Henry Darger: Disasters Of War

About this book

Henry Darger spent his life working as a janitor in Catholic hospitals living alone in a rented room on Chicagos 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 Dargers 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 Kunstwerkes curator. A selection of 12 previously unpublished excerpts from The Realms of the Unreal and from Dargers diary explore the artists favorite topics: thunderstorms and atrocities. With a biography and exhibition history.