Jim Elledge's 'Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life Of An Outsider Artist' (2013) is an intelligent, highly detailed and compassionate, if speculative, exploration of the American 'outsider artist' whose work slowly came to the attention of the world after his death in 1973.
Darger's life spent on the peripheries of society, and especially his extremely idiosyncratic paintings and writings, have represented a complex and problematic mosaic, one which has led such important cultural figures like Robert Hughes to label Darger an actual or potential "sadist, pedophile and serial killer." While some of Darger's images--especially those of naked little girls with tiny flaccid penises being slaughtered by adult men and monsters in fantastic landscapes--are certainly unique, eye-catching and potentially disturbing, a presumably erudite art critic and author like Hughes should have known better than to interpret such images literally.
The correct response to Darger's enormous body of watercolors--if such a statement can be made--is awe, an awe so powerful that it precludes a harsh literal interpretation.
Darger's early life was sadly typical of America's lower economic classes at the turn of the last century. Raised haphazardly by his alcoholic and often-absent father in a slum in the "vice district" of Chicago, Henry roamed the streets as a child, where, in trying to survive, he was sexually preyed upon by older men and where he learned to prey upon others around him in turn.
Having spent his youth placed in or committed to various kinds of institutions where he was labeled "crazy," and where the short, slight Darger was almost completely at the mercy of predatory larger boys and harsh administrative disciplinarians, as an adult, Darger survived in poverty by working in a series of menial and relatively solitary janitorial positions.
Retreating from the world which had rejected, scorned, and abused him, Darger began his surrealistic 15,145 page novel, 'In the Realms of the Unreal: The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion,' which concerned hunted and abused children in the fantastic land of Abbienna, and began illustrating it by tracing photos and illustrations taken from advertisements, magazines and newspapers.
A fan of the original twelve Oz novels written by L. Frank Baum and the nineteen additional volumes continued by Ruth Plumly Thompson at Baum's behest, Darger's Abbienna can be interpreted as a nightmare vision of Oz, with not just a single female protagonist like Dorothy Gale of Kansas, but fully seven heroic sisters (known as 'the Vivian Girls' due to their surname), who, as the novel's title suggests, lead a rebellion against the evil Glandelinians that imprison, rape, slaughter and crucify children.
As in many of the Oz novels, 'In the Realms of the Unreal' also featured a lone boy hero in Pendod Vivian (sole brother of the Vivian sisters), serene and Eden-like gardens of bountiful nature, and strange monsters and animal-human hybrids that are alternately good and evil. In Darger's Arcadian tableaus, little girls in yellow and red polka dot dresses carry strawberries the size of beach balls, flowering plants tower over their heads, cartoon birds and ducks vie for their attention, and 'guardian' dogs in the Rin Tin Tin and Lassie mold stand heroically off in the distance. These scenes could be taking in place in the Winkie or Quadling countries of Baum's famous fairyland, peaceable kingdoms that were also routinely threatened by invasion from the Gnome King, the Phanfasms, the Growleywogs, the Mimics and others.
But the most direct influence came from Baum's second title, 1904's 'The Marvelous Land of Oz' in which the headstrong young General Jinjur leads an all-girl "army of revolt," and also features a boy hero, Tip, who literally turns into a pretty young girl in the novel's closing pages, for Tip is not just any boy, or a boy at all, but actually the blond-haired Princess Ozma of Oz, who has been transformed into an amnesiac young male by the evil witch Mombi's magic spell.
In light of what Elledge reveals about Darger's upbringing and youth, there can be little doubt that 'In the Realms of the Unreal' was a cathartic act of self-exorcism in which the artist, consciously and otherwise, attempted to come to terms with the parade of abuses and other violent trespasses which had been the hallmark of his existence.
Darger, from the first, seems to have been primarily oriented towards other men, and Elledge is to be commended for his broad and exhaustive exploration of Darger's psyche, the psyche so blatantly exposed--though not necessarily revealed--in his hundreds of brightly-painted images.
Since Darger, who had only a broken lower education, simplistically believed that men who were attracted to other men should have been born female, he portrayed himself, via his now-infamous 'Vivian Girls' proxies, as a small army of pretty young sisters with male reproductive organs (it is notable that though Darger was rather passive in the face of adversity as an adult, the Vivian Girls are born fighters who lead a successful rebellion against an evil empire). But Elledge underscores that Darger did not perceive himself as 'transgendered,' that is, as a female erroneously born in a male's body, but simply as an individual who, solely based on his attraction to men, should have rightly been born female.
Elledge spends almost no time examining how Darger created his amazing paintings, perhaps because there is no hard information available, Darger having worked in complete isolation. Elledge does, however, carefully detail Darger's two novels and other writing via the dozens of manuscripts, notes, and other written material the artist left behind. An angry but fervent Catholic, Darger's shifting religious beliefs are also thoroughly examined.
Elledge is a proponent of "queer culture"--whatever that means exactly--and thus some may find his interpretation of Darger's behavior and psychology too narrow and somewhat politically skewed in the direction of what is called 'queer theory' by some.
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