Isaiah Zagar transformed a cluster of dilapidated buildings in South Philadelphia into landmarks, plastering them—inside and out and the alleys in between—with glistening mosaics in glass, ceramic and paint. He seemed like a kindly, white bearded old hippie who managed to dedicate his life to art.
When his son Jeremiah decided to make a documentary about dad, how could he know that he’d also make a record of his brother’s descent into drug addiction and the unraveling of his parents’ seemingly happy 35-year marriage? What separates his film In a Dream (out on DVD) from reality television is the light it casts on one man’s creative life. Everyone thought of Isaiah as a genial eccentric and he was, but his obsessive 12-hour workdays in the factory of his art concealed deeper compulsions, insecurities and delusions.
From the get-go, there is something solipsistic about the elder Zagar with his tightly written daily journals, packed with self-portraits. Little by little we learn he was molested in childhood and tried to kill himself in his twenties. His therapist told him: “you’ve got to work,” and so he did, forcing the chaos of his inner life into a tightly regimented routine of art making. He found comfort in his helpmate, his wife Julia, and satisfaction in parenthood, but his attention and emotions seemed to waver with time. Zagar was capable of cruel disregard for those who cared most about him.
As for his art, it resembles the prodigious output of any number of other 20th century Outsider artists, even if Zagar skirts the strict definition of Outsider by running a gallery (with lots of help from Julia) and being exposed to formal training. If there is anything larger in his work than the splintered mirrors of his own self-image, it might be his idea of the beauty in everything and the oneness of all. And yet, one can’t help but think that in some phases of his life, even the people closest to him were nothing more than objects in a vast art project.
