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Church: I will now turn the presentation over to Lee Kogan. Lee Kogan is curator emerita
at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. She was previously the Director of the Folk
Art Institute at the Museum and for more than a decade was adjunct assistant professor of
art and art professions at New York University. She organizes, writes, lectures, exhibitions
widely and has contributed essays on southern and other American Folk Art catalogues, magazines,
and books. I know for myself, I’ve read Ms. Kogan’s essays for many, many years.
So I’m very, very excited to present her today.
Kogan: I’d like to thank you Jason, thank the NCPTT and Tony Rajer who was a close friend
of mine. I get choked up thinking about Tony because it would have been a way to see him
again today but organizing this conference and inviting me to participate. I really congratulate
the Clementine Hunter team and that project that’s been going on for years. You have
performed a noble deed indeed and artists like Clementine Hunter are given the respect
that they deserve.
Henry Darger and His Alternate World, Realms of the Unreal and the Henry Darger Archives
at the American Folk Art Museum.
The art of contemporary self-taught artists is very often a preservationists, conservator
or restorers nightmare. Self-taught artists most often do not have the interest or for
that matter, often the funds, to purchase stable, long-lasting acceptable art materials.
They create thoughtfully but spontaneously, combining materials at hand, frequently used
and recycled, most often collected from local sources.
Eugene Von Bruenchenheim erected towers from chicken bones. Teresa Brisby gathered materials
at the town dump. Simon Rodia used broken crockery, cement, steel rods, and wire for
his magical towers. For an artist whose primary medium is work on paper, the use of fugitive
materials is hazardous. Brittleness, fading, darkening, flaking, loose adhesive, tears,
holes, sometimes pests as in the work of Martin Ramirez are typical problems that result over
time. Working individually, sometimes in private, without artistic recognition, representation
without exhibitions and galleries or collector interest, the art can over time wind up in
the trash along with the maker’s other personal effects. This might have been the case with
Henry Darger, currently respected and recognized as one of the most significant artists, self-taught
artists of the twentieth century and I would say artists of the twentieth century. His
art crosses boundaries of folk and contemporary art as he is hailed by the American Folk Art
Museum and is an artist certainly in the museum’s permanent collection. But his art is also
in the collections of other major American museums, the American Art Museum Smithsonian
Institution, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art among them.
This talk explores the private and mysterious world of the powerful ingenious and remarkable
American self-taught master. When he died in 1973, his prodigious, undiscovered artistic
oeuvre of writings, paintings on paper, and mountains of source material in books intermixed
in a cluttered one and a half room living space with a plethora items culled from daily
foraging in neighborhood garbage cans. All of this could easily have been trashed. The
contents of Darger’s room and Darger in the year 2012 may have been an interesting
subject for the current popular reality TV show, The Hoarders, the Artists Edition. But
serendipity played an important role in saving the art and essential source material of this
genius’s inspired work.
The landlord was Nathan Lerner, a [ ? ] trained industrial designer, an artist himself, who
after emptying two loads of detritus into a hired dump truck, came upon a stash of paintings.
He was overwhelmed with the contents. Lerner sensed the artistic importance of this previously
undiscovered talent. While Lerner, over the years, did no paper preservation on the fragile
works, the writings, the source material, he and his wife Kiyoko kept all intact along
with the room furniture and brick-a-brac.
Darger’s art, like almost all self-taught artists was created with inexpensive, easily
available materials. He used affordable drawing paper sheets, carbon paper and water color
paints commonly available at the local five and ten cent store. Recycled cardboard was
of use and collage materials were utilized from newsprint, magazines, and other popular
sources. He favored decorative stamps as picture borders and used the local drugstore for photo
duplication and enlargement. While his materials were somewhat unstable and fugitive, they
did survive. Some of the tracings that Darger used over and over again bear signs of wear
and there is evidence, as I mentioned, and as you saw rips and tears and fading and darkening
in other works.
American Folk Art Museum became seriously interested in the art of Henry Darger during
and following a 1997 exhibition at our museum, Henry Darger, The Unreality of Being, organized
by Steven Prokopoff, University of Iowa Museum of Art. By 2000, through the efforts of the
Contemporary Center with Brooke Anderson, who I’m thrilled to say is here today, yay,
and a dedicated team of funders, the museum and a combination of gift and purchase acquired
a sizable of paintings, books, archival material created by Henry Darger. The source material
includes coloring books, comic books, newspaper clippings, photographic prints and negatives,
and Darger’s traced transfer patterns derived from photographic enlargements and paper based
collage imagery. In the artist’s personal records is some correspondence, religious
materials consisting of prayer cards, pictures featuring religious imagery, some financial
records and assorted ephemera. Darger’s important personal library including several
Frank Baum Oz books, Heidi, Penrod, and illustrated civil war publications, a few bibles, hymn,
prayer, and catechism books are among his library books as well.
