What If Art Had No Value? – Henry Darger
Peter Gjovik joins us as we try to define what art is and how we value it. We take a deep dive into the work of Henry Darger and outsider art. Spencer thinks chicken wings might be art. Ryan dislikes illustrations of dead kids, and Peter provides some actual information.
Hot Topics: Merry Christmas, Vin Diesel as performance art, Joshua Bell, Hardware Hank, artisanal chicken wings, and much more.
Henry Darger
Peter Gjovik walks us through the fascinating story of Henry Darger. Darger’s best known work is a 15,000 page illustrated manuscript, discovered in 1973. After his death, Darger’s landlords discovered the manuscript, 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. The American Folk Art Museum, and Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris have shown his work. It is also in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His pieces often sell for as much as $750,000.
Darger created two other works during his life, Crazy House: Further Adventures in Chicago, which contains over 10,000 handwritten pages, and The History of My Life, which is roughly 5,ooo pages. Crazy House tells the story of an evil, sentient house in Chicago that brutally murders any children unfortunate enough to enter. It features many of the same characters as The Story of the Vivian Girls. The History of my Life begins as a sort of autobiography, before turning into a story about a giant tornado.
We also discuss the differences between art and craft. Where do the audience’s expectations and the artist’s intention factor into the equation?
The Joshua Bell Subway Experiment
Peter Gjovik and The Good Camp
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