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Email PageThe Vivian Girls Emerge
November 2, 2006- January 13, 2007
Reception: November 2, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Henry Darger
Andrew Edlin Gallery
529 W 20th StAndrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to announce "HenryDarger: The Vivian Girls Emerge", an exhibition of works by the self-taught visionary who is widelyregarded as the greatest talent in the outsider-art field and, at the same time, as an innovator whose literaryand mixed-media creations defy that category's sometimes limiting label.
On view from November - January 13, 2007, the exhibition will feature many significant Darger works that have never before been shownpublicly in the United States.
Among the show's highlights: Five similar and relateddrawing-collages of individual Vivian Girls (the protagonists of the narrative that Darger's drawings illustrated) that appear to have been madeearly in the artist's development of his epic tale, "In the Realms of the Unreal." These images are rare, for Darger normally portrayed the youngsters in groups; other depictions of the sisters willalso be on view.
The exhibition will also include one of the artist's most important works, "The Battle ofCalverhine." Described by art historian John M. MacGregor, a specialist in Darger studies, as "the masterpiece of Darger's work in collage," the mixed-media panorama is certainly his largest,measuring approximately three by ten feet. It is one of few pieces in the artist's oeuvre that can accurately be dated, based on sections of a 1929 newspaper that he applied to its back side. Thiswork is believed to have been especially important to Darger, as it hung on the wall of the room in which he lived and worked in Chicago from 1931 until his death in 1973. Recently conserved,the big battle scene was featured in "Inner Worlds Outside," an exhibition relating works from both the outsider art and fine art fields that was shown in Madrid and London, and is now on viewat the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin).
Considered one of the most original and intriguing artists of the last century, Darger created amultifaceted body of work that, in its richness and complexity, has been compared to that of William Blake. A recent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, demonstratedthe self-taught master's influence on contemporary artists. His art was also recently on view in "Into Me/Out of Me," an exhibition presented at P.S. 1/MoMA (New York); opening onNovember 26 at Kunst-werke, Berlin, where it will be shown again, this exhibition also includes works by contemporary artists such as Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Jeff Koons andCindy Sherman.
Andrew Edlin Gallery is the exclusive, international representative of the Henry Darger Estate.
Art Reviews of The Vivian Girls Emerge
| New York Times January 5, 2007 | Roberta Smith | "Henry Darger was a reclusive, visionary outsider genius whose work, discovered only after his death in 1973, descended on art-world consciousness in one enormous clump of mostly undated painting and writing. But that doesn’t mean Darger didn’t have a traceable development like supposed insider artists...." |
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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