Customer Reviews

Henry Darger

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Having purchased every art book on Henry Darger I can easily say this is the best of them all. The number of reproductions, the large size, and the amount of detail in the images far suprasses any of the other books I own.

The book opens with a chapter called "American Innocence" and shows a variety of contemporary art that has been influenced by Henry Darger. From Marcel Dzama to Matthew Barney and many others, it's interesting to see how others have appropriated Darger's aesthetic and how much of an impact Darger has had on "professional" artists.

After this we come to the main attraction: the art of Henry Darger. The first section is "Sources and Drawings" and includes drawings, sketches and collages. This is artwork that is smaller in scale than the larger panoramas. There are many pieces that have no been reproduced elsewhere. The next section is "An Artist's Studio at 851 Webster Avenue" which shows us Darger's magazine clippings and sources, his photocopies, some notebook pages. Sort of the 'behind the scenes' section.

Then comes the "Plates" sections. From pages 100 to 268 you get beautiful color reproductions of his wide panoramas. The book itself is wide format which works perfectly, and there are several gatefolds that really pack a punch. The clarity of the artwork is better than any other book to date and the selection is definitive. Another plus is that the artworks are all reproduced on top of black backgrounds which helps the artwork to stand out and also lets you see the often ragged edges of the pieces.

The book concludes with "The History Of My Life" which is a text written story by Henry Darger. The actual typed out pages are reproduced so you can see and read the actual document Darger created. This is easily the best Darger book out there and highly, highly recommended for Darger fans. This surpasses the thicker Bonesteel Darger book "Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings" which might have a larger page count but not as many reproductions, and not as clearly reproduced, and the binding tends to break apart on it. I still like the Museum of Folk Art's book which is a smaller book' they have the largest Darger holding in a museum and this is a good reference. But if you can only buy one this is it and what a great book it is.

What a great book! I have done a lot of research on Darger, and have looked at nearly all the books available, and this one wins, hands down. I strongly recommend it.

I believe that the critical apparatus in this book sets the stage for a major re-evaluation of Darger as an artist, placing him in a broader context as a critically important 20th Century painter, and not just an "Outsider Artist" of great impact.

This may be important to art historians, but for potential readers and buyers of this book, the key point is that it provides an extraordinary selection of top-quality work never previously available to even professional scholars. I was absolutely floored by the number of important works featured in this book which had never appeared in print before (and I own everything that has been published on Darger). The quality of reproductions is the best of any existing Darger publication, and the lavish presentation of the work is supplemented by a top-flight discussion of Darger's place on the pantheon and a (still all-too-small) treatment of his writing.

For those potential buyers of Darger books looking for a simple bottom line: buy this if you buy only one Darger book (I bought it today at the bookshop of Musee des Artes Brut in Lausanne.) For Darger fanatics, MacGregor's increasingly-difficult-to-find magnum opus still gets inside of Darger's head like nothing else (credit a decade-long obsession on the author's part),and gives a much fuller view of his writing, but the trove of otherwise-unavailable paintings makes the item under review a must-have for anybody with a serious interest in HD.

A point that will not be relevant to buyers of this book, but which deserves to be made and certainly will not be discussed elsewhere: the fact that this book contains so many previously-unseen paintings in private hands (including the collection of Kiyoko Lerner) must prompt a serious re-assessment of the Lerner stewardship of Darger's ouvre. Famously, they found his vast trove of work in his empty apartment soon before his death. This book, as with everything else in print, fawningly imagines what might have happened if the Lerners had tossed it all into a dumpster. Not especially likely, as Nathan Lerner was himself an artist. As this volume for the first time fully reveals, what the Lerner's did is sold off a third of Darger's greatest work to collectors all over the world (painfully, at least a half dozen works are credited as "private collection, whereabouts un-known") kept a third for themselves and gave another third to galleries, principally NY Folk Art Museum and Musee Des Arts Brut. In all fairness, no-one has ever been in the position of coming into sudden possession of a body of work of this magnitude, but as this first fully definitive visual catalog of Darger's ouvre makes clear, the Lerner's "did well by doing good."

This volume comes very close to being the last word on Darger's visual work, and places it in the context of ephemera and his working method far better than any volume to date. What remains to be done? These pictures were to Darger no more than the illustrations for his 15,000 page magunm opus "The Realms of the Unreal." It is understandable that art historians have not been overly-enthusiastic about coming to grips with such a vast body of writing, but history and those eager for a fuller assessment of Darger's work deserve better. When will we have the equivalent of this book focused on Darger's equally-extraordinary written legacy?

Until then: enjoy. This is the finest, loveliest and most comprehensive tribute to Darger's painting, and a publishing phenomenon in the modern art world.