Henry Darger - outsider of life

I am not sure if one can call Henry Darger an outside artist, since the definition itself seems very hypocritical. On one side, outside art is an art created by people who did not received a formal education or art created outside the boundaries of official culture. On the other hand some famous artists were dying to be called an outsiders by creating a rough art even though they did receive a proper education, like Pablo Picasso while inventing cubism. I feel it is silly to divide and especially to evaluate art according to the artist’s mental state, desire for recognition, or education. Artist create simply because he or she can not allow themselves not to.

As for Henry Darger as a person, he obviously was a very sensitive child. He refused to grow up to the very end. I want to think that was his choice, but even if it was not, I consider his emotional experiences, depicted through his work “The Story of the Vivian Girls”, as a rare gift to all humankind. This extremely poor, little man all his life was dreaming about saving the orphans, he desperately wanted to adopt a child even though he realized he cannot afford even to have a dog. Darger was saving little girls in his novel by creating creatures that would protect them and by giving them supernatural powers. He described the Vivian Girls as a Holly creatures and the dearest flowers in the whole world. In his work the girls are often represented naked, with males genitals, and cut open (raped). I am not so sure if he has ever seen a naked girl in his life. Most probably, he was abused or witnessed child abuse, he experienced forced labor and severe punishments while living in those special facilities. He was trying to change the past by creating and replacing his childhood memories with fantasies, but at the very end he did not feel better.

His life ended without him saving/adopting anyone for real and without being saved from lonelyness himself. Before his death he wrote: "I had a very poor nothing like Christmas. Never had a good Christmas all my life, nor a good new year, and now.... I am very bitter but fortunately not revengeful, though I feel should be how I am. ..." For all that, Henry Drager, probably can be called an outsider, but an outsider of his own life, not art.