Product Description
This large-format, lavishly
illustrated volume presents the
iconic American outsider artist in
a new critical light, locating him
for the first time as a major figure
in the history of contemporary art.

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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A game-changing book
I believe that the critical apparatus in this book sets the stage for a major re-evaluation of Darger as an artist, placing him in a broader context as a critically important 20th Century painter, and not just an "Outsider Artist" of great impact.

This may be important to art historians, but for potential readers and buyers of this book, the key point is that it provides an extraordinary selection of top-quality work never previously available to even professional scholars. I was absolutely floored by the number of important works featured in this book which had never appeared in print before (and I own everything that has been published on Darger). The quality of reproductions is the best of any existing Darger publication, and the lavish presentation of the work is supplemented by a top-flight discussion of Darger's place on the pantheon and a (still all-too-small) treatment of his writing.

For those potential buyers of Darger books looking for a simple bottom line: buy this if you buy only one Darger book (I bought it today at the bookshop of Musee des Artes Brut in Lausanne.) For Darger fanatics, MacGregor's increasingly-difficult-to-find magnum opus still gets inside of Darger's head like nothing else (credit a decade-long obsession on the author's part),and gives a much fuller view of his writing, but the trove of otherwise-unavailable paintings makes the item under review a must-have for anybody with a serious interest in HD.

A point that will not be relevant to buyers of this book, but which deserves to be made and certainly will not be discussed elsewhere: the fact that this book contains so many previously-unseen paintings in private hands (including the collection of Kiyoko Lerner) must prompt a serious re-assessment of the Lerner stewardship of Darger's ouvre. Famously, they found his vast trove of work in his empty apartment soon before his death. This book, as with everything else in print, fawningly imagines what might have happened if the Lerners had tossed it all into a dumpster. Not especially likely, as Nathan Lerner was himself an artist. As this volume for the first time fully reveals, what the Lerner's did is sold off a third of Darger's greatest work to collectors all over the world (painfully, at least a half dozen works are credited as "private collection, whereabouts un-known") kept a third for themselves and gave another third to galleries, principally NY Folk Art Museum and Musee Des Arts Brut. In all fairness, no-one has ever been in the position of coming into sudden possession of a body of work of this magnitude, but as this first fully definitive visual catalog of Darger's ouvre makes clear, the Lerner's "did well by doing good."

This volume comes very close to being the last word on Darger's visual work, and places it in the context of ephemera and his working method far better than any volume to date. What remains to be done? These pictures were to Darger no more than the illustrations for his 15,000 page magunm opus "The Realms of the Unreal." It is understandable that art historians have not been overly-enthusiastic about coming to grips with such a vast body of writing, but history and those eager for a fuller assessment of Darger's work deserve better. When will we have the equivalent of this book focused on Darger's equally-extraordinary written legacy?

Until then: enjoy. This is the finest, loveliest and most comprehensive tribute to Darger's painting, and a publishing phenomenon in the modern art world.

fantastic collection!
What a great book!I have done a lot of research on Darger, and have looked at nearly all the books available, and this one wins, hands down.I strongly recommend it.

Fantastic! The Best Henry Darger Book Out There (and I've bought them all)
Having purchased every art book on Henry Darger I can easily say this is the best of them all. The number of reproductions, the large size, and the amount of detail in the images far suprasses any of the other books I own.

The book opens with a chapter called "American Innocence" and shows a variety of contemporary art that has been influenced by Henry Darger. From Marcel Dzama to Matthew Barney and many others, it's interesting to see how others have appropriated Darger's aesthetic and how much of an impact Darger has had on "professional" artists.

After this we come to the main attraction: the art of Henry Darger. The first section is "Sources and Drawings" and includes drawings, sketches and collages. This is artwork that is smaller in scale than the larger panoramas. There are many pieces that have no been reproduced elsewhere. The next section is "An Artist's Studio at 851 Webster Avenue" which shows us Darger's magazine clippings and sources, his photocopies, some notebook pages. Sort of the 'behind the scenes' section.

Then comes the "Plates" sections. From pages 100 to 268 you get beautiful color reproductions of his wide panoramas. The book itself is wide format which works perfectly, and there are several gatefolds that really pack a punch. The clarity of the artwork is better than any other book to date and the selection is definitive. Another plus is that the artworks are all reproduced on top of black backgrounds which helps the artwork to stand out and also lets you see the often ragged edges of the pieces.

