In the Realms of the Unreal - Film

Henry Darger and his work are enthralling. His personal story is as spelling binding as the one he wrote and illustrated that brought him notoriety. His book that has never been fully published is possibly the longest ever written, 15,415 pages. This fantasy story of a child-slave rebellion is fully illustrated with paintings and drawings, some measuring up to fifteen feet long. Henry Darger was a recluse, and some might claim mentally ill. He spent his life in solitude, moving from apartment to apartment for sixty-four years while working jobs as a hospital janitor. No one knew he had written or painted anything until at the age of 81 he was moved into a poor home and his landlord began to clean out his room.

Jessica Yu created a documentary called "In the Realms of th Unreal" about Darger that I highly recommend seeing. It does an ingenious job of telling the story of his 15,415 page story of the Vivian girls while simultaneously telling the equally fascinating story of the life of Darger.

You can also see Darger's work on display at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. If you read further about Darger's work I find it troubling that he is referred to as an "outsider artist", as if what he were an untrained naive trying to iconically represent his emotions. While yes, Darger was untrained in art, the book and illustrations were his life; his second life where he escaped to nightly. His body of work cannot be looked at as directly as a painting is that you put in a frame and hung on a wall. It is as much a performance piece played out once over the course of his 81 years of life as it is the "outsider art" that many try to categorize it. To call his work folk art is to miss the point.