Filed under: College Drop Out, Exemplary Children of Divorce, Religion, creativity
Biographies of Modern Artists are difficult to come by. Artists speak through their work first and if they’re successful a biographer comes along and explains the life experience from which the art springs. I was really pleased to find that Artist Liza Lou is from a divorced family. Lou is an American Artist who makes unbelievably beautiful sculptures which are covered in tiny beads. She became famous for her life-size portrayal of a modern american kitchen which sparkles and gleams. It’s a feminist commentary. It’s also interesting that she chose to show an idealized version of something related to home.
Lou’s childhood seems very strange. Her parents were bohemian artists living in New York until they found God and became Born Again Christians and moved to the suburbs. Lou’s Father seems to have gone off the deep-end. She has performed a piece about his abuse. Lou has a sister. I don’t know what age she was when her parents divorced. She is said to be still close to her Mother.
Excellent article (with pictures) here.
From the article:
“Liza’s work is an imitation of life, where nothing is real,” says her Paris gallerist, Thaddaeus Ropac. “At the same time, it’s so present that it can be very frightening.” According to art historian and critic Robert Pincus-Witten, it offers a unique synthesis of issues deriving from conceptualism, Pop art and feminism. “There’s that ambiguity between the extremely luxurious and the politically terrifying,” he says.
You don’t have to dig very deeply into Lou’s personal history to find the wellsprings for her works’ conflicting themes. Her parents lived determinedly bohemian lives in Manhattan until 1965, when they attended a revival meeting and became born-again Christians. After burning all of their books and artworks, including Roy Lichtenstein paintings that were gifts from the artist, they moved to Minnesota, where they worked for various fundamentalist churches. Lou and her sister grew up watching exorcisms and speaking in tongues.
At a certain point in her teens, Lou began to question some of the tales she’d been told: Did King David really speak to her mother in the hospital after Lou was born, to explain that the baby was a blessing unto this world? (Today, although not exactly an atheist, Lou says she isn’t a believer, either: “Certain things have to line up for me in terms of logic.”) In 1989 she took a summer trip to Europe, and in the cathedrals of Florence and Venice, she experienced revelations, though they had less to do with Jesus than with mosaics and Byzantine domes. “As an American kid who grew up in the suburbs—postmodern churches with plastic chairs and all that crap—it was totally transforming to be in a place that took hundreds of years to make,” Lou says. “That blew me away.”
Filed under: Abandonment, Alcoholism, College Drop Out, Exemplary Children of Divorce, Foster Children, Raised by non-relatives, creativity
“Once upon a midnight dreary”
was written by a Child of D. I suppose it makes sense…
Last week’s New Yorker magazine published an article about Poe’s life called “The Humbug” written by Jill Lepore.
(http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/04/27/090427crat_atlarge_lepore)
Edgar Allen Poe was born to an actress. A year after he was born his Father left. Two years after Poe was born his Mother died. Poe and his siblings were separated and Poe was raised by a wealthy merchant and his wife. He was never adopted by these people. It seems that wild swings in financial fortunes and power plays dominated the household of Poe’s childhood and Poe was out on his own by the time he was 17.
He also had drinking and gambling problems from very early on. Financially strapped, Poe joined the military for a while and then attended West Point. He wrote for money. It seems he moved around a lot. His love life seems equally difficult. The women in his life seemed to have suffered illnesses and to have passed away. At age 27 Poe married his 13 year old cousin. The marriage lasted about 12 years before Virginia, his wife, died of tuberculosis. Poe died at Age 40.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
Filed under: College Drop Out, Exemplary Children of Divorce, creativity
As I’ve said before I don’t like to add a whole lot of Actors and Actresses to the Exemplaries List. Not because their lives and feelings don’t count, but just because Superstardom is sort of an unusual life experience that doesn’t apply to a lot of people. A whole lot of it depends on having the “It” factor and so much of real success in life comes from hard work, determination, self-confidence, intelligence, etc.
(Also, I suspect that Children of D might overall be more attractive than kids from Divorce. I think that it might be more difficult for attractive and magnetic Parents not to give in to temptations like having affairs (and being vain and egocentric and arrogant) and so might be more likely to do things which lead to having multiple relationships in life. They are more likely to want to pursue something better and bigger and more perfect in life. Their kids might be better looking and more genetically enhanced from a physcial stand-point in this regard and so more easily successful in fields that require such attributes. This is just a supposition of mine).
Actress Courtney Cox is the Actress best known for her hilarious portrayal of Monica in the Friends series on TV. Turns out she’s a Child of D. Cox’s parents divorced in 1974 when she would have been around Age 10. Her childhood is described on Wikipedia here:
Cox was born Courteney Bass Cