There are only five million things to do this weekend, and I'm planning on listing them all here. But first, I'd like to think about taking a good hike. Then, I'd like to laugh at myself as I read this article in the New York Times about blogging. It has me pegged in so many ways that it's embarassing!
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I went to see In the Realms of the Unreal today at the Seattle International Film Festival. I went to see this movie because I am interested in Henry Darger's art. I first read about him in some scholarly journal of outsider art I found in a youth hostel in Milan nine years ago. I found his works, focused on strange girl figures highly reminiscent of children's book illustrations, very compelling. I've learned more about him over the years (local choreographer Pat Graney did a dance piece inspired by his art), but I thought this movie offered a unique opportunity to learn more about his life and art.
SYNOPSIS
In the Realms of the Unreal takes a three-fold path of exploration, looking at Henry Darger through his art, his own words about his life, and interviews with people who actually knew him. His life was heavily marked by his experiences in an orphanage and in the Illinois Institute for Feeble-minded Children. The movie illustrated the course of his life with his own words from his massive autobiography (frequently accompanied by pictures of the actual writing - childish pencilwork on school-ruled paper), read out loud by a narrator, and sometimes with interviews with his neighbors, including his last landlord, the altarboy at the church he attended, and a fellow who apparently did such things as bathe him when his health deteriorated.
The movie emphasized his poverty, and the fact that his technique of modifying the size of an image through a photo enlargement heavily ate into his paltry income. He was also shown to be very isolated, but his neighbors differed in their analysis of the causes ... was he lonely, or was he just a kook that preferred to be alone? When his letters abusing the church for neglecting to allow him to adopt a little girl are read, though, it seems clear that anyone on the outside would probably not have thought him a suitable parent, as it seemed that the story he created in his art bled over into his real perception of the world.
The movie also shows lots and lots of his art, and explains a little of his technique. They show his materials - really lame looking pots of watercolors with hand-written labels, a huge box of gnawed pencils, the stacks of books in which he kept his found illustrations, a beat up tin transfer, his well-loved shelves of novels - and the incredible output, stacks and stacks of dusty notebooks with hand written labels. There are several examples given of his re-use of a particular image, so you could see the same cowgirl in several paintings, and his imaginative re-use of images as in one case the bustle and skirt of a woman's dress used to represent a curious extraterrestrial flower. The movie attempted to capture the narrative of the Vivian Girls as it followed the story of Darger's life, frequently having a little girl read both the story text and the text from Darger's autobiography, as appropriate.
Finally, the movie discussed two other projects of his - his multi-year "weather-log" as well as his autobiography - that filled out the history of his output nicely. And, as a Seattleite, it's hard not to agree with the writings of a person who would say of the weatherman, "What man has such arrogance as to pretend to know the will of God?"
MY ANALYSIS
As a Darger fan, I very much enjoyed this movie. It didn't focus too much on his story or his weirdness or his technique, but added to my understanding of all of these things while providing me an opportunity to enjoy his art more. The many images of his room were very informative and atmospheric. I loved that the author didn't decide that there was just one story to tell about his life. From the very beginning ... the pronunciation of his name .... she made it clear that the stories of those who know him were all simply their perceptions of who he was, in each case limited by the door to his room. Inside his room, he talked to himself in many voices, but one woman couldn't remember anything of what he said, and another thought perhaps he was reliving the conversations with the nuns where he worked ... or was it the nuns at the orphanage where he grew up? The altarboy said he saw himself as a holy person, but Darger's own writings talk about how he threw things at the crucifix in his room when he didn't get what he wanted.
This ambiguity pleasantly leaves Darger's mental state a mystery for the viewer to unravel. Crazy, lonely, quiet, autistic (a word never said in the movie) - each person has a different take, Darger's self analysis providing yet another view ... but filtered through the story of his childhood the answer remains unclear. Most important to this movie is his art.
The movie makes viewing Darger's art an especial pleasure. In addition to the technical questions, it answers some of the more curious aesthetic ones, such as "Why the little penises on the naked girls?" Rather than proposing that they were hermaphrodites, the movie suggests that Darger's limited exposure to the world may have left him unaware of the differences between little boys and little girls. But the movie also makes these incredible animations of his drawings, which I found very honest to his vision. I loved seeing the watercolors move and watching the addition of color and images to his drawings as the movie attempted to capture his working style.
The movie also did not ignore the dark side of Darger - the mutilation images. It didn't seem the least bit worried about whether or not he had a strange obsession ... it was all depicted very positively (which I think was good, he didn't have a criminal record so let the psychiatrists sort it out). However, it mostly let ride without question the religious obsession, which I thought could have used more exploration. There was a little bit of discussion about his weather diaries, in which he on a daily basis kept track of whether or not the weather man was right. I found it funny that in the 1950s this kind of thing irritated people as much as it did today. Of course, nowadays people don't folllow comments on the inaccuracy of the weather report with comments like, 'It's an arrogant man who thinks he can predict the will of God" (not an exact quote but pretty close).