Darger’s monumental text material included a fifteen thousand page novel entitled, The
Story of the Vivian Girls and what is known as the Realms of the Unreal of the Glandeco-Angelinian
war storm caused by the child slave rebellion, called The Realms of the Unreal to us or shortened,
The Realms, as well as, an eight volume autobiography that was five thousand eighty four pages,
of which two hundred six were about his life and the balance about a tremendous tornado,
Sweetie Pie, that destroyed a town. He created around three hundred painted works on paper
to illustrate The Realms, some grouped as diptix, some triptix, some totaling almost
ten feet in length. He left several weather journals, fire journals and interestingly
what seemed to be another novel, several thousand pages completed which scholar John MacGregor
refers to as Adventures in Chicago/Crazy House, a sequel to The Realms.
In 2001, Darger’s personal archive from his residence was gifted by Kiyoko and Nathan
Lerner. A Getty grant enabled the American Folk Art Museum to organize and preserve the
Henry Darger Collection that is currently housed in thirty eight foot climate controlled
storage facility along with our fine object and painting collection. Every piece of document,
artwork, and object was lightly brushed since Darger’s Webster Avenue room was subject
to tremendous accumulation of soot from the furnace. All the material was catalogued and
placed individually in folders and housed in special made boxes. I would say that again,
congratulations to Brooke Anderson for supervising and overseeing along with the registrar and
then a professional group oversaw that.
Every piece of paper and every painting was housed in Mylar for ease in handling and looking
at, so one could handle those works, most of which are double sided. Paper was de-acidified
for all the paintings and important ancillary material, like the tracings. Small holes and
tears were repaired by a paper conservator for every work that we exhibit or have been
exhibited. Unfortunately, and this is terrible, Nathan Lerner cut with a knife all the drawings
from Darger’s handmade sewn spine binding. This was most unfortunate. All of Darger’s
manuscripts were transferred to microfilm and the archival material was professionally
organized and stored at the museum’s climate and humidity controlled facility as are the
glorious water colors.
The American Folk Art Museum is the single largest repository of Henry Darger’s graphic
art, literary output, and archival material in the world. Several exhibitions, a symposium,
lecture series were spawned from these fascinating art works and accompanying archives. Darger
drawings, his staggering texts were hand written and then typed single spaced. Art and archival
material housed in one major place offers a rare window into looking at art and better
understanding this singular artist oeuvre. He experienced pain, suffering, isolation,
loss during his eight-one years and it is important to study the details of Darger’s
biography and what he shares with viewers but it does not and I emphasize not make the
art better or worse. However, it does help in comprehension and sets an important context
for study and may amplify our appreciation. Darger turned the circumstances of his life
in a remarkable way with his inspired productivity. The collection and ancillary material makes
clearer his artistic process.
I visited 849 Webster Avenue, north side of Chicago near Fremont Street in 1996. This
is how it looked then and here is a view from Darger’s room from the window. At the time,
the neighborhood had a century old look, but while shabby, was vital and well kept. The
house is two blocks from the elevated subway line with a cluster of stores and restaurants
serving the surrounding middle class population. The Catholic Church, St. Vincent de Paul which
Darger, while working, attended daily and upon retirement attended as many as five masses
a day, is just two blocks from his room. Past the front stoop and the main floor up another
flight of stairs to the back is the room that Darger scholars say, time stopped. Inexpensive
ornaments, many religious ones were noticed on the fireplace mantel and there were several
steamer trunks, an old hamper filled with balls of string, old eyeglasses, immense stacks
and decades old coloring books were around. Previously, there was saved Pepto Bismal bottles
as well. The room was not at all tiny or cramped but it was filled with stuff.
Henry Darger was born at home 350 24th Street in Chicago to Rosa Fulton Darger from Wisconsin.
Significant in his life from his writings, Darger’s mother died of septicemia when
he was four after she gave birth to a girl. The artist had no memory of his mother or
his sister, who was given up for adoption within a month after her birth. Though his
father was handicapped, according to Darger’s account, he was happy with his father until
age seven when his father was no longer able to take care of him. He was sent to Mission
of Our Lady of Mercy Home and attended the Skinner School. His behavior became a concern.
