Henry Darger @ American Folk Art Museum

The Private Collection of Henry Darger

April 6–September 19, 2010

American Folk Art Museum

folkartmuseum.org

more info: folkartmuseum.org/dargerprivatecollection

What Henry Darger displayed on the walls of his apartment in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago is on public view, for the first time, in the exhibition The Private Collection of Henry Darger, from April 6 through September 19, 2010. Brooke Davis Anderson, curator and director of The Contemporary Center and the Henry Darger Study Center, has selected nearly 40 cardboard collages from the more than 80 in Darger’s personal collection that are now part of the American Folk Art Museum’s holdings. These are the artworks that Darger lived with and saw every day.

Like many practicing artists, Darger surrounded himself with his own production. Modestly scaled, executed with simple supplies on readily available material, reclaimed and repurposed, the collages are framed in inventive ways. The images are also surprising. “They illustrate a previously unexplored aspect of Dargerís creative world,” notes Ms. Anderson. Rather than the familiar large-scale, scroll-like, brightly colored landscapes, battle scenes, and weather-related watercolors, these intimate works are primarily portraits: faces of girls and boys, men and women. The countless images of people were cut from newspapers, magazine illustrations, coloring book pages, and photographic enlargements.

Darger used cardboard and other found boards as his backing and layered the images densely in a collage technique. He often framed images with Christmas Seal stamps. Less frequently, he encased his composition in wax paper strengthened by medical tape, mirroring more conventional framing methods and materials. Because of the fragile nature of newsprint and paper and the deleterious effects of the coal-burning stove in his apartment, both inherent vices, the collages exude a patina of age and use (continue reading @ artdaily.org)

Untitled (Two Girls and a Dog Sitting in Garden), 1959

Untitled (Religious Collage with Madonna and child)