as told by the Vivian Girls
remember back about a month ago when i was talking about Henry Darger?
Carlye and i saw his art this weekend
the paintings are all part of Darger's illustrated novel "In the Realms of the Unreal", it took a lifetime to complete. in total, the work was over 15,000 pages and had almost 30 paintings to accompany it
most of the story has to do with a terrible war
but there were moments of beauty too. there were several paintings of flowers and beautiful fields in sharp contrast to the gore and pain of battle
Darger never had any money , having worked as a janitor all his life. as such, all of his paintings are done with cheap watercolors on butcher paper
he pasted the pieces together to make his canvases longer, some around ten feet in length
the exhibit also tried to give you a feel for what it was like in Darger's single-room apartment where he worked. here you can see the clutter of the magazines and papers he found as well as the art supplies he scavenged from the trash and dime stores. Carlye was struck by the fact that he organized his paints and crayons by color in the containers. he also labeled things with tags like "storm cloud purple" rather than leave their original names in place
since he had no formal training in art, Darger rescued hundreds of magazines, comics and coloring books from the trash to use the images in his work. he also obsessively collected bits of string
and rubber bands.
the handwritten sign in the middle says "No smoking under no conditions". this sign seemed odd to me since Darger never talked to anyone, let alone had them come over. who was this sign for?
i just threw this last picture in. i think it's one of the nicer ones i've taken of Carlye in a while
Carlye and i saw his art this weekend
the paintings are all part of Darger's illustrated novel "In the Realms of the Unreal", it took a lifetime to complete. in total, the work was over 15,000 pages and had almost 30 paintings to accompany it
most of the story has to do with a terrible war
but there were moments of beauty too. there were several paintings of flowers and beautiful fields in sharp contrast to the gore and pain of battle
Darger never had any money , having worked as a janitor all his life. as such, all of his paintings are done with cheap watercolors on butcher paper
he pasted the pieces together to make his canvases longer, some around ten feet in length
the exhibit also tried to give you a feel for what it was like in Darger's single-room apartment where he worked. here you can see the clutter of the magazines and papers he found as well as the art supplies he scavenged from the trash and dime stores. Carlye was struck by the fact that he organized his paints and crayons by color in the containers. he also labeled things with tags like "storm cloud purple" rather than leave their original names in place
since he had no formal training in art, Darger rescued hundreds of magazines, comics and coloring books from the trash to use the images in his work. he also obsessively collected bits of string
and rubber bands.
the handwritten sign in the middle says "No smoking under no conditions". this sign seemed odd to me since Darger never talked to anyone, let alone had them come over. who was this sign for?
i just threw this last picture in. i think it's one of the nicer ones i've taken of Carlye in a while