Meet Henry Darger, the Most Famous of Outsider Artists, Who Died in Obscurity, Leaving Behind Hundreds of Unseen Fantasy Illustrations and a 15,000-Page Novel

"In his cheeky invention of a character called Marvin Pontiac, an obscure West African-born bluesman, the avant-garde composer and saxophonist John Lurie created 'a wry and purposeful sendup of the ways in which critics canonize and worship the disenfranchised and bedeviled,' Amanda Petrusich writes at The New Yorker. Lurie's satire shows how the critical fetish for outsider artists has a persistent emphasis: a hyperfocus on 'misshapen yet pervasive ideas' about class, race, education, and ability as markers of primitive authenticity. The term 'outsider art' can sound patronizing and even predatory, laden with assumptions about who does and who does not deserve inclusion and agency in the art world. Outsider art gets collected, exhibited, catalogued, and sold, usually accompanied by a semi-mythology about the artist’s fringe circumstances. ..."
Open Culture (Video)
W - Henry Darger
Salon - "Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal" by John M. MacGregor
On Henry Darger’s 15,000-Page Novel
amazon: Henry Darger

“Untitled” (mid 20th century), watercolor, pencil, carbon tracing, and collage on pierced paper, 24 x 106 1/2 in.