"Writing a piece of orchestral music is an extremely obsessive process."
Composer Jefferson Friedman, Inspired by the Most 'Outsider' of Artists

Sunday, September 30, 2007

When an aging janitor and onetime mental patient named Henry Darger moved out of his Chicago boardinghouse in 1971, his landlord discovered a bizarre legacy -- a 15,000-page novel and hundreds of paintings, all depicting a war on a distant planet between children and a regime that enslaves, tortures and kills them. Today, Darger (1892-1973) is widely seen as a major American artist, and Thursday through Saturday at the Kennedy Center, the National Symphony Orchestra will perform an orchestral work about one of his most intense paintings, "Sacred Heart: Explosion." The new piece, by composer Jefferson Friedman, 32, is part of a trilogy based on "outsider" artists.

-- Stephen Brookes

Darger spent his life alone, in poverty, dealing with some pretty frightening personal demons. What drew you to him?

I think that most people who create, whether they're "outsider" or not, are trying to grapple with their inner demons. When I'm composing, I'm trying to get something from the inside to the outside. With Darger, it's just a more extreme case.

A lot of his art is seriously disturbing: a group of little girls who get tortured and abused, usually without any clothes on. And most of them are drawn with penises. Weren't you a little creeped out?

Of course! It's definitely disturbing stuff. These scenes are definitely graphic and weird, but -- at least in his mind -- he was the savior to these children. He was trying to protect them from evil forces. Who knows what it was in his background that caused him to want to be that -- it's all speculation.

Do you think he was insane?

I think maybe "eccentric" is a better word. I doubt he ever molested children or anything like that; it's entirely possible that he used this as an obsessive outlet to control those impulses. But was he insane? On the continuum of insanity, he was probably skewed toward one end of the scale.

Darger always seems to be pitting his spiritual side against his dark, "glandular" side. Is there something universal in this?

Well, I think there's something redeeming to what he did, or I wouldn't have decided to write a piece about it. It definitely has social value. And the intention of the artist is something that's always up for debate. But when I first saw his work, I was completely blown away.

Other serious composers -- people like Wolfgang Rihm and Terry Riley -- have also been building on the work of outsider artists. Do you see a trend?

I don't know -- but it's interesting, the connection that musicians feel for outsider art.

Why is that?

With most outsider artists, there's a certain amount of purity to what they did. Since outsider artists aren't trying to make any sort of commentary, their work functions more as a blank canvas for musicians. And then, writing a piece of orchestral music is an extremely obsessive process -- there's a connection with the kind of focus and dedication you see in Darger's works.