He made funny noises in class and was taunted by classmates. A series of medical consultations
resulted in his transference to the Illinois Asylum for the Feeble Minded in Lincoln, Illinois.
The place was crowded and existed well into the twentieth century. The major diagnosis
causing Darger’s transference to Lincoln we are told was ***. Imagine an intelligent
child, a sensitive one, spending years in a Dickensian institution. The institution
failed to provide Darger with mental stimulation and social skills and support that he desperately
needed or any opportunities for growth. There are suggestions that he may even have been
abused there.
During his Lincoln stay, his father died. He made several attempts to escape or to leave
and finally did at age 17. He moved to Chicago, lived in a single occupancy room and supported
himself with a series of low paying jobs, mainly janitorial. Eventually, as a consistent
and dependable worker, he was employed by St. Joseph Hospital where he was a dishwasher
and a cleaner. He served in the army and received and honorable discharge due to poor health.
He retired from work at age 71, too ill to stand. He lived on Social Security, attended
church service and spent time with art and writing. When he could no longer take care
of himself, the Lerner’s arranged for him to go to a nursing home, The Little Sisters
of the Poor, how ironic. They did visit him but then stopped after a few visits when he
no longer seemed to recognize them.
His prodigious novel, The Realms of the Unreal, is an epic tale of war, a story of danger,
destruction, cruelty, torture, mutilation, horror, even the light is responding to these
horrors, rescue and escape. The battle of good versus evil is over the issue of child
slavery. An overall religious orientation is ever present and the Christian side eventually
triumphs. The adult male adversaries, the Glandalinians in the early works were often
dressed in gray and wore mortar board hats. Heroines are the Vivian girls who always survived
travails through their purity, wisdom, goodness, and cunning, even though here they look as
though they’re in trouble. The Vivian girls are perfect samples of Catholic morality but
they are also perfect shots and excellent military strategists.
Darger so identified with the Vivian sisters that they seemed to become part of his imagined
surrogate family. Their pictures and those of other little girls hung on the walls of
his room. Judging from archival photographs that we have that were taken in the 1970’s
after he died. The Vivian sisters are helped by imaginary creatures, the Blengiglomenean
Serpents, called the Blengins. There are many different types. Often they are seen in the
form of winged dragons and are serpent like creatures with eighty to one hundred foot
wing spans. Blengins sometimes appear in human form and merge with humans at the end of the
story. They are dangerous to everyone except the little girls whom they fiercely protect
and to whom they are “tender as a mother towards a child.” Among their varied forms
are the human- headed Blengins, we see that here; the spangled Blengins. There is also
a young Tuscalorian Blengin and the human- headed Dorotheans. There’s the cat- headed
Blengiglomenean and a gigantic Roverine with young and all the Roverines are poisonous.
Darger generals were mainly appropriations from newspaper and other printed sources.
Here are the wicked Glandalinians, four of them; General Bichnelian, Thomas Federal,
he took a lot of time giving names to all of his characters, General Tamerline and General
Meldonian Shuman. Next in the upper left we have another Glandalinian and in the bottom
high Abbieannian defenders of virtue and morality. Humor is noted in giving names. There was
a General “Accountant” and there was also a General “Convention.” So he loved to
pun. Generals were pompously dressed in Austro-Hungarian or Prussian World War I uniforms. Here though
is the angel faced Angelinian, Colonel Jack Francis Evans. There were also colorful flags
and maps, important parts of the story, lending color and spectacle to the epic.
Unschooled in drawing and painting, Darger discovered his own solutions to realize his
artistic vision. As you saw before, collage appealed to him as he cut pictures from a
multitude of sources combining them skillfully and with his own beautiful painted backgrounds.
Believing he was unable to draw freehand, he also used tracings from coloring books,
children’s fashion ads, and cartoons. He stored the ads in the library when he clipped
from newspapers and magazines. Notice, here’s a Coppertone ad which was among his saved
illustrations and look at it and think of his life and really creates a disturbing unease.
Here’s another example that he saved. It’s a potentially threatening situation from a
newspaper. Often he altered works with pencil and over painted with color, giving them a
fresh context. Sometimes the artist used texts to create his own label copy on the bottom
of a photograph, giving his characters a new identity and adding his own personal narrative.
