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April 27, 2005
In the Realms of the Unreal
I saw “In the Realms of the Unreal” with Margetty and Karen tonight. It’s a stunning film about artist Henry Darger. He was an emotionally damaged man who made incredibly beautiful paintings which no one even knew about until days before his death at the age of 82. Along with the paintings, his landlords found a hefty autobiography and a detailed 15,000 page account of a war against chidren in a world that existed only in his imagination. The paintings, all of which illustrated the war, were done on both sides of cheap newsprint and many were over 10 feet long! He spent his life collecting pictures from children’s books and clothing catalogs to use in his paintings. The work is beautiful.
Luckily for us, his landlords realized the importance of what they’d found and didn’t just trash the contents of his room. This is a fascinating, kind of sad story and is captured brilliantly in the film by director Jessica Yu. Go see it.
You can see Henry Darger’s work here. I went to an extensive exhibit devoted to him at the opening of the great American Museum of Folk Art in NY a few years ago.
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Posted by HighStrungLoner in Film at 11:40 PM
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