History Creator / HenryDarger

* FriendToAllChildren: Darger's heroes are protectors of children. Threats to children make up the bulk of his writing. He wanted to adopt a child, but couldn't due to his low income and history of mental illness.

[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390123 A documentary]] about his life was released in 2004. A second film, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDOfEsaPAeY Revolutions of the Night]]'', released in 2012, gives more detail about his background. Most of his work is on exhibition at the [[http://collection.folkartmuseum.org/view/people/asitem/items$0040:492 American Folk Art Museum in New York]]. Chicago's INTUIT Gallery is [[http://www.art.org/henry-darger-author-artist/ celebrating his 125th birthday]] with special presentations all through 2017. April 12 has been declared [[https://hyperallergic.com/371835/today-is-henry-darger-day-in-chicago/ Henry Darger Day]] in Chicago and Mayor Rahm Emanuel even signed a proclamation in his honor.

* FriendToAllChildren: Darger's heroes are protectors of children. Threats to children make up the bulk of his writing.

* SelfAbuse: This is cited as the reason he was institutionalized. Of course, [[ValuesDissonance, given the era]], it probably wasn't as bad as the authorities thought.

* AmbiguousDisorder: While it is generally agreed that Darger was mentally ill to some degree, it is not known for certain what specific disorders he may have suffered from, to what extent he suffered from them, and how much they were reflected in his art. He mentions a compulsion to make "strange noises" (which Wiki/ThatOtherWiki speculates may have been symptoms of Tourette's syndrome), something that got him disciplined by his teachers and bullied by the other children. It's difficult to say whether Darger was severely mentally ill to begin with or whether his symptoms later in life were exacerbated by [[BedlamHouse the horrendous conditions in the asylums.]] He may also have simply been something of an eccentric child who ended up being slapped with the label of deviant anyway by a society that was [[ScienceMarchesOn unprepared]] [[SocietyMarchesOn and unwilling]] to make accommodations for him (an interpretation supported by the fact that the diagnosed reason for his being in the institution was "[[ADateWithRosiePalms self-abuse]]", which at the time was [[ValuesDissonance classified as a form of mental illness]].

[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390123 A documentary]] about his life was released in 2004. A second film, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDOfEsaPAeY Revolutions of the Night]]'', released in 2012, gives more detail about his background. Most of his work is on exhibition at the [[http://collection.folkartmuseum.org/view/people/asitem/items$0040:492 American Folk Art Museum in New York]]. Chicago's INTUIT Gallery is [[http://www.art.org/henry-darger-author-artist/ celebrating his 125th birthday]] with special presentations all through 2017. April 12 has been declared [[https://hyperallergic.com/371835/today-is-henry-darger-day-in-chicago/ Henry Darger Day]] in Chicago and Mayor Rahm Emanuel even [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming signed a proclamation]] [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome in his honor]].

* AmbiguousDisorder: While it is generally agreed that Darger was mentally ill to some degree, it is not known for certain what specific disorders he may have suffered from, to what extent he suffered from them, and how much they were reflected in his art. He mentions a compulsion to make "strange noises" (which Wiki/ThatOtherWiki speculates may have been symptoms of Tourette's syndrome), something that got him disciplined by his teachers and bullied by the other children. It's difficult to say whether Darger was severely mentally ill to begin with or whether his symptoms later in life were exacerbated by [[BedlamHouse the horrendous conditions in the asylums.]]

* AmbiguousDisorder: While it is generally agreed that Darger was mentally ill to some degree, it is not known for certain what specific disorders he may have suffered from, to what extent he suffered from them, and how much they were reflected in his art. He mentions a compulsion to make "strange noises" (which ThatOtherWiki speculates may have been symptoms of Tourette's syndrome), something that got him disciplined by his teachers and bullied by the other children. It's difficult to say whether Darger was severely mentally ill to begin with or whether his symptoms later in life were exacerbated by [[BedlamHouse the horrendous conditions in the asylums.]]

* WouldNotHurtAChild: Darger was very much this - despite what some people would have you think - and thus depicted scenes of the Glandelinians torturing and murdering children because hurting a child was the most evil thing he could possibly think of. Darger spent a large portion of his child as a virtual slave at a horrible BedlamHouse, so he knew damn well [[RealitySubtext what it felt like for a child to be abused by uncaring adults.]]

* SceneryPorn: Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of his portraits are incredibly vivid and colorful idyllic nature scenes - ''not'' the {{Gorn}},.

The specifics of his life story and history can be found on ThatOtherWiki. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjCS_u3Sgpg Fredrik Knudsen]] has an excellent rundown on [=YouTube=] as well.

* ReclusiveArtist: Yup.
* SceneryPorn: The vast majority of his portraits are incredibly vivid and colorful idyllic nature scenes - ''not'' the {{Gorn}}.

* BarbieDollAnatomy: How the children in his works are drawn, most of the time.

[[caption-width-right:302:Henry Darger, Artist and Protector of Children]]

* BarbieDollAnatomy:

* FaceHeelTurn: Darger turned his AuthorAvatar to the side of Glandelinia after the loss of his prized photograph (see CreatorBreakdown above.)

* WriteYouWhoKnow: Darger wrote himself, his OnlyFriend William Schloeder, and a childhood bully named John Manley into ''The Realms of the Unreal'' (as protagonists and an antagonist, unsurprisingly.)

* RealitySubtext: Although he would always deny that he had suffered so greatly there, it's not hard to draw parallels between the evil Glandelinians violently enslaving children and the backbreaking child slavery and abuse that Darger himself suffered at the Asylum.

* The 15,145 page novel ''[[Literature/InTheRealmsOfTheUnreal 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]]'', chronicling a fictional war between the Christian nation of Angelinia and the militantly atheist nation of Glandelinia.