An aspect of Darger's life which was highly important to his artistic production (yet I feel had been neglected by all of the other books I had read about him - not that they were biographies, really, just intros to collections of images) was his poverty. Working as a janitor did not provide him the means to access high-quality art supplies, which meant butcher paper and child's watercolor pots were the most appropriate materials for him to work with. It also made his habit of digging in the trash to look for discarded books and such seem very sensible - much as he patched and repatched his clothes, he found no shame in repurposing other people's discards. It also explained what seemed to me his poor grammar and childish writing. Since he was more or less taken out of school at the age of twelve, it is unsurprising that his words and orthography seem the work of a person with an under-developed mind - but the movie changed my view of them from a "simple" man to that of an under-educated man.
As a close, the movie noted that it was only after Darger was committed to the same poorhouse where his father died (Saint Augustine's? - in Chicago) that anyone saw his art. When his neighbor (the man who bathed him) came by his sickbed and told him he'd seen his art, his reaction was shock, then "Well, it's a little too late for that now, isn't it?" I was also intrigued that on his his last day of life, he wrote in his diary (this isn't an exact quote), "What's next?"
When I came back from Orcas Island this weekend, I saw that my three remaining roses, Rosa Mundi and Fourth of July (my only purely modern rose) in the front yard, St. Cecilia in the back, had finally bloomed. That means every rose I have is in bloom right now ... well, except for poor Souvenir de Malmaison, which probably needs to be transplanted from the overly shady side of the house. I should post pictures of them ... they're very pretty. I've got one of the Getrude Jeckyl's sitting in a vase at my desk, and it has made the whole office smell like air freshener. It's actually a little too sweet, but as long as my officemate doesn't complain I'm keeping it here.
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I was recommended to read this fabulous Fox news story about that fab new cyber craze, "Blogging," via one Miss Spikeylady. As a person with a bad, bad blogging addiction (unusual in a person in their 30s, I'll admit), I found the article hilarious.
Of course, it made me want to write about my blogging adventures, how it helped me make friends and lose them, just so there'd be a little something more exciting out there for people to report on than just showing people sitting down in front of their computers and typing. Woo, that looks SO COOL on TV. But if you don't understand what it can do in terms of personal relationships, you're missing what I think is the most powerful aspect of blogs. This blog, of course, has NOTHING to do with building and creating personal relationships ... it's just about finding an easy way for me to keep track of my writing and things that are going on in my life. But I'm reminded of why I switched over to LiveJournal despite owning this domain ... it's just a far more powerful force in my personal life than this lonely outpost has ever been.
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Today I noticed that my Fair Bianca had started blooming. I've got one more rose in that planter to go this year. Gertrude Jekyll is already blooming nicely. She's a very fragrant rose and has extremely lovely folded blossoms. I have unfortunately forgotten to trim any of my roses this year as they are supposedly to be trimmed around now, but I have little interest in cutting them when they're blooming like this! I guess I'll just wait until they quiet down and then reduce them to a more appropriate size.
The weather has been warm and pleasant in Seattle. It's already been in the 80s. I'm not sure how unnatural this is or not, but the phrase that keeps running though my mind is "global warming is our friend!" Last night at Mike and Nina's house I was discussing what would happen if the oceans rose. We're up on a hill, they're at least 300 feet above sea level at their house. I thought we could use either of the stupid stadiums downtown as sites for mock naval battles like the Romans had in the Colosseum. This idea met with general approval.
The first of the bearded irises bloomed in my yard today. (I say the first of my "bearded" because my Iris Japonicus has already been blooming for a while ... I gave it a little extra water to see if that would coax the rest of the buds along.) It's a yellow iris, and I think it's one of the ones Ann Donovan gave me a long time ago from Randy's yard. Meanwhile my tulips have moved along to the very lates - Zorel (purple flamed white), a droopy set of Maytimes (lily flowering, white-edged reddish purple, exACTly like the picture in the catalogue) and Peach Blossom doubles. Some pink tulip that I wasn't anticipating much of has turned out to be the star of the late garden in the rest of the yard, and I really want to figure out what exactly it was. It's not Makeup ... oh God, don't tell me it's from the "late season blend!" Now I'll never figure it out.
[more]
I went to see In the Realms of the Unreal today at the Seattle International Film Festival. I went to see this movie because I am interested in Henry Darger's art. I first read about him in some scholarly journal of outsider art I found in a youth hostel in Milan nine years ago. I found his works, focused on strange girl figures highly reminiscent of children's book illustrations, very compelling. I've learned more about him over the years (local choreographer Pat Graney did a dance piece inspired by his art), but I thought this movie offered a unique opportunity to learn more about his life and art.
The first of the bearded irises bloomed in my yard today. (I say the first of my "bearded" because my Iris Japonicus has already been blooming for a while ... I gave it a little extra water to see if that would coax the rest of the buds along.) It's a yellow iris, and I think it's one of the ones Ann Donovan gave me a long time ago from Randy's yard. Meanwhile my tulips have moved along to the very lates - Zorel (purple flamed white), a droopy set of Maytimes (lily flowering, white-edged reddish purple, exACTly like the picture in the catalogue) and Peach Blossom doubles. Some pink tulip that I wasn't anticipating much of has turned out to be the star of the late garden in the rest of the yard, and I really want to figure out what exactly it was. It's not Makeup ... oh God, don't tell me it's from the "late season blend!" Now I'll never figure it out.