Disasters of War is a
collection of images from Henry Darger’s work.  It has about 200 pages of color
reproductions of his mammoth illustrations of the Vivian sisters. "The
Realms of the Unreal," and it also has several pages extracted from his writings. 
The book is introduced with an interview with Kiyoko Lerner, who was Darger’s
landlord for many year, and became the main curator of his work until the bulk
of his creative output was moved to museums.  The book is large and the quality
of printing is high, so it is possible to see the details of Dargers’ art.  The
text of his novel included here, even though just a short extract, is tedious
and so almost unreadable.  Much of Darger’s drawing is crude and the theme of
the battle between the girls and their enemies is in itself not particularly
interesting.  What makes Darger’s work so mesmerizing is his ability to create
such bizarre images, in their content, composition, and style. 

There is no escaping the fact that
when looking at these images, one is led to speculate about Darger’s mind, and
whether he was psychologically disturbed.  In the recent documentary In the
Realms of the Unreal (reviewed in Metapsychology 10:23) those who knew him
report that he was able to hold down a job and manage his money, but that he
was a very strange man, talking to himself in his room using many different
voices, yet not very social with other people, not willing to answer any direct
questions about himself, and completely secretive about the writing and
paintings that he created in his room.  Various experts have offered different
diagnoses of him, without ever having met him before his death in 1973, but of
course there will never be any confirmation of those speculations.  It is clear
that he was very preoccupied with the innocence and fragility of young girls,
and their fight against evil powerful forces.  It seems very likely that this
theme relates to his own childhood as an orphan, and his suffering at the hands
of others.  One of the other mysteries of his work concerns his drawing of
naked children, showing girls with small penises.  Some people in the
documentary speculate that he did this because he didn’t know the biological
differences between male and female, but this seems very unlikely, given that
he drew some girls without penises, so he could not have believed that all
people have them.  Anyway, it seems almost impossible for a man to grow up in
the twentieth century with such ignorance, no matter how sheltered he is from
the world.  Darger cannot have been so sheltered, since he worked in a hospital
for many years.  It is much more likely that male genitalia represented
something important to him, but he gives no clue as to what he thought about
it. 

This publication, edited by Klaus
Biesenbach, helps readers to reflect on Darger’s work by providing
plenty of material to carefully scrutinize.  However, it may be that Darger’s
art is simple on the surface, and inscrutable at deeper levels.  One is left
with the simple pleasure of looking at the odd images, which are funny,
disturbing, puzzling, and often beautiful.  Disasters of War is one of
the best collections of Darger’s work, and anyone with a deep interest in the
man’s art should take a look at it.

© 2006 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is
Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island, and editor
of Metapsychology Online Reviews.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: ArtAndPhotography