* MeaningfulName: Most of Darger's heroes and villains can be easily distinguished by their names.

* Finally, a series of 300 paintings, some more than thirty feet long and double-sided, illustrating ''In the Realms of the Unreal'' and infamous for featuring numerous drawings of naked little girls with penises being tortured, strangled, and hacked to pieces by Glandelinian soldiers. (The majority of his pictures are heroic portraits, ordinary action-adventure scenes, or colorful, flower-filled panoramas. However, the 1% of his output that covered the Glandelinian massacres are the ones that get the most attention.)

Some reviewers including Creator/ElizabethHand have [[https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2002/eh0210.htm noted similarities between Darger and J.R.R. Tolkien]], right down to their devout Catholicism, losing their mothers in childhood, and being born and dying in the same years.

* CreatorBreakdown: One of Darger's most prized newspaper clippings that he used as a template for his drawings was a photograph of a murdered girl named Elsie Paroubek, taken from the ''Chicago Daily News''. When he lost the photo, he built a shrine to Paroubek in his apartment and petitioned God for the photo's safe return. When the photo didn't turn up, and when he was unable to find it in newspaper archives, Darger turned the war in ''Literature/InTheRealmsOfTheUnreal'' against the Christian child rebellion and ratcheted up the {{Gorn}} inflicted on his child protagonists. After he failed to adopt a child through a Catholic orphanage, Darger interpreted this as God punishing him for making the child characters miserable and later changed the narrative again. ''Realms'' ended up having two alternate endings, one where the Christian forces are triumphant and another where they are defeated.
* DisproportionateRetribution: Children, particularly in his stories about the Vivian Girls, are often punished, enslaved, tortured and murdered for trivialities.

* CreatorBreakdown: One of Darger's most prized newspaper clippings that he used as a template for his drawings was a photograph of a murdered girl named Elsie Paroubek, taken from the ''Chicago Daily News''. When he lost the photo, be built a shrine to Paroubek in his apartment and petitioned God for the photo's safe return. When the photo didn't turn up, and when he was unable to find it in newspaper archives, Darger turned the war in ''Literature/InTheRealmsOfTheUnreal'' against the Christian child rebellion and ratcheted up the {{Gorn}} inflicted on his child protagonists. After he failed to adopt a child through a Catholic orphanage, Darger interpreted this as God punishing him for making the child characters miserable and later changed the narrative again. ''Realms'' ended up having two alternate endings, one where the Christian forces are triumphant and another where they are defeated.

* CreatorBreakdown: One of Darger's most prized newspaper clippings that he used as a template for his drawings was a photograph of a murdered girl named Elsie Paroubek, taken from the ''Chicago Daily News''. When he lost the photo, be built a shrine to Paroubek in his apartment and petitioned God for the photo's safe return. When the photo didn't turn up, and when he was unable to find it in newspaper archives, Darger began turning the war in ''Literature/InTheRealmsOfTheUnreal'' against the Christian child rebellion and ratcheted up the {{Gorn}} inflicted on his young protagonists. After he failed to adopt a child through a Catholic orphanage, Darger interpreted this as God punishing him for making the child characters miserable and later changed the narrative again. ''Realms'' ended up having two alternate endings, one where the Christian forces are triumphant and another where they are defeated.

* CreatorBreakdown: One of Darger's most prized newspaper clippings that he used as a template for his drawings was a photograph of a murdered girl named Elsie Paroubek, taken from the ''Chicago Daily News''. When he lost the photo, be built a shrine to Paroubek in his apartment and petitioned God for the photo's safe return. When the photo didn't turn up, and when he was unable to find it in newspaper archives, Darger began turning the war in ''Literature/InTheRealmsOfTheUnreal]]'' against the child rebellion and ratcheted up the {{Gorn}} inflicted on his young protagonists. After he failed to adopt a child through a Catholic orphanage, Darger interpreted this as God punishing him for making the child characters miserable and subsequently changed the narrative again.

Henry Joseph Darger (April 12, 1892–April 13, 1973) was an outsider artist and author from Chicago. After losing his parents at an early age, he spent the majority of his childhood in a series of abusive [[OrphanageOfFear orphanages]] and [[BedlamHouse insane asylums]], and responded by [[HappyPlace creating an internal fantasy world]]. At sixteen, he escaped the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children in Marion, Illinois, and walked 160 miles back to Chicago, finding work there as a janitor in a succession of Catholic hospitals. Apart from a short stint in the US Army during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, he lived quietly as a janitor and dishwasher all his life, hardly ever speaking in public and emerging from his apartment only to go to work and Mass. Eventually, he died in a nursing home in 1973. When cleaning out his apartment, his landlords found an immense treasure trove of artwork and stories that Darger had been working on for more than sixty years.

Henry Joseph Darger (April 12, 1892–April 13, 1973) was an outsider artist and author from Chicago. After losing his parents at an early age, he spent the majority of his childhood in a series of abusive [[OrphanageOfFear orphanages]] and [[BedlamHouse insane asylums]], and responded by [[HappyPlace creating an internal fantasy world]]. At sixteen, he escaped the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children in Marion, Illinois, and walked 160 miles back to Chicago, finding work there as a janitor in a succession of Catholic hospitals. Apart from a short stint in the US Army during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, he lived quietly as a janitor and dishwasher all his life, hardly ever speaking in public and emerging from his apartment only to go to work and Mass. Eventually, he died in a nursing home in 1973. When cleaning out his apartment, his landlords found an immense treasure trove of artwork and stories that Darger had been working on for more than sixty years.

[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390123 A documentary]] about his life was released in 2004. A second film, ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDOfEsaPAeY Revolutions of the Night]]'', released in 2012, gives more detail about his background.