The book concludes with "The History Of My Life" which is a text written story by Henry Darger. The actual typed out pages are reproduced so you can see and read the actual document Darger created. This is easily the best Darger book out there and highly, highly recommended for Darger fans. This surpasses the thicker Bonesteel Darger book "Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings" which might have a larger page count but not as many reproductions, and not as clearly reproduced, and the binding tends to break apart on it. I still like the Museum of Folk Art's book which is a smaller book' they have the largest Darger holding in a museum and this is a good reference. But if you can only buy one this is it and what a great book it is. ... Read more

Product Description
Since his death in 1973, Henry Darger, janitor, orphan, writer and artist, has found increasing posthumous fame as an artist of influence, particularly for a generation of North American artists born in the late 60s and early 70s, such as Marcel Dzama, Justine Kurland, Justin Lieberman and Amy Cutler, who have drawn on his colossal oeuvre of drawings and writings, and his bizarre world of transgendered and often partially clothed girls warring against evil adults and monsters, in order to evolve their own worlds of similarly fantastical imagery. Several landmark Darger exhibitions and a hit documentary film (In the Realms of the Unreal) have continued to disseminate his work to wider audiences, rendering the persistent epithet of "outsider artist" almost meaningless. All Darger monographs become rarities with incredible rapidity, and this new hardcover edition of the Andrew Edlin Gallery's excellent introduction to Darger will prove no exception. It contains new and improved images, an updated introduction and updated sections on Darger's exhibition history and public collections. In an accompanying essay Edward Madrid Gomez writes: "knowing what we know about this loner's life, it seems that no one else but Darger could have produced it, in the same way that we cannot imagine the ground-breaking works of such artists as Beethoven, Picasso, Wolfli or Joyce emerging from the minds or spirits of anyone else except these geniuses, whose talents have helped define just how far-reaching and accomplished artistic creativity can be."
Henry Darger was the author of drawings, watercolor scrolls and a 15,000 page novel called 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A basic overview
This third edition is a decent basic overview of the Darger phenomenon, an updated 2009 reprint of the earlier 2006 same title. Some of the more colorful, curious and shocking images are not here in these brief 76 pages. I recommend THE HENRY DARGER COLLECTION AT THE AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM, Anderson, Abrams/AFAM 2001, or HENRY DARGER: SELECTED ART AND WRITINGS, Bonesteel, Rizzoli 2000, among others. These are also available at Amazon from time to time, or at out-of-print resellers on the web. Also see the DVD of IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL by Jessica Yu, a 2004 film that was shown on PBS. An excellent film narrated by Dakota Fanning, before she was famous, and others. This is a perfect documentary that reveals all the strangeness and sorrow, the techniques and genius, yet lets you make up your own mind about Darger, even how to pronounce his name. Also available on Amazon.

Henry Darger
I bought this for my daughter for Christmas.. she LOVED it. It was a bit expensive, but well worth it.It was paperback.. would have liked hard cover, but that wasn't available. ... Read more

Product Description
When Henry Darger died in 1973 at the age of 81, he leftbehind an astonishing cache of art, shocking in both its content andits sheer size. The trove included massive, multi-volume illustratedmanuscripts, double-sided nine-foot-long watercolor murals,photo-enlarged tracings, and hundreds of sketches. Depicting aturbulent world, these works are the product of the fertile yettormented imagination of a secretive Chicago janitor who has sincebeen recognized as one of the supreme self-taught artists of the 20thcentury.

Cataloguing in full color the American Folk Art Museum's recent acquisition of 37 paintings, among other Darger works, this informative yet affordable volume offers a general introduction to a controversial self-taught artist.Amazon.com Review
Sweetly colored, pleasingly composed, and delicately rendered, Henry Darger's scroll-like paintings of armies of transsexual children have had a cult status since they were first shown in 1997 at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. The museum's paintings are part of a vast series illustrating the artist's 15,000-page story about the rescue of naked abducted children by seven little girls. Darger, a reclusive janitor and self-taught artist with ambivalent feelings about religion, spent his childhood in a Catholic orphanage, and in the years before his death in 1973 attended Mass several times daily. The real virtues of this slender book are the 114 full-color illustrations of the paintings, which range from fanciful nature scenes to gruesome battle images. The chief essay, by Michel Thévoz, is a pretentious effort that treats Darger's startling and wholly original pastiche of images drawn from magazines and coloring books at a fastidious arm's length. --Cathy Curtis ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Darger Retrospective
This was published to go with the large Henry Darger retrospective in New York and has all the great drawings (which are huge) reproduced. Darger had such a unique vision and there is so much detail in his artwork. Is he a genius? Yes!

Q: madness or genius? A: madness
there is no question, henry darger is not a genius. the fascinating visual effect of his pictures is not contrived, it is the real result of an extremely neurotic man. but that's what makes these pictures so hard to forget.

to put them in context, almost all of the known works of henry darger are a part of the same epic narrative project. the drawings are accompanied by a 5,000 page plus text, telling the story of the vivian girls.

darger was not very good at drawing figures, so he traced photos and cartoons he clipped from magazines and newspapers. supposedly he once lost the newspaper photo of a kidnapped girl that he had been using for one of the main characters, and this forced him to write into the story a search for her. he was so frustrated by this loss that he cursed god and exhibited some sort of religious tantrum.

it is very interesting to look at his pictures and speculate on how each one came to be. i saw one in a museum, which had four cowboys on horses, positioned in a diamond formation, each lasoing a little girl. the space created is distorted like an optical illusion, with spots collapsing and overlapping in ways that do not make sense, so that you can see one object appears in front of another in one spot but behind it in another.

these pictures might give you nightmares or cause seizures.

Darger: madman or genius
I must admit that before i picked up this volume, i wasnt certain of the answer to the aforementioned question. I knew about him, had read bits and pieces about him, but did not know the full scope of his talent.

This book allows the reader to see not just his art, but to catch a glimpse of the sheer magnitude of his madness/genius. The art work is brilliantly reproduced (seeing his stack of journals made the book worthwhile for me).

If you are at all interested in seeing the work and a glimpse of the life of one of the outsider art masters, i suggest that you pick up this book at once. ... Read more

Product Description
In the quarter century since the death of Henry Darger--and the discovery of the astonishing cache of artworks and writings he left behind--this reclusive Chicago janitor has become recognized as one ofthe most important outsider artists of the twentieth century in America.This book provides the first comprehensive survey of Darger's art and writings. Included are reproductions of approximately 114 of Darger's collage drawings and fifteen selections from his writings, focusing on his life's work. In the Realms of the Unreal, which is an account of a cosmic struggle against child slavery unfolding on a planet vastly larger than our own. This battle between the forces of good--led by the intrepid Vivian sisters--and the evil Glandelinian nations, was illustrated and extended in Darger's art, including the mural-size watercolor drawings that represent his mature achievement as an artist.Michael Bonesteel, a Chicago-based art critic and authority on outsider art, provides an introduction to Darger's work and narrates the Dickensian circumstances of his childhood which, along with his profound religious faith and doubt, shaped his extraordinary sensibility. A true American original, Henry Darger combined an unquestionable innocence with a dark and sometimes deeply disturbing vision to create a body of work of originality and lasting impact.Amazon.com Review
The voluminous works of Henry Darger were discovered after his death in 1973 by his landlord in a crowded and almost derelict apartment on Chicago's Northside. Among the piles of newspapers, magazines, and hundreds of balls of twine were scrapbooks made from telephone books and an entire lifetime of creative work. Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings is an amazing window into the extraordinary world of this outsider artist.

In order to escape his unhappy childhood in a mental institution and his reclusive adult life, Darger created his own salvation in the form of an intricate fantasy world of drawings and stories revolving around a set of little girl heroines, with vivid watercolors and collages of children engaged in battles against their enemies. The images are violent and strange, yet they achieve a fragile beauty. His work has taken a long time to gain attention in part due to his disturbing "obsession with little girls ... as hermaphrodites with small penises--and worse, a significant number of works that graphically depicted the strangulation, evisceration, and wholesale slaughter of children." Beyond the graphic nature of the artwork is a story that intertwines religion, superstition, loneliness, and bravery. This remarkable book offers the chance to take a journey through the life, mind, and creative process of a true artist, and it includes entries from his personal diaries and chapters from his fictional saga, "In the Realms of the Unreal." --J.P. Cohen ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Realms of the Unreal.
This isn't concerning the book but I thought I would inform everyone that there is a film on Henry Darger that will be at the Sundance Film Fest (Park City, Utah) The title of the documentary is called "Henry Darger: Realms of the Unreal."It looks to be a great film. The filmakers have also animated parts of his paintings.Hopefully the film will make to near your home in the future. I just picked up my tickets so if you can I would recommend it. Good Luck.

unexpected, inexplicable, and simply unreal...
Henry Darger (1892-1973) spent most of his life working as a dishwasher, janitor, and bandage roller at a hospital in Chicago.Darger's mother died in childbirth with his sister when Darger was 3 years old, and his father died when Darger was 15.The family was economically destitute, and the young Darger ended up in boys homes, orphanages, and such unsavory institutions as the "Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children" in Lincoln, Illinois.Darger lived most of his adult life in the same apartment, and when he died in 1973 his landlord found a number of homemade books containing three large manuscripts written and illustrated by Darger, each more than 5000 pages long.

The most important manuscript is the first, a 14 volume work titled "The Realms of the Unreal, or the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion," which Darger spent two decades writing and illustrating.This epic is the chronicled history of a 4-year war on an imaginary world.On this world, children have been enslaved and a war breaks out to free them.Spearheading the rebellion are the seven Vivian sisters, little girl heroes--figures which seem to have been based, at least partly, on Joan of Arc.Among the story's other main influences are Frank L. Baum's Oz books, the works of Charles Dickens, and the history of the American Civil War.

Darger's artwork is both imaginatively vivid and disturbing.Most of the art involves little girls as the heroes and the victims, with men and supernatural creatures called "the Blegiglomenean Serpents" (or, "the Blengins") as their oppressors.The little girls are often depicted in idyllic portraits; however, they are also often shown being strangled or killed in battle.Also, they are often nude, and sometimes portrayed as hermaphrodites with male genitals.Much of Darger's work is composed of individual figures traced from magazines or comics.Artistically, Darger is compared with figures as diverse as Blake and Andy Warhol.

