RECOMMENDED
Like many artists, Henry Darger became famous posthumously. His works were found in his Chicago apartment after he died in the 1973. Darger felt he was bad at drawing so most of his paintings were traced or derived from source material such as comic clippings and coloring books, which he then embellished by adding his own captions and collages. He made his own watercolors and named them Oriental Blue and Flesh Colour, a purplish shade. His works center on a fantasy manuscript he wrote entitled “The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave,” clocking in at more than 15,000 pages. His paintings follow the cherubic Vivian girls through battles with their enemies, abusive adult males. The exhibit delves into Darger’s reclusive world, showing photos of his apartment, excerpts from his novel and the pencils, paints and books he used in his works. Seen up close, his double-sided watercolor images slightly bleed through to the other side and his support are two sections glued together, like a continuous scroll. The exhibit is like peering through a keyhole into the artist’s psyche, and although we may never comprehend his genius, it’s a good place to start. (Garin Pirnia)
Through March 16 at the the Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood, on the campus of the University of Chicago.
Related Stories
Darger Never Disappoints: A Review of “Betwixt-and-Between: Henry Darger's Vivian Girls” at Intuit Did the Vivian Girls' boy parts signal gender fluidity or just an artist suspended in prepubescence?
Transforming the Mundane: A Review of Tara Donovan at the Smart Museum The gallery space is filled with objects we see every day, objects we use every day. Donovan breathes new life into them. 
Rodin and Nauman Face Off: A Review of “Hysterical Material” at the Smart Museum of Art Masters of figural abstraction from different centuries go tête-à-tête.
Poetic Gestures Painted and Drawn: A Review of Tang Chang at the Smart Museum This Thai painter's first American solo exhibition meditates on gestural abstraction as poetic movements.
One Collector's Effort to Reframe Art History: A Review of “Solidary and Solitary” at the Smart Museum of Art The exhibition delivers a rather mixed message, while confirming the importance of the celebratory, abstract art made by artists of African descent who worked in the 1950s and 1960s.
Master Prints Shed Light On the Century Before French Art Was In Vogue: A Review of “Art in Seventeenth-Century France” at the Smart Museum The prints displayed here pre-date the concerted turn to intellection that characterized French art after the middle of the seventeenth century, but they convey something of the time’s ambition.
