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Chapters: Danse Macabre, Symbolism, Richard Dadd, H. R. Giger, Codex Seraphinianus, Henry Darger, Austin Osman Spare, Roger Dean, Fantastic Planet, Danny Malboeuf, Zdzisław Beksiński, Paul Laffoley, Elizabeth Mcgrath, Ernst Fuchs, Jeremy Caniglia, Juliusz Słowacki, Visionary Art, Mark Ryden, Joe Coleman, de Es Schwertberger, Tristan Greatrex, Krk Ryden, Peter Gric, Daniel Martin Diaz, Alex Gross, Juxtapoz, Paul Whitehead, Antonio Roybal, Calvin Maglinger, Camille Rose Garcia, Amanda Sage, Robert Venosa, Fantastic Art Centre, Brigid Marlin, Marion Peck, Oleg A. Korolev, Jophen Stein, Society for Art of Imagination, Miguel Tio, Judson Huss, Dark Art, Kayla Komito. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 220. 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 Fullman, died after having given birth to a daughter, who was given up for ad...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=466610 ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), published by The Register Guard on March 27, 2005. The length of the article is 981 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.

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Title: A spin into the odd world of Henry Darger.(Entertainment)(Seattle dance troupe brings its view of one man's art to the stage)
Publication: The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) (Newspaper)
Date: March 27, 2005
Publisher: The Register Guard
Page: L5

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Article in a periodical; also includes Meddardo Rosso, P.S.1, Achilles Rizzoli ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Etc. Montreal, published by Thomson Gale on December 1, 2006. The length of the article is 2198 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.

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Title: Le mannequin et la poupee, une icone explosive?(Paris)
Author: Ludovic Fouquet
Publication: Etc. Montreal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 76Page: 61(6)

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A book-length poem that is at once tragic and hilarious.

Girls on the Run is a poem loosely based on the works of the "outsider" artist Henry Darger (1892-1972), a recluse who toiled for decades at an enormous illustrated novel about the adventures of a plucky band of little girls. The Vivians are threatened by human tormentors, supernatural demons, and cataclysmic storms; their calmer moments are passed in Edenic landscapes. Darger traced the figures from comic strips, coloring books, and other ephemeral sources, filling in the backgrounds with luscious watercolor. John Ashbery's Girls on the Run creates a similar childlike world of dreamy landscapes, lurking terror, and veiled eroticism. Its fractured narrative mode almost (but never quite) coalesces into a surrealist adventure story for juvenile adults.
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Customer Reviews (6)

3.75 stars : I, too, find him prepossessing
Predictable surprises -- and a few unpredictable ones -- inhabit this volume, a single long poem loosely based on the illustrations of Henry Darger. There are chuckleworthy phrases that rattle about the brain with a happy insouciance for several days after one has read the thing. "The oxymoron gets his rocks off" and "pink shrouds fell on the pansy jamboree."And we like going for the ride, even if we get a little dizzy and a little seasick. The "androgynous truths" bubble perkily to the surface, in a verbal universe where what matters matters as much as what doesn't matter.We know a few of the magician's tricks, but there are always a few swerves and slides which we can't anticipate. The honey drips from a blighted bough -- or is it a bright and sprightly bough? -- and the housepets lap the gruel in their gaily-coloured bowls, and the narrator stands back and lets it all happen.As with anything by Ashbery, there are unwholesome things and things from which the reader runs away, but we marvel at the ingenuity nonetheless.

Ashbery and Naive Literature
I picked this up on impulse. I'm interested in the work of Henry J. Darger. But I was not taken by this book at all. Ashbery flows a lot of beautiful verbiage together. But it's incomprehensible at a first readingand I'm not going to spend more time trying to root anything out of it. Itseems like a lot of surrealist automatic writing. There were occasionalimages that would surface in an appealing way like, "count the dogs asfurniture as otherwise there will be no chairs," but few of the imagesrecurred enough to give any sense of narrative or unifying theme. I betDarger's naive literature is a lot more fascinating than this.

Pastoral, apocalyptic fin-de-siecle masterpiece
I, too, have always admired but never been bowled over by John Ashberry's work. With this work I am convinced he is our greatest American poet.Since I am familiar with Henry Darger's pictures and style, Ashberry'simagery seems natural even as it is surreal.The two share an aesthetic ofusing common cultural artifacts and twisting them so that even thoughyou're staring right at them, you no longer recognize what you're seeing.It is a dream language, and Ashberry has never been so adept at navigatingthat territory. The poetry, like Darger's paintings, mix the pastoral andthe apocalyptic, the innocent and the decadent with such unsettlingvirtuostic ease that you're not sure which is which. If I had to pick apoetry to compare it to, I might pick Blake--both for the lyric sweetnessand hinted threats of "Innocence and Experience," and thecultural commentary/prophecy of his later, longer work. If, like me, yourexperience with Ashberry's work has left you shrugging, this os the placeto start. I don't read much poetry anymore--this will reaffirm your faithin it.

Most great
Words very good, yes. Ashbery writes best good book. Yes, buy it, good, yes.

Good beach reading!
This is the very favorite book that I read.It has an author by John Ashbery.It is real poetry.I wanted to read it 2x before I read it.It is good for the beach reading (date: June 18).Please bring a dictionaryto look up the different words.Who are the girls (names)?I took thisbook to everywhere I was going one day and finished that book in 3 daysafter going 19 places.Please read this enjoyable imagination. ... Read more