Henry Darger, “Outsider Artist,” and Normal Deviation
There are artists who, like a hobbyist, make no effort to show their work, going so far as to conceal it. As a student of art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1983, an example of one such artist was brought to my attention. It was Henry Darger (1892-1973). The academic problem was how to evaluate an artist such as Henry Darger as an artist -not as a clinical case.
Art is not social work even if, as it often seems, an artist's art is overshadowed almost to irrelevance by the life of the artist. An artist's life is circumstantial. Personal analysis of an artist is even worse. Blunt-speaking critics must refrain from the use of such nontechnical terms as "closet artist." It is a paradox because the problem of suppressed expression is the elephant in the sacristy of both creativity and personality.
Henry Darger's artistic quirk is not as easy to define as simple pornography, in which actual human beings are being exploited, making a case for criminal charges. The theme of Henry Darger's artwork is a serial collage of cliché images of underage girls, originally drawn from imagination by commercial artists, found, and appropriated by, Henry Darger for his purposes.
This imagery is as innocuous, visually, as a stamp collection. It resembles stamp collecting in more ways than one, as stamp collecting is a fascination, which most people outgrow as adults. A very few persist in the obsession, never outgrowing the infatuation, comparable to model train hobbyists. It is an escape from the demands of daily life.
As such should the artwork of Henry Darger be evaluated. It is an instance of personal obsession. It should be, because his was an obsessive-compulsive personality. Henry Darger's medical records are a public record. He was a welfare case his entire life. He was born into modest circumstances, which were made harder by early misfortune. His case, individually, may be summarized as an instance of introversion (in the psychological sense.)
About personality, evaluation becomes projection on the part of the viewer. Henry Darger was an introvert and his oeuvre faithfully expresses his introversion. It was expressed despite his best efforts, because his full effort was split between self-expression, and repression. His subject matter (underage girls) can be seen to represent his unconscious Id, psychologically, which plays into the trap of art-as-therapy.
The body of Henry Darger's creativity includes a long, written narrative. I admit I have never read a word of it. There is far too much visual matter to digest without, what I presume, is a minute digression into the follies of the underage girls which constitute his cast of characters. I would be interested in what insights he, or anyone, might offer into his subject (childhood libido) -but I seriously doubt the reading would be rewarding in Henry Darger's case.
Henry Darger's one great advantage in life was being born, and having lived, in Chicago for his entire life. Chicago is famous for its democratic humanism. It is the cradle of Sociology. Because of his touching background, his life and work has caused a great deal of interest in the community of humanitarians. Chicago has always had a special place in its heart for its resident outsiders. Outsider art is considered the real deal. It can't be parodied by school-savvy, mainstream, aspire-to-greatness, School of the Art Institute art students.
At the risk of being accused of resorting to cliches myself, I would characterize Henry Darger's status as an artist, as that of an un-canonical saint. I am reminded of Sartre's solicitude towards Jean Genet. The point of my conceit is that if the mainstream of art can be characterized as “canonical,” in Henry Darger we have an example of an artist upheld as a paragon of virtue precisely for being outside of the established canon.
The broader issue, therefore, is the cultural establishment of a counter-canonical canon, a category of outsider, non-conformist, Six Sigma deviation-from-the-mean artist, and class of art. It is an exemption, not a class standard, analogous to a tax exemption. It may be, one day (or perhaps it already is), that "closet art" occupies its own department of The School of Art.