[HN Gopher] Henry Darger
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Henry Darger
Author : EndXA
Score : 136 points
Date : 2024-04-03 23:16 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.moma.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.moma.org)
| 39896880 wrote:
| He wrote a massive novel, is dead and left no estate, and yet it
| remains unavailable to read. There is certainly no technological
| reason why this is the case.
| 1auralynn wrote:
| Personally, I find his work compelling - I saw an amazing
| exhibit at the Frye in Seattle and the scale of it was
| incredible, also the composition. But I think his work makes
| some people uncomfortable. From Wikipedia: "One idiosyncratic
| feature of Darger's artwork is that his girl subjects are shown
| to have penises when unclothed or partially clothed. Darger
| biographer Jim Elledge speculates that this represents a
| reflection of Darger's own childhood issues with sexual
| identity and homosexuality."
| 1auralynn wrote:
| There is a great documentary on him: In the Realms of the
| Unreal
| sitkack wrote:
| I saw this and came to say the same thing.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRlvDKcDvsI
|
| Weird dude, but outsider art is fascinating.
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| I also got to see his work at the Frye many years ago. It was
| one of the best exhibits I've seen in Seattle. That was also
| the era they had R. Crumb retrospective--a real coup for a
| museum that's free to the public.
| dhosek wrote:
| From all accounts, it's--not good. Also, it's really long and
| it would be a non-trivial (and expensive) effort to make it
| available.
| 39896880 wrote:
| It's already been digitized [0]. It's just being held up due
| to you, you guessed it, lawsuits [1]. Whether it's "good" or
| not is not really relevant; we have the capacity to preserve
| it and make it available.
|
| [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20230811081008/https://www.lex
| ol...
|
| [0]https://folkartmuseum.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resou
| rc...
| HanClinto wrote:
| This is the best (only) copy that I have been able to find that
| appears to be legitimate (?). It only includes selections, is
| of low quality, and is not the entire work -- but it does
| provide some legible pages:
|
| https://archive.org/details/realms-of-the-unreal/Realms%20of...
|
| This book also supposedly includes excerpts from his writings,
| but I didn't check:
| https://archive.org/details/henrydargerdisas0000darg/
| dfxm12 wrote:
| A lot of problems like the one you're describing boil down to
| commercial rather than technical reasons.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| An excellent film about his life and work has been made: In the
| Realms of the Unreal [1]. Oddly not mentioned in the article (or
| did I miss it?)
|
| [1]. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390123/
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _In the Realms of the Unreal - Henry Darger 's Magnum Opus_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17987678 - Sept 2018 (1
| comment)
| speff wrote:
| Fredrik Knudsen did a really nice video covering Henry in his
| Down The Rabbit Hole series [1]. Would recommend
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjCS_u3Sgpg
| MarcusE1W wrote:
| "I figure that it's better to be a sucker who makes something
| than a wise guy who is too cautious to make anything at all."
|
| I really like his quote. Simple, maybe said before in different
| words, and yet it stops you and makes you think for a moment
| about yourself.
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| Henry Darger is one of the most illustrous examples of outsider
| art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art
|
| He held the same job his entire life as a janitor and yet he
| created a mystical complex world only know by himself.
| pavlov wrote:
| In the world of software, the closest equivalent to outsider
| art would probably be TempleOS:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
| kazinator wrote:
| I would say no, and here is my reasoning.
|
| Check the bio. Davis was a skilled programmer with a solid
| background: a master's degree in electrical engineering from
| Arizona State, which he earned in 1994, just two years before
| the documented onset of his mental illness in 1996.
|
| Because of his illness, Davis _himself_ became an outsider,
| clearly.
|
| But TempleOS isn't any more "outsider art" than any other
| solo project, like Bill Joy's vi, or Knuth's TeX or what have
| you.
|
| Also, religious themes aside, the techniques in Temple OS are
| thoroughly mainstream, full of familiar concepts. The code is
| understandable to any engineer competent in those areas. (No
| worse than any other mountain of uncommented code that occurs
| in our industry, in any case.)
| npteljes wrote:
| Maybe the mood is similar, but it's not outsider art, Terry
| frequently published and participated in communication with
| regards to TempleOS.
| kazinator wrote:
| There should be no other art, arguably.
|
| What is an "insider" in art? Someone who has a private
| telephone line to the god of true style?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The article hints at that, it basically means he didn't have
| any formal education in art, little outside influence from
| established artists, did not get any feedback on his work,
| did not publish anything on his own; I'm not sure if he ever
| gave any interviews or context after the works were
| discovered.
| kazinator wrote:
| Three-year-old's drawing posted on refrigerator: outsider
| art or not?
|
| It seems that "outsider art" only really makes sense as
| "work produced by someone not participating in a certain
| socio-economic structure that some people have erected in
| connection with their art-related interests", which is a
| remark that has no value.
|
| Someone doing "outsider art" is an outsider to something,
| but that something is not art itself. That socio-economic
| structure is not art itself. The "outsider art" designation
| doesn't say anything about the art itself, only the
| circumstances of one who made it; it is a form of _ad
| hominem_. There is no such thing as "outsider art" just
| like "logical proposition uttered by a known liar" is not
| actually a real category of logical propositions, like
| "true proposition".
