Compulsion
1.
Adolf Wolfli was arrested around 1900 for "attempting to molest" a 3 1/2 year old girl and sent to live in the Waldau Institution. He'd had 2 other run ins with young girls, both in a shaded Swiss Forrest pathway during his walks to collect twigs for kindling, and was finally removed from society.
Once within the walls of Waldau his doctors kept a close eye on him and noted throughout 1903-1906 numerous (more than half a dozen per year) outbreaks of violence by Wolfli: he would "start a quarrel with anyone being loud, anyone else quarrelling, or anyone touching his drawings - which he considered to be worth a fortune, at least 1 or 2 francs per." His violent outbursts continued so regularly that he was eventually confined to his cell and for several consecutive months the doctors' notes revealed: "Draws all day." and: "Goes through a pencil every 5 days." and several months later: "His drawings are a confused jumble, but his ability to create curves and straight lines without the utilizing an apparatus is admirable." and five months later: "Draws as usual, using 1 pencil every 2 days." During his lifelong stay in Waldau he completed over 40 books (which he wonderfully called "hefts") complete with illustrations in color and black and white, collage, as well as his treatises on his invented mathematics, plus an unending stream of symphonies and operatic things which he composed. He wrote several "blurbs" for himself, too, of which this one is quite marvelous: "naturalist, poet, writer, draftsman, composer, farm labourer, milker, handyman, gardener, plasterer, cement layer, rail worker, day labourer, knife grinder, fisher, boatman, hunter, migrant worker, grave digger, and soldier of the Emanthal Battalion 3rd company 3rd section. Alright!!" His use of the double exclamation point is quite amazing. For more on Wolfli please see Horror Vacui.
2.
Wolfli was born in 1864 to peasants in a rural town outside of a larger town in Switzerland. His life story is sad: orphaned, farm labourer, convicted of a horrendous crime, released from prison only to commit a similar horrendous crime thus entering a lifetime of hell in the confines of a sanitarium where he either acted out in violent, bone-breaking outbursts or remained in his cell for years on end drawing quietly. Nothing of his was ever presented to the public until just before his death around 1930.
This all sounds familiar, eerily familiar in a sort of de-ja-vu, misty sort of way. Where have I heard this story?
In 1892 Henry Darger was born, to a poor family near Chicago. His life story seems to mirror Wolfli's in several ways: orphaned at an early age, sent to live in a nightmare world known as Lincoln Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children, an escape from that Asylum at age 17, and eventually a slower life as a janitor and devout Catholic.
(I imagine, though, that if you are reading this then you are somewhat like minded, and have seen or heard of the recently released, and nicely made, documentary about Darger's sad life and amazing work: In the Realms of the Unreal. If you have not yet seen it, or have not yet heard of it or of Henry Darger then I request that you make any arrangements necessary to view it, post haste.)
Darger's history is similar to Wolfli's yet the two seemed to be inextricably tied to one another despite their separation by half a world and at least a decade, and even more strange is that Darger's paintings are quite similar too. They are created using a codified language, of sorts, and are almost always comprised of scenes from his larger work of fantasy-fiction (in which he is a commanding general of a massive army that fights for the good of the world and the protection of the innocent, again - the similarity to Wolfli's own several-million page opus is uncanny and worth noting) and for the most part the images could be broken down into a sort of language, much like Wolfli's paintings/drawings. Darger was a master draftsman (note: not an artist, but a draftsman) and worked with newsprint, pencil and watercolor as well as clipped art from newspapers, school books, and other seemingly "everyday" sources. Wolfli, as well, had his own "language" of images consisting of different shaped birds, masks and faces, stripes, hatching patterns and other borders that were repeated throughout thousands of drawings. Darger almost always painted what appear to be young girls without genitalia.
3.
Reverend Robert Shields had no run ins with molestation, was not seen as insane, and had never experienced much of anything that could pass as a "bad" childhood. He lived to be 89 and happened to keep a diary of his life (writing automatically about each event of each day, down to 15 minute intervals) that fills over 91 separate boxes and uncoils to almost 38 million words in length. What is this impulse to record and save every scrap? Is it tied to the same thing that binds Henry and Adolf together? Shields had no trouble growing up, yet seems to exhibit this same compulsion to horde reality in the same ways that Wolfli and Darger seemed urgently pressed to record their own imaginations. His brother explains that Shields won a speed typing contest in 1904: "“He did not spend as much time on it as you might think because he could type very fast and think very quickly and practically had a photographic memory.” So, his compulsion actually stems from a nice little victory at a small-town typing contest and not some infinitely disrupted childhood filled with death and torture... Childhoods must not make people what they are! What, though, links Shields to the two painters? His ability was not cherished, in fact he did not even spend time typing! He probably did not value his gift, perhaps much in the same way Wolfli and Darger did not value their gifts (They probably were not mentally capable of even seeing what they were doing as art, hence the crude term that is applied to them these days "art brute" or "outsider art". It's my humble opinion that these terms are thoroughly wrong and even disrespectful to the artists they are pinned to --- so, sad for Henry and Adolf, they still get charged with being "outsiders" despite the fact that they had never once stepped foot inside, nor had any wish to in the first place.) Shields himself stated: "Maybe by looking into someone’s life at that depth, every minute of every day, they will find out something about all people. I don’t know. No way to tell.” And, by that logic, maybe by looking into the fantasy's of someone's own private life, in depth, we may all find out something about everyone, too.
A small footnote that does not need to be a footnote: it is funny to report that Shields actually started his diary at age 17 to chronical a romance, gave up and did not resume until the age of 54.
4.
Shields, Wolfli and Darger. We can enjoy their works while not really grasping the mental heaviness of their individual lifes. I see Shields a bit more vaguely than I see the other two, simply because I have only just recently learned about him and his diary but I see no reason to not dump him into the pile. I see Seymour in them, too, and wonder if their eyes ever gave those immeasurably undetectable sighs of pain. Darger and Wolfli, assuming their psychiatric states were as bad as their doctors said they were, must have. Darger we know a bit more about, thank goodness, and watching the documentary about him (or reading any of the fabulous books that collect his art and writing) provides a bit more of a humanistic perspective about him, and we can soon see him bathed in a light that is a bit more like our own - his childhood shrivels into a sad little bundle that he no doubt carries with him into that unsalutory looking room that, as Buddy Glass penned it, was probably never broken into by anyone who cared for him because there was no one, and he simply lived there, in it, with it, painting it and writing about it under the auspices of huge huge huge battles and entire worlds of soldiers unfolding infinitely over the terra-firma of his imagination. Wolfli, poor Wolfli. A criminal by every thickness of the word... he suffers the same syndrome and is neglected to the point that he has only himself to turn to - so dramatically so that when he does come in contact with another person at Waldau it usually ends in an rush of blows and blood and from a certain angle, with a certain haze of color, even this sad fact takes on a tinge of sensitivity and the portrait of a very broken man comes to fruition: he did, on his worst mornings and most dreadful nights probably give out sighs and signs for help which weren't ever responded to, nor cared for in return. He, too, made a sort of opposite-diary, like Darger, to chronicle not the life he had but the life he lived in his own head --- the only area of quiet and relief that he had on loan to him during his living life. And, finally, Shields - the reverend who typed his entire life, as it was and unlike Wolfli and Darger yet at the same time so simultaneously merged with them.
Afterword:
The top photo is Wolfli's stack of handwritten books, drawings, and composed music. The second photo is Darger's table in the reconstructed room of his. The third photo is of the Reverend, and his massive book. I hope, with what little posterity I have at my own disposal, to some day erect a sizable stack myself. We all do, I'm sure, and because of this we're all similar.
