quality of the reproductions is stellar: over 150 pages of huge, gleaming full-colour images sometimes spread over a fold-out page to fully represent the enormous (sometimes 12 feet) scale of the images. One couldn't ask for a better representation of Darger's work.
Exhibit One: On page 194 we meet a Blengiglomenean, or a Blengin for short, an angelic being of Darger's own invention; a female child with the wings of a butterfly. Her sullen face is framed by not only Judy Garland braids but two huge, curling ram's horns. She has a long, reptilian tail ending in what appears to be a striped beach ball. In addition to the phallic horns and tail, she also has a penis. Almost all the female characters in Darger's paintings do. The males in his paintings are never shown nude. Was Henry Darger transgender or non-binary? No one will ever know for sure.
Exhibit Two: On page 112 demonic soldiers butcher, hang and disembowel angelic children. It's obviously drawn by someone who doesn't really know how disembowelment works, but crude and inaccurate as the violence is, it's still horribly unsettling. A young girl is nailed to a cross by her feet with her abdomen cut open and her guts hanging loose: another appears to have intestines in the place of horns. Some believe these images are evidence Darger was a psychopath and possibly even a murderer. Others point to his devout Catholicism as an inspiration for such imagery. Not long ago, graphic accounts of the death of child saints were considered suitable bedtime reading in the nursery.
To put it mildly, it's hard to know what to make of Henry Darger. His art is childlike in style, but not remotely suitable for children. Sugary and bloodthirsty, almost aggressively innocent yet simmering with sexuality, every page burns with ambiguity. It's easy to read into these images a tale of innocence unwillingly tainted, of arrested development and PTSD. There is absolutely no doubt that Darger was horribly abused in childhood, spending most of his teenage years in an children's asylum. But I think it's important to take these images as they are; imposing a critical narrative of mental illness, gender dysphoria or psychopathy on Darger's art can only ever be speculative and will inevitably always be far more about the critic than Darger himself.
And for that reason, I found the written sections of this volume a let-down. Klaus Biesenbach's introduction was overly-long, pretentious and barely even about Darger's life or art. Pages are devoted to Darger's influence on the fine arts and the promotion of contemporary artists 'influenced' by him: simultaneously, there is a seemingly deliberate attempt to destroy Darger's status as an outsider artist. Paul Chan, a modern-day Darger admirer is quoted as follows:
I am not Darger. But I can ask, What if Darger had a G5 (computer) and an MFA, and were still alive?
This almost makes me angry. What is the point of writing about someone like Henry Darger outside of the context of the poverty, mental and physical illness, crushing manual work and social isolation that dominated his artistic and personal life? It feels like a gentrification of the imagination, an attempted colonisation of art.
Fortunately, Biesenbach prints Darger's own autobiography in full (though sadly there are no excerpts from his novels in this volume). Darger's written self-portrait is powerful and gripping, and just as ambiguous as his painting. He freely admits to being violent (including stabbing someone as a child), obsessed with storms and fire, arrogant, bitter and vengeful.
I am now past 65 years old, and I am still that way. Refuse me a favor, don't expect one from me.
You would say, what would I do if I had granted a favour first, then afterwards in asking for one, I would be refused?
Let that person watch out.
And yet he was kind to children, lonely, generous, self-deprecating. Darger describes himself as a religious zealot who would punch an icon of Jesus in the face when wracked by chronic illness, a child prodigy hated by his teachers and classmates, the boy who ran away from the asylum and became a dishwasher. So much about Darger's life and work can only ever be speculative, but one thing is certain: in today's world of fan art, web comics, guro, hentai and fairy kei, his art is fiercely contemporary, horribly relevant.
June 25, 2023
Brilliant beautiful huge art book that I get lost in for hours. Henry Dargers life and art are fascinating. I am so glad I bought the physical book for this one. (And I was inspired to make my own traced coloring book girls painting! books that get me painting are awesome!)
October 9, 2021
Love you, Henry, you sorry saint.
June 17, 2024
The best way to experience the scale of Dargers work at home. The articles towards the beginning give some insights into the influence that Darger had on other artists.