|
| Art requires no membership in any club, or conformity to
| any shibboleths. Because art is a basic human expression;
| it doesn't require education, or discussion or anything
| else.
|
| "Insider art" is not any more valid than "outsider art",
| because art doesn't require any conformance to a code. It's
| not like "outsider residential wiring", where someone who
| is not a trained and licensed electrician can make a code-
| violating mess that is unsafe. Becoming part of some
| millieu in connection with doing art is entirely optional.
|
| The literal interpretation of "outsider art" is
| nonsensical, like this: "You may have produced a natural
| smell out of your anus, but since you have no formal
| education in it, don't follow influences of notable
| farters, and don't receive feedback on your work from
| connoiseurs of flatulence, it is 'outsider fart'."
| Applejinx wrote:
| Community art. Think the Algonquin round table, or Cyberpunk,
| or Impressionism, etc etc. Very often when something begins
| to happen, people's social behaviors kick in and they get
| interested in what they all are doing, and that's where you
| get movements and styles across multiple artists. They're in
| a community.
| npteljes wrote:
| Very simple, if you look at the definition of outsider art.
| "Insider" would be someone with training in arts, or an
| artist having art connections while doing their art. Most
| notable arts are done this way.
| kazinator wrote:
| That is a someone; but the term in question is "insider
| art". If that someone makes art, that gets labeled "insider
| art". Without knowing who made some art, in what
| circumstances, can we reliably test a work of art to tell
| whether it is insider art or outsider art?
| ndarray wrote:
| > Outsider art is an umbrella term for any art made by self-
| taught individuals who are untrained and untutored in the
| traditional arts with typically little or no contact with the
| conventions of the art worlds.
|
| Does this definition even matter when, in order to gain any
| significant recognition, outsider artists must get noticed and
| picked up by those same conventionalists of the art world?
| egypturnash wrote:
| It's useful for sales and promotion. Same as any other genre.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| In this case "the conventions of the art world" refers more
| to technical concepts like perspective, composition, color
| theory, etc. In this way, outsider art is distinguished from
| naive art. I personally think the distinction is flimsy, but
| humans do like to create these kinds of taxonomy. Folk art is
| another similar, but somehow technically different genre of
| art.
|
| It has less to do with the people in the art world: gallery
| owners, agents, critics, etc. Artists who meet the definition
| of outsider artists had their work shown in the traditional
| way, like Grandma Moses, Horace Pippin, etc.
| agys wrote:
| If you ever happen to be in Lausanne, Switzerland visit the
| "Collection de l'Art Brut"...!
|
| https://www.artbrut.ch/fr_CH/auteurs/la-collection-de-l-art-...
| dheavy wrote:
| THANK YOU!
| scandox wrote:
| Also you can view The Prinzhorn collection in Heidelberg
| Germany.
|
| https://www.sammlung-prinzhorn.de/
| markhenderson wrote:
| Another similar artist that's still alive is Jon Sarkin [1] He
| has made over 10,000 pieces of outsider art usually drawn on the
| back of vinyl album covers. He has an archive of work online [2]
| and is active on instagram [3]
|
| [1] https://jonsarkin.com [2] https://archive.jonsarkin.com [3]
| https://instagram.com/jonsarkin
| kazinator wrote:
| The artwork comes across as Japanesque.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| What even is "japanesque"? I don't believe that word has any
| meaning tbh.
| kazinator wrote:
| Why would anyone harbor a belief that can easily be refuted
| by dictionaries? I don't get it. ELI5.
| bone_frequency wrote:
| From the webster entry:
|
| -esque adjective suffix : in the manner or style of : like
|
| A very accesible blog post on how to use it:
| https://www.grammarly.com/blog/esque/
| el_pollo_diablo wrote:
| I first learnt about Henry Darger in Olivia Laing's _The Lonely
| City_. It is a first-hand account of the psychological effects of
| loneliness and isolation. The author draws parallels between her
| own experience and that of other artists like Darger, and
| describes the way in which this experience can drive their
| creative process.
| aworks wrote:
| The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago is small but
| good. I found Darger's art there captivating and disturbing.
|
| https://www.art.org/henrydarger/
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Much more detail on wikipedia [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger
| lvspiff wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vXjwTux8T4 - my intro to Henry
| Darger which sent me down a rabbit hole on wikipedia
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _"I figure that it's better to be a sucker who makes something
| than a wise guy who is too cautious to make anything at all."_
|
| It very much frustrates me seeing professionals too timid to
| click through wizards on something as inconsequential as
| installing Word. "OK, it says click here to continue. Should I
| click there?" Even when mentoring new team members, I'm amazed at
| how afraid they might be to try something in a test environment
| where they know it doesn't matter if something goes wrong.
| Sometimes I think I've gotten as far as I have in life because
| I'm just not afraid to try, and I don't even think of myself as a
| risk taker.
|
| I don't care if you think of yourself as a sucker or as a wise
| guy. Just make the damn thing (even if you're making mistakes).
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