Henry Darger: The Secret Galaxy of a Janitor and Outsider Art
Discover the secret life of Henry Darger, a Chicago janitor who created 'In the Realms of the Unreal,' a 15,000-page masterpiece of outsider art found in 1972.
Meilleure citation de Henry Darger: The Secret Galaxy of a Janitor and Outsider Art
Darger's life proves that the mundane public version of a person is often just the tip of the iceberg; you never really know the scale of the 'Realms' someone might be carrying around inside them.
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I want to learn about Henry Darger’s discovery and contributions the outsider art world. I want to learn about what his life was like.
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Henry Darger was a retired hospital janitor in Chicago who became a legendary figure in outsider art after his death. For sixty years, he lived a quiet, eccentric life in a small apartment while secretly creating a massive creative universe. He is famous for his staggering 15,000-page manuscript and accompanying illustrations, which were only discovered by his landlord, Nathan Lerner, when Darger moved into a nursing home in 1972.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a massive typewritten manuscript created by Henry Darger. Spanning fifteen thousand pages, it is considered one of the longest works of fiction ever written. This monumental piece of outsider art was found buried under piles of newspapers and household clutter in Darger's Chicago apartment, revealing a complex secret galaxy that the self-taught artist had been building in total secrecy for decades.
Henry Darger's secret art collection was discovered in 1972 at 851 West Webster Avenue in Chicago. When Darger could no longer climb the stairs to his apartment and moved to a nursing home, his landlord, Nathan Lerner, entered the room to clear it out. Amidst thousands of Pepto-Bismol bottles and balls of string, Lerner found the massive manuscript and hundreds of large-scale artworks that established Darger as a master of Art Brut.
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