Art 5/5
Book 4/5
Art 5/5
Book 4/5
February 10, 2025
An incredible portrait and collection of a much-too-unknown American artist, this book explores the life, works, and oeuvre of a self-trained artist who worked as a school janitor by day and a prolific, cutting-edge mixed media artist by night. I knew little of Darger before picking this book up – I found some material about Darger online after hearing a passing remark on a podcast, and then I went straight to the library to see what I could find. I found this beautiful book released by Prestel that brings together scholars, historians, and critics (as well as Darger’s own autobiographical writings) to construct an identity and body of work for us that seems relatively complete. Darger saw the world through pastoral scenes, soldiers, little girls, cherubic frightening angels, and a chaos that is as dangerous as David Lynch but much more emotionally approachable until you look closer, and this book certainly covers everything in a giant format that mimics the scale and surrounding nature of the pieces. An excellent book about an unknown modern artist whose work wasn’t discovered until his death – juxtaposing powerful visual messages with a life lived as simply as possible. No attention, no recognition, just a man and his work speaking for itself. Resoundingly beautiful and terrifying.
October 10, 2024
The reproduction of the art is phenomenal, if more than a little overwhelming when seen together. The main problem is that only Bonesteel provides an essay that is worthy of the rest of the book. Biesenbach’s essay is exactly the sort of trite nonsense I hate in art books, mainly concerned with connecting people “influenced” by Darger as a form of showing off the breadth of his knowledge. There’s no real justification for these connections and he is forever forming a connection like one with Joseph Cornell which he then just leaves dangling while he wangs on about someone else he’s met and schmoozed with. Considering how complex and complicated Darger is as an artist, he requires - demands, even - a writer who is able to work through the central problem of Darger’s life: that he is essentially unknowable, that this strange and frequently problematic art comes from a place we will never absolutely understand and actively invites lazy amateur diagnosis. He’s a troubled man who made troubled and troubling art, and he deserves a writer who can match that. In Biesenbach he’s got the exact opposite of that
January 2, 2025
A gargantuan (well over three pounds, 300+ pages, more than a foot long plus foldouts) book scaled to introduce a fragment of Chicago outsider artist Henry Darger's prolific output of over 23,000 pages of writing and thousands of illustrations. Darger illustrated his works by tracing cartoon figures, scaling them via photo development labs and creating watercolor backgrounds. Often the pictures were pieced paper scrolls over 10 feet long. The book effectively portrays the artist, his technique and his art. It is primarily vivid art plates on high quality paper blended with academic essays and Darger's discursive autobiography, which reveals his pre-occupations with fire, weather, physical pain and children. Those focal points are the basis of his visual art and writings. Darger describes himself as "dangerous" and "a sort of devil" and his art and writing reflect it.
February 24, 2020
Darger's use of colour is incredibly vibrant and beautiful, and the sheer weirdness of his art is right in my wheelhouse, but this book certainly does reveal the circular, repetitive nature of his style and the limits of his skill (which evidently plateaued early on in his "career"). I'm still glad it's finally back in print though, as Darger was an incredibly singular artist, but there's only so many naked girl/boys being strangled I can stomach before I want to close the thing.
June 21, 2015
I love these weird, creepy drawings, but I have to say learning about the artist somewhat subtracted from my enjoyment. This is true art brut, in the course of reading about which you find out things you really didn't want to know. But the drawings are still wonderful!
January 14, 2010
The captions to the works in this book are just amazing!.....teehee.
September 23, 2010
Fascinating stuff. Required reading for a Film Studies course I'm taking right now.
October 18, 2010
This is a good comprehensive collection of Henry Darger's art. It has fold-out pages to depict the larger works in their truer form. The back of the book contains excerpts Darger's autobiography.
Want to read
December 26, 2011want.
April 3, 2017
I would rank this among the essential books on outsider art, and really for any art library that wants to be comprehensive. Darger is of course one of the main figures in that class of artists -- one can't really call it a movement, or a genre -- and his work is fascinatingly odd. The book itself is big and beautifully produced, using a black ground to show the works well, and with several fold-out pages for large panoramic views. Those sensitive should be aware that some of Darger's images of children are sexualized, although not especially graphic that I can recall; that was a characteristic of some of his work.
April 4, 2017
I'm a huge Darger fan, and this book probably has the best reproductions of his work of any that I've seen. It's enormous -- I actually don't own a shelf that it will fit on properly -- but given the incredible horizontal sweep of some of Darger's paintings, that's probably a necessary evil.
The essays were interesting, and I especially appreciated the fact that the excerpt from "History of My Life" was a good deal longer than the one in the Michael Bonesteel book. (Still no full reprint though, so if you really want to read the 4500 pages on the fictional tornado, you're out of luck.)
The essays were interesting, and I especially appreciated the fact that the excerpt from "History of My Life" was a good deal longer than the one in the Michael Bonesteel book. (Still no full reprint though, so if you really want to read the 4500 pages on the fictional tornado, you're out of luck.)
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews