Journals Showcase (Witryna Czasopism.pl)

It happens also so that homelessness gains value, or – to put it differently – lack of permanent rooting inspires people, making them create interesting pieces of art. Such a case is described by Paulina Reiter in her text Mieszkaniec Krain Nierealnego (Inhabitant of the Realms of the Unreal), devoted to Henry Darger, an American born at the end of the 19^th century. Despite the fact that he lived in a big city, Chicago, he was out of the way of the local society, considered to be “a harmless madman”, who “collected rubbish from the bins in the neighbourhood, spoke almost to nobody, but until late hours argued with God or led multivocal discussions with himself”. Almost until Darger’s death nobody new he worked on a monumental piece of art – on 15 thousand pages he wrote a novel entitled in a baroque manner Historia Dziewcząt Vivian, w tym co jest znane jako Krainy Nierealnego, albo Glandeko-Angeliniańska zawierucha wojenna spowodowana Buntem Zniewolonych Dzieci (The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion). The story is illustrated with a few hundreds of pictures which were reviewed by critics and art experts as brilliant realization of art brut. Where is there homelessness in the inspiring story about Darger? Reiter suggests that Darger was alienated from the real world, that he mentally migrated to “the Realms of the Unreal”, lived in them and for them, trying at the same time to treat his childhood trauma by writing. Darger's oeuvre is a kind of message from outside the reality well known to us, and perhaps this is the reason why it is intriguing so much the contemporary art audience.