Visionary brilliance
Henry Darger, the janitor who spent a lifetime writing and illustrating a loving paedophile epic of staggering proportions never seen until his death, has not yet found his time but it will come.His frenzied Blake-like illustrations have had some exposure in museums which feature outsider and folk art (like the recent exhibit at P.S.1 in NYC) but this collection of his work exhibits a glimpse of the novel they were designed to support.With no training his obsessive masterpiece includes prose, poetry, songs and maps.Infectious in a raw undeniable way it is a spelendid, brilliant, disturbing and awesome.

very nice
I've waited for a collection of Darger's work ever since I first saw a handful of originals on exhibit at the County Museum. This volume has a lot (over 100?) of high quality color reproductions of the Vivian Girls leading the sometimes bloody, cosmic child slavery rebellion against the invading Glandelinians, along with source material, and some interesting shots of Darger's studio/apartment.

There are also some pretty interesting writing excerpts from Darger's mammoth source material, REALMS OF THE UNREAL (which dwarfs the notebook writing of David Fincher's antagonists in SEVEN and FIGHT CLUB). It's pretty genuine, and the editors contend to've kept the editing to a crucial minimum.

Tim Burton, et al., can claim to be as weird or on the fringe as much as they want, but they don't hold a candle to someone with a real chemical imbalance.

It's pricey, but well worth it if you're a collector of this sort of stuff. Now, if only someone would make a comparable collection for Adolfo Wolfi...

A necessity for understanding Henry
There have been several things written about Henry Darger and his art but this book is the definitive work.If you want to understand Henry Darger and get a full appreciation of his genius,, read this book and enjoy the beautiful illustrations. ... Read more

Product Description
Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal is a generously illustrated book that represents the culmination of more than a decade of research into the enigmatic artist's life and work by world renowned outsider art expert John MacGregor. The long awaited monograph is MacGregor’s first English-language publication on Henry Darger and the most comprehensive critical investigation of Darger’s writings and illustrations available in any language.

Henry Darger was born in Chicago in 1892. Shortly before his death in 1973, his landlord, Chicago artist Nathan Lerner, made a startling discovery in his tenant’s room: the history of another world in fifteen volumes, In the Realms of the Unreal—at 15,145 type-written pages, possibly the longest work of fiction ever written. In startlingly vivid detail, Darger’s Realms recounted the role of seven sisters, known as the Vivian Girls, in a violent conflict over child enslavement on an unnamed planet. Amidst the refuse, Lerner also found three huge bound volumes of brightly colored illustrations for the work, many painted on both sides and some over twelve feet in length. In the decades since his death, Darger’s alternate universe has attracted the intense interest of collectors, critics, and scholars around the world. His illustrations and writings have been the subject of major museum exhibitions in Europe and North America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Of art and other demons.
Henry Darger was a lonely old man who lived by himself in a small room in Chicago. He worked as a janitor all his life and went to church several times every day, but he never talked to anyone, so no one even knew how to pronounce his last name. When he died, his landlord went to clean out his room. There he discovered Darger's secret life work - around 300 paintings, and 30,000 pages of writing, including a 15,000-page long novel called "In The Realms Of The Unreal."

It takes a brave man to spend ten years to research such an obscure figure. Apparently John MacGregor was the only man up to the task. This book is the only comprehensive analysis of Darger's life and art in existence.

There's a lot to analyze. Darger's novel describes a horrifically violent world war, fought in an unreal world by the virtuous Catholic nation of Angelinia and the evil atheist nation of Glandelinia. Darger's real life was monotonous and isolated, but his inner life was a war, described every night for sixty-odd years with fanatical devotion. Most of his art depicts destruction. And his main symbol of Christian virtue is seven angelic little girls, whom he loves with suspicious passion. It is unnerving, to say the least.

MacGregor attempts to simultaneously describe Darger's life, critically appraise his art, understand his theology, and explore his psychology, while presenting numerous samples of Darger's work. This is the only such attempt ever made, so this book gets a good review almost by default. But I want to point out a few things about Darger's art and MacGregor's treatment of it.

MacGregor uses many superlatives to describe Darger, like "amazing," "astonishing," "brilliant," and "genius." But when he attempts to discuss Darger's writing in detail, the resulting impression is exactly the opposite. He calls Darger's writing "autistic," states (accurately, judging from the samples) that Darger was incapable of creating convincing dialogue and characters, and points out the incoherence of Darger's invented geography. Then sometimes he calls it "brilliant" in the same breath, and argues that Darger's novel is still very readable and interesting.

If it is, MacGregor's chosen samples don't do a lot to show it. Sometimes Darger could describe a sharp image, or affect the tone of an epic poet or a Bible prophet. But it's impossible to know if this is really a sign of creativity, or just a random aberration. In 15,000 pages, one can find evidence to support any interpretation.

Even when Darger writes something relatively good, one never knows if he really wrote it, or if he copied it from somewhere. MacGregor shows that Darger frequently borrowed whole passages from other works, like Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress." To MacGregor, this is a sign of brilliance. Maybe it is brilliant, for an autistic outsider. But I don't want to patronize Darger in that way, I want to try to approach his art as art first. Unfortunately, such an approach does invite the conclusion that the Realms are basically unreadable.

Maybe this is MacGregor's fault. He states, for example, that Darger could occasionally depict more complicated characters, like the honourable enemy general Izner Myletze. If this is true, it speaks in favour of Darger's writing, and is worth discussing. Unfortunately, MacGregor cites only one excerpt from the novel to prove it, and never returns to this issue again.

MacGregor suggests that one day, the novel might be published in abridged form, and appreciated by the general public. This seems impossible. There's no way to know what to abridge. The Realms have a dramatic situation, but no plot development. MacGregor himself says that the war remains unresolved until the last page of the novel.

The paintings stand up much better. Darger wasn't good at free-hand drawing, so he invented a kind of collage technique, carefully explained by MacGregor, in which he would trace stock human figures from books and magazines, and insert them onto his landscapes as he saw fit. He then coloured them in accordance with his setting, adding military uniforms and weapons. The landscapes themselves were of his own creation.

This technique is more impressive than it sounds. As in the novel, nature plays an active role in the paintings. The human figures are often caught under wild, threatening skies. The clouds come in all kinds of shapes, always gigantic, overwhelming the people. Darger's sense of scale makes nature into a colossal force.

Even the human figures, plundered from disposable popular sources, are turned entirely to Darger's purpose. Sometimes he can use them to create a feeling of motion, like in the one scene where the Vivian girls are running down a railroad track, pursued by enemy forces. And sometimes he comes up with a striking visual image, like the one on the cover of this book, or the one of the heart of Christ in heaven.

Then, of course, there are the violent paintings. There are only about ten of these, but the violence is completely unhinged. The most frightening painting of this sort depicts a massacre in a snowfield, where nature is deathly silent. This is the most distasteful aspect of Darger's art. Though maybe we shouldn't be too quick to call him crazy - isn't Mel Gibson making millions out of basically the same thing?

MacGregor argues that Darger was a great artist in his own right, but after reading this book, one feels that Darger can never be recognized. And this is depressing. It makes one think that art is useless. Darger's life-long commitment to his art basically destroyed his life, even as it motivated it. He was a very unhappy man. And although this book makes a powerful impression, when it's over, one is somewhat glad to get outside into the sunshine.

The Creation of An Alternate World
As fans of The Simpsons should know, "Outsider Art" is art that is made by a hillbilly, a mental patient, or a chimpanzee. Anyone who is interested in art like this should know about the great Henry Darger. His story is fascinating, heartbreaking, and deeply deeply disturbing, on all levels. The image on the cover of this book is one of the best examples of what Henry Darger is all about.Huge disembodied flame-colored hands hover menacingly over a group of little yellow-haired girls cowering in their beds. One is running away screaming. Another peers up in cool curiousity... Darger's cult of fame is based on the mega-voluminous epic he wrote throughout his solitary life, based on the often incredibly violent adventures of his imaginary "heart's darlings", The Vivian Girls. Choking and disemboweling were particular obsessions with Darger, and the "battle scenes" can be very hard to look at.Really, keep this book AWAY FROM KIDS, or they might be scarred for life. I admit I found myself seriously creeped out whilst reading this book alone late one night. But that's Darger! And you'll find just as many images of fanciful , wild, and utter beauty.His use of color is truly skillful, for someone so -- "unskilled."Unable to draw, he used a variety of creative techniques to achieve the results he wanted, such as collage, tracing, and color washes.The story of Darger is amazing, and this book gives him the detailed and in-depth treatment he deserves.

Joseoh C. Tedeschi
For anyone looking to enter the unreal realms of Henry Darger, his writings and his artwork, MacGregor's book is essential. He has both exhaustively researched and reconstructed Darger's life as an isolated, perhaps mentally disturbed individual working as a dishwasher and janitor in Chicago and delved deeply into the often gruesome content of Darger's fantasy realm. The book itself is a wonder - it is like a great independent film, unflinching, provocative, well-constructed.

Henry Darger, In the Realms of the Unreal
As an art therapist, I read Dr.John M.MacGregor's book, 'Henry
Darger,In the Realms of the Unreal'and marvelled at the potency of art as a therapeutic agent.

Henry Darger initiated his own therapy.He painted a torrent of images representing his rage.Without his art and his writing, I wonder who would have been the target of this volcanic fury.

John MacGregor's book is a must for all art therapy faculties and departments.

Beth Robinson

Darger: Brilliant, scary enigma
Darger's voluminous work, of which the drawings are only the tip of the iceberg, are inaccessable, literally, except for fragments published in a previous collection.Even if the full opus was available it would still be a alien monument due to it's sheer size, attracting only the peculiarly curious and those who have aquired the taste for Darger's vision.This said, MacGregor's work is a valuable description by a voyager to a dark continent who is capable of expressing the awe, fear and wonder that he experienced when immersed in this strange land.The book is lush, in design and writing, and each chapter tackles a different aspect of the Darger mystery.I imagine attempting to read all of Darger would cause the odd combination of shock and boredom that de Sade's work elicits, trangressive scenes compulsively written ad nausiam.MacGregor distills the major themes of Henry's work, avoids the mind-numbing repetition, yet preserves the vertigo of scale that Darger achieved, intentionally or otherwise.An odd masterpeice written about an even odder masterpeice. ... Read more

Product Description
Cultural Writing. Art. Large format color reproductions of the fifteen works by Darger in the Collection de l'art brut in Lausanne. Includes a generous selection from Darger's unpublished novel In the Realms of the Unreal, presented both in the original English and translated into Italian by John M. MacGregor. Also includes an essay by MacGregor in Italian only. Additionally the book features detail photographs, original drawings and pictures of the artist, and of the room exactly as it was found at the time of his death. ... Read more

Product Description
Henry Darger spent his life working as a janitor in Catholic hospitals, living alone in a rented room on Chicago's north side, attending Mass up to five times a day, and writing a picaresque tale in 15 massive volumes, composed of 145 handwritten pages and 5,084 single-spaced typed pages, and titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. To accompany this enormous literary production, Darger also created several hundred large-scale illustrations--pencil on paper drawings painted over with watercolor and occasional additions of collage--that relate the story: On an unnamed planet, of which Earth is a moon, the good Christian nation of Anniennia wars with the Glandelinians, who practice child enslavement. The heroines are the seven Vivian sisters, Abbiennian princesses, who, after many battles, fires, tempests, and lurid torture, succeed in forcing the Glandelinians to give up their barbarous ways.~The Disasters of War offers an affordable introduction to Darger's astonishing outsider oeuvre. It explains the technique, diligence, and creativity of the works, illustrates details, and features a conversation between the Darger estate holder and the Kunstwerke's curator. A selection of 12 previously unpublished excerpts from The Realms of the Unreal and from Darger's diary explore the artist's favorite topics: thunderstorms and atrocities. With a biography and exhibition history.

Essay by Klaus Biesenbach.~Interview by Kiyoko Lerner.

Paperback, 9.5 x 12 in./213 pgs / 176 color and 6 b & w. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Buy A Different Darger Book
The reproductions in this book aren't as sharp as they are in other books I have and there are too many pages of cropped detail photos. The paperback format is a little flimsy and this is only Darger book I have (out of 4) that is presented vertically. Why is this important? All of Darger's work is very wide so in order to show them off the best the book needs to be in a horizontal format. Seems very basic but this book decided to go vertical which wasn't a good choice. The content here can be found in any of the other Darger books so this is definitely not recommended at all.

goood boook
i like the book would have been nice if there were more background on the man but i think this was what they intended mostly to show the images

Janitor or Genius
This is my favorite book about outsider artist Henry Darger. Check out the amazing film by Mark Salzman's wife. The bio, Man in the Polka Dotted Dress is not coming out cuz the guy who sells Darger for thousands bills is dirty. No oneis finding Darger's long lost sister. Chill out, you are still rich cuz of another man's genius. ... Read more

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Chapters: Richard Dadd, Joseph Yoakum, Wesley Willis, Adolf Wölfli, Francis E. Dec, Henry Darger, Richard Sharpe Shaver, Crispin Glover, Ralph Fasanella, Riley Martin, Ludwig Mestler, Arthur Villeneuve, Bunleua Sulilat, Howard Finster, Charles Dellschau, Donna Williams, Bob Justin, Gottfried Mind, Axel Erlandson, Harriet Powers, Nek Chand, Alexis-Vincent-Charles Berbiguier de Terre-Neuve Du Thym, Visionary Art, Tsang Tsou Choi, Jean Tirilly, Minnie Evans, Tarcisio Merati, John Krubsack, Alén Diviš, Scottie Wilson, Malcolm Mckesson, Martín Ramírez, David Tibet, Charles Sims, Justo Gallego Martínez, James Hampton, Donald Pass, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Judith Scott, Lonnie Holley, Manfred Gnadinger, Ferdinand Cheval, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Nick Blinko, August Natterer, Bruno Schleinstein, Richard Wawro, Bill Traylor, Alexander Lobanov, Clementine Hunter, Izzy Sher, Paul Salvator Goldengreen, Felipe Jesus Consalvos, Mary Barnes, Madge Gill, Angus Mcphee, Karl Brendel, Philadelphia Wireman, Sylvia Convey, Achilles Rizzoli, Farouq Molloy, Carlo Zinelli, Charles Benefiel, Oswald Tschirtner, Morton Bartlett, Mose Tolliver, Billy Tripp, Loy Allen Bowlin, Jonathan Lerman, Mendelson Joe, Enoch Tanner Wickham, Vonn Ströpp, August Klotz, Mayer Kirshenblatt, Charles Crumb, Peter Moog, Aloïse Corbaz, Anson Holzer, Gilles Tréhin, Mary Ann Willson, Johann Knüpfer, Viktor Orth, Gladwyn Bush, Duel, Jane Winkelman, Zebedee Armstrong, Kayla Komito, Ken Grimes, Franz Pohl. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 346. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Francis E. Dec -Francis E. Dec was born on January 6, 1926, in the Nassau County, Long Island community of Hempstead Village, New York (a Black and Latino majority neighborhood, accounting later for its frequent racist designations in Dec's rants) and appears to hav...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=242741 ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Henry Darger, L. S. Lowry, Antonia Gerstacker, Sergey Zagraevsky, Edward Hicks, Henri Rousseau, Howard Finster, Katya Medvedeva, Bob Justin, Séraphine Louis, Niko Pirosmanashvili, Bryan Pearce, Charles Henry Granger, Alfred Wallis, Frances Lennon, Adolf Dietrich, Ferreira Louis Marius, Nikifor, Fred Yates, Ralph Cahoon, Visionary, Horace Pippin, Radi Nedelchev, Markey Robinson, Robert-Émile Fortin, Oluf Braren, Camille Bombois, Bracha Turner, Konstantin Rodko, Denys Corbet, Miguel García Vivancos, Chaïbia Talal, James Lawrence Isherwood, Derold Page, Jean-Yves Couliou, André Bauchant, Michel Delacroix, Tamas Galambos, Nina Barka, Antonio Ligabue, Janko Brašić. Excerpt:Adolf Dietrich (November 9, 1877 June 4, 1957) was a Swiss labourer and, as one of the most renowned naïve artists , one of the leading Swiss painters of the 20th century. Life Adolf Dietrich was born to poor farmers in the canton of Thurgau as the youngest of seven children. Upon discovering his exceptional graphical talents, his schoolteacher suggested that he become a lithographer . His parents, however, refused: their youngest son was needed as a farmhand. Dietrich would remain in the house of his parents, as a bachelor, for the rest of his life. Because the small farm provided little income, he had to work as a home worker and as a day labourer in a local textile mill as well as in the woods. Only on Sundays was he free to engage in drawing and painting. His first sketchbook dates to 1896, his first paintings to 1900. He created his works without any training or examples; but he did heed the advice of passing landscape painters to trust in his powers of observation.For years, Dietrich tried without success to have his works shown in public. After his works were first shown in Konstanz in 1913, he received so... ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Croatian Naïve Painters, Naive Painters, Grandma Moses, Henry Darger, L. S. Lowry, Antonia Gerstacker, Sergey Zagraevsky, Edward Hicks, Henri Rousseau, James Bard, Nan Phelps, Howard Finster, Katya Medvedeva, Bob Justin, Séraphine Louis, Beryl Cook, Niko Pirosmanashvili, Jacqueline Nesti Joseph, Bryan Pearce, Charles Henry Granger, Sybil Gibson, Alfred Wallis, Frances Lennon, Adolf Dietrich, Ferreira Louis Marius, Nikifor, Fred Yates, Ralph Cahoon, Visionary, Horace Pippin, Radi Nedelchev, Rigaud Benoit, Markey Robinson, Robert-Émile Fortin, Oluf Braren, Krsto Hegedušić, Ivan Lacković Croata, Camille Bombois, Mirko Virius, Bracha Turner, Ivan Rabuzin, Konstantin Rodko, Denys Corbet, Andrés Curruchich, Norman Neasom, Miguel García Vivancos, Ivan Generalić, Chaïbia Talal, James Lawrence Isherwood, Derold Page, Jean-Yves Couliou, Gesner Abelard, Petar Grgec, André Bauchant, Wilson Bigaud, Michel Delacroix, Tamas Galambos, Nina Barka, Antonio Ligabue, Brenno Benatti, Janko Brašić, Franjo Mraz. Excerpt:Franjo Mraz (April 4, 1910 in Hlebine - October 26, 1981 in Bre ice ) was a notable Croatian artist . Together with Ivan Generali and Mirko Virius , he is considered a founder of Croatian naive art . His most famous paintings are "Oranje" ("Ploughing") and "Zima" ("Winter").A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at Ivan Generali (December 21, 1914 November 27, 1992) was a Croatian naïve art painter.Generali was born in Hlebine near Koprivnica . In elementary school, painting lessons were his greatest joy and as a child he used to earn money. He mostly drew with pencil on paper bags and some of these sketches were seen by Krsto Hegedu i , at the time (1930) just a student of the art academy, later a professor. Hegedu i was impressed with Generali 's work and organized Generali 's ... ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine, published by Parachute Contemporary Art on October 1, 1997. The length of the article is 1060 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Henry Darger (exhibition).
Author: Christine Martin
Publication: Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 1997
Publisher: Parachute Contemporary Art
Issue: 88Page: 69

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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Chapters: Naïve Painters, Henry Darger, L. S. Lowry, Antonia Gerstacker, Sergey Zagraevsky, Edward Hicks, Henri Rousseau, Howard Finster, Katya Medvedeva, Bob Justin, Séraphine Louis, Niko Pirosmanashvili, Bryan Pearce, Charles Henry Granger, Alfred Wallis, Frances Lennon, Adolf Dietrich, Ferreira Louis Marius, Nikifor, Fred Yates, Ralph Cahoon, Visionary, Horace Pippin, Radi Nedelchev, Eolo Pons, Markey Robinson, Robert-Émile Fortin, Oluf Braren, Camille Bombois, Bracha Turner, Wilhelm Uhde, Konstantin Rodko, Denys Corbet, Miguel García Vivancos, Chaïbia Talal, Max Fourny, James Lawrence Isherwood, Derold Page, Jean-Yves Couliou, André Bauchant, Michel Delacroix, Marian Ulc, Tamas Galambos, Nina Barka, Antonio Ligabue, Janko Brašić. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 188. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Henry Joseph Darger, Jr. (April 12(?), 1892April 13, 1973) was a reclusive American writer and artist who worked as a custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page, single-spaced fantasy manuscript called 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, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story. Darger's work has become one of the most celebrated examples of outsider art. Darger was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1892. While he is believed to have been born on April 12, the exact date is debated. A record exists of his U.S. draft registration card, filled out on June 2, 1917 during the First World War, which lists his birth date as April 17, 1892. Cook County records show that he was born at his home, located at 350 W. 24th Street in Chicago. When he was four years old, his mother, Rosa Full...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=466610 ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Augustin Lesage, Henry Darger, Carlo Zinelli, Adolf Wölfli, Hélène Smith, Raphaël Lonné, Aloïse Corbaz, Maurice Baskine, Madge Gill, Carl Fredrik Hill, Willem Van Genk, Farouq Molloy, Jean Tourlonias, Scottie Wilson, Paul Duhem, Else Blankenhorn. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Augustin Lesage, né le 9 août 1876 à Saint-Pierre-lez-Auchel (Pas-de-Calais), décédé le 21 février 1954, est un peintre français inclassable.Rattaché au mouvement spirite, étudié par André Breton, il est intégré à la Collection de l'art brut, dont il est une figure majeure. Sources : Augustin Lesage naît à Saint-Pierre-lez-Auchel le 9 août 1876. À l'âge de 7 ans, il perd sa jeune sœur Marie, de 4 ans sa benjamine. Dans cette région minière du Nord de la France, c'est tout naturellement qu'il commence à travailler à la mine dès 14 ans, après son certificat d'études. Mais c'est cette fois sa mère qui, cette année-là, meurt d'un cancer de la lèvre. À 18 ans, il rencontre sa future femme avec qui il a une fille en 1895. À 20 ans, il est mobilisé dans des régiments de Dunkerque et Lille, d'où il revient en 1900 pour reprendre « l'existence simple et dure d'un travailleur du sous-sol ». Un soir de 1911, alors qu'il avait trente-cinq ans, il entendit au fond de la mine, effrayé, une voix lui annoncer : « Un jour, tu seras peintre ! ». Le message se répète peu de temps après, puis les voix - au sens sonore du terme -, ne se feront plus jamais entendre. L'année d'après, il est initié au spiritisme et participe à ses premières séances. Là, sous l'impulsion de ce qu'il pense être l'esprit de sa sœur Marie, morte à l'âge de trois ans, il commence ses premiers dessins automatiques. Des messages par écriture automatique lui sont égale...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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Exhibition catalog 18 pages, 12" X 4 3/4" format. "A Personal Recollection" by Nathan Lerner . Exhibit dates: January 13 to March 10, 1996 in Iowa & January 11 to February 8, 1997 at the Museum of American Folk Art , New York ... Read more

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Kapitel: Jean Dubuffet, Henry Darger, Willem Van Genk, Baya, Alois Wey, Scottie Wilson, James Hampton, Carlo Zinelli, Heinrich Anton Müller, Adam Dario Keel, Paul Salvator Goldengruen, Kunsthaus Kannen, Leo Navratil, Karl Brendel, Adolf Wölfli, Oswald Tschirtner, Hans Krüsi, Ernst Herbeck, Louis Soutter, Theodor Wagemann, Jacques Soisson, Sala Kaeo Ku, August Natterer, Johann Hauser, Eugenio Santoro, Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern, August Walla, Aloïse Corbaz, Angus Mcphee, Zustandsgebundene Kunst, Sammlung Prinzhorn. Aus Wikipedia. Nicht dargestellt. Auszug: Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (July 31, 1901 - May 12, 1985) was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making. Dubuffet was born in Le Havre. He moved to Paris in 1918 to study painting at the Académie Julian, but after six months he left the Académie to study independently. In 1924, doubting the value of art, he stopped painting and took over his father's business selling wine. He took up painting again in the 1930s, when he made a large series of portraits in which he emphasized the vogues in art history. But again stopped, only turning to art for good in 1942 when he started to paint figures of nude women in a impersonal and primitive way, in strong and unbroken colours. Also he chose as subjects people in the commonplace of everyday life, such as people sitting in the underground, or just walking in the country. His first solo show came in 1944. In 1945 he became strongly impressed by a show in Paris of Jean Fautrier's paintings in which he recognized meaningful art which expressed directly and purely the depth of a person. As did Fautrier he started to use thick oil paint, but mixed with sand and gravel, by which he could model the paint as a skin of the painting. This resulted i...http://booksllc.net/?l=de ... Read more