JF Ptak Science Books Continuing Post 1081 from 2010
Somewhere in the past I got the idea that the defining icon and supremely outsider-y artist, Henry Darger1, lived his life twice. One life he
spent with the other people in his job as a quiet janitor; the other life he spent re-enacting his day in miniature, a
diorama of his workplace and his own
apartment, reviewing his conversations real and supposed, revisiting shared-or-not visual clues, altering the day as it progressed with the possibilities of the actions-not-taken.
Maybe it is just this unshakable self-created image that colors the association of the Campbell Kids’ Miniature Play School Room that makes it seem so dark and dangerous, especially since we now what is going to happen to the little girls in Darger’s red-tinged lexi-necessary art world. Here’s a molecular-level example of Darger’s fantastic output, featuring his Vivian Girls:
(The picture at the lef is Miss Elsie Paroubek, a 5-year-old girl murdered in Chicago in 1911 and who may have been the sympathetic impetus for Darger’s life work.)
And this is really just a child’s toy–a delightful one, too, filled with details of the school day: movable desks, toy books, bouncey pony tails, and a teacher speaking at the back of the heads of the kids. (He’s also carrying a stick by the way; maybe its just a pointer.)
I suspect that the disturbed nature of this toy lives just in my head with its created Darger visions or repetitive living. Or maybe not–it does looked inescapably creepy, complete with a child in dunce’s hat.
Notes:
1. Henry Darger, 1892-1973, living form the Chicago World’s Fair to Watergate, posthumously became perhaps the recognized standard model for outsider art, his magnum opus a 15,000 page and hyper-illustrated work The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the
Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child
Slave Rebellion being the base of the interest. It has its own magnificence to be sure, and I can instantly recognize the enormous effort and creativity, but I always come back to the redded-up girl’s sexual organ additions, which are naturally upsetting, making the whole of the affair feel like a monstrous mental health porn. And for as long as I’ve known about him, and which is also wholly
unsupported by fact or reasonable supposition, I pictured Darger returning to his rooms at
night after a day of cleaning, mopping, scrubbing, taking abuse for
spills not cleaned, and then reliving the entire day at night in
miniature. In my own story, Darger created small figurines and puppets
through which he re-enacted his day, complete with sets of the rooms in
which he worked. Perhaps he lost himself in these moments, finding a
vindication in miniature stages in his second-story walk-up that he
couldn’t in his daily life, allowing his creative, 20-million-word
nighttime imagination to open up. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I made this imaginary life up.