Simple alterations might have consisted of penciling in the eyes, changing the character
of the photograph and using newspaper periodicals and other illustrations, many pictures were
too small for his expanded vision, so he began this long and for him expensive process of
tracing the figures and then going to the drugstore, the drugstore processing service
to make negatives and enlarge his tracings. There are over 246 enlargements in carefully
labeled brown envelopes that he filed. Multitudes of the same figure were created, sometimes
with slight alteration of a hand or a foot or a reversal of the figure from one side
to another, giving it a new look.
Some characters were much favored and recurred again and again. One of his favorite figures,
he was inspired by the Little Orphan Annie comic of Harold Gray in 1929, he saved old
newspapers and Annie Rooney, which this is, was created later by Brandon Walsh and Darrel
McClure. The comic strip, the coloring book, children’s fashion ads were excellent sources
with their simple forms, outline shapes in harmony with the flattened perspective that
he favored. Images were altered when Darger removed children’s clothes. In this instance,
he added a bathing suit for the child. Was it so not to arouse attention of the clerk
or technician at the drugstore, or the person who was enlarging his photographs? Clothed
and unclothed figures were simultaneously intermixed in Darger’s artworks. All the
more unusual because many of the little girls have male genitalia. It’s not clear whether
Darger was confused about sexuality or had another purpose. Scholar John MacGregor addresses
the issue with some detail psychoanalytically in his significant book, Henry Darger; Realms
of the Unreal.
Other recurring figures are running figures and jumping figures as these are, which really
add a galvanic energy to the narrative. One of his favorite recurring figures is the vulnerable
little girl with a pail. Sometimes pictured amidst impending cruelties, other times noticed
in more serene social settings. Unclothed multiple figures of child slaves, but the
seven blond-haired sisters frequently clothed in the same outfit might be seen here. There
are eight of them so it might have been a relative with them near to the left of center
in the polka dot dresses.
The larger works, as I mentioned, are horizontal and painted double sided. The diptix and triptix
were created from individual smaller drawings that were selected, then glued together by
the artist to create the larger format. The sequence of order of the drawings and if there
is a narrative sequence correlating them to the text, it has not thoroughly been investigated
yet. Some of the correspondences have been found but many have not. Darger was gifted
in assembling elements in space to tell a story and or that were visually arresting.
He had remarkable compositional and color sense. Few artists used purple, yellow, and
pink more sensitively, especially in some of the gorgeous color washes. He created lush
harmonies with his color palette. Mundane elements were gathered and magically transformed.
Heavily peopled singing is sometimes as many as 100 hundred figures are both serene and
action filled. Occasionally simultaneously combining these two disparate moods that I
like to think of, actually it was Elka Spoerri talking about Wolfli when she compared his
works and said it was catastrophe and idle. I like to, one can see that in describing
these large narratives as well.
Humor is also noted in an example as follows; “After being locked in a rat infested cell,
the Vivian sisters decided to harness all the rats and let them out on the Glandelinian
quarters. They so frightened the soldiers that the soldiers jumped up on the tables
when they saw the rats scampering on the floor.” The text balloon ends with a sarcastic comment,
“some soldiers “belittling them for their lack of courage.
In the story of his life, Darger wrote, “unlike most children, I hated the idea of growing
up and I’ve become an old man darn it.” And the last entries in his journal or diary,
February 1971, they are really touching. After an apparent eye operation, “A serious infection.
In bed at home. I couldn’t dare go out because of an eye covering for protection placed by
the doctor. I had a poor nothing-like Christmas, never had a good Christmas in my life, nor
a good year, and now ruining it, I’m very bitter but fortunate not to be revengeful
though I feel I should be.” And finally, the last entry, “I’m walking the streets
and again going to mass as usual. What will January 1971 be for New Year? What will it
be.” Illness, incapacity and death in his real life answered his query but subsequently
immortality and respect came to this unprepossessing artist through his extraordinary artwork.
Church: Do we have any questions for Miss Kogan?
Kogan: I would like to just make a comment. People do call and want to examine the archives
or study or do some work. Right now our museum has gone through some complexities of its
own. We are up and running. We have a wonderful exhibition, beautifully reviewed and well
visited but at the current time your requests, the archives are not that easily available
to the public. We pray and hope that they will be soon. So if you want to contact us,
do but don’t plan on doing a paper that’s due in six months.
Church: Are there any more questions?
Questions not intelligble.