Notes on Henry Darger

Notes related to the story below.

• I don't draw much, but when I do I always end up drawing the same things - funky make-believe flowers, and a little guy wearing a suit with butterfly wings on his back and antlers sprouting from his head. Up to last night I had only seen Darger's "torture" paintings - so when I saw the bizarre flowers and the children with butterfly wings, I was stunned. Please don't laugh at me - I think I may have been channeling Henry Darger. OK, go ahead, laugh.
• Men like Henry Darger (and happily there were many of them) are commonly called "outsider artists". I don't like this term. I think it has a condescending ring to it; these people are loners who aren't schooled and don't create art for money, thereforefore they must be outsiders. I propose that this kind of art be called "devotional art", because the artists usually devote their entire lives to a single project or theme, and because the art is usually very religious/devotional in nature. For example, a Floridian named Edwin Leedskalnin spent years building an enormous sculpture out of hunks of coral and dedicated it to a girl who had dumped him when he was 16 years old. And an ordinary Frenchman built a "castle" covered with 12-foot statues of gods and goddesses using only a wheelbarrow and concrete that he mixed himself. He called the wheelbarrow his "partner in pain". The castle, called the Palais Ideal, is now considered an early Surrealist masterpiece. And I couldn't forget James Hamilton, Jr., another janitor (like Darger) who created a stunning altar and throne out of bits of tinfoil - now housed in the Smithsonian. These creations are too breathtaking, too miraculous, to be stuck with "outsider art".
• I saw this movie in a small, wood-paneled theatre where the chairs look like they were upholstered with the skin of Grover from Sesame Street. The acoustics suck and there's a stage in front of the screen that usually has a piano or a paint bucket left on it. And you know what? It was 400 times better than anything The Matrix and the Cineplex Odeon could ever deliver!
• You know that film technique everybody's using, where photos are made to look 3-D? It's used in so many documentaries and news shows nowadays that it drives me nuts. Well, it was finally put to good use in the documentary I describe below - the filmmakers used it to animate some of Henry Darger's paintings. Seeing the battle scenes and the fluttering children come to life was magical.