Darger's artistic project, comprising a complicated and mysterious novel and hundreds of accompanying drawings, was discovered only after his death in 1973. While working as a janitor at a Chicago hospital, Darger spent decades inventing and detailing the kingdoms, warring factions, battles, histories, belief systems, and mythologies that make up the violent tale 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 drawings illustrate chapters and events from the story, and are often composed in part from the massive archive of newspaper and magazine clippings, coloring and picture books, and advertisements that Darger collected in his apartment.
Gallery label from Soldier, Spectre, Shaman: The Figure and the Second World War, October 24, 2015-March 20, 2016.
