Author Michael Bonesteel vividly remembers the first time he came across the work of Henry Darger, the reclusive, emotionally disturbed hospital worker whose fantastically bizarre art and writings were discovered by his Lincoln Park landlord more than a quarter century ago.
It wasn’t until the following year that Bonesteel saw Darger’s works for the first time, at a Museum of Contemporary Art show called “Outsider Art in Chicago” that included the work of six Chicago artists. He describes the experience in near-religious terms: it was as if he were standing in a cathedral, feeling a connection to the “mystical exaltation of saints” in a way he never had (but always thought he was supposed to) as an altar boy.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
More than two decades later, Bonesteel’s attraction has culminated in Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings. The 256-page book includes an introductory essay by Bonesteel, some 125 reproductions of Darger’s drawings and collage paintings, and 18 excerpts from his writings–mostly from the Realms (including hymns and songs by Darger), but also from the artist’s 5,084-page autobiography, his extensive weather journals, and his diary. Bonesteel’s is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s life and work to be published in this country. (A book on Darger by psychiatric-art scholar John M. MacGregor came out in 1996 in French; he’s still trying to find a publisher for his more expansive monograph on the artist.)
Darger’s belated acclaim was no surprise to Bonesteel. “Why shouldn’t everybody be as knocked out as I am about this guy? I’ve been wondering for years why people didn’t look at his stuff and, instead of coming up with points of view like ‘Oh, he’s a pedophile’ or ‘Oh, he’s a weirdo,’ see the other side of him–see what an incredible artist he is. I don’t think he was a pedophile, I don’t think there’s any evidence that he ever was. However, I can see why people would jump to that conclusion.”
When he became too lame to climb the stairs, Lerner signed him into a Catholic-run convalescent home; when Lerner asked him what he wanted done with his possessions, Darger reportedly replied, “It’s all yours.” He died on April 13, 1973, the day after his 81st birthday, and was buried in the paupers’ section of All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines.
Bonesteel considers Darger “an original creative genius in the same way Picasso was, and I’m not exaggerating. He transcends categories. Calling Darger an outsider artist, and just an outsider, is like calling Picasso a cubist, and just a cubist–you couldn’t pigeonhole him as one type of artist. I think Darger’s the same way. There are aspects about him that are outsiderlike, but by restricting your definition to that you leave out all kinds of other things that contradict the whole outsider paradigm….You can look at him as a kind of proto-pop appropriator–although postmodern artists have an irony to their work that he didn’t; he’s really more of a modernist. You could view him as a Catholic artist.”
Bonesteel always had a notion of putting together a book on Darger, but it was a chain of serendipitous events that finally made it happen. Planning to write a book on Chicago outsider artists, Bonesteel spent much of 1997 doing research in Darger’s room, which until last spring had been preserved pretty much intact except for the Realms: still in place were Darger’s typewriters, manuscripts, worktable, scrapbooks, and portraits of little girls and Catholic saints. At the same time Kiyoko Lerner, who still owned the building, was approached by Rizzoli, the New York-based art-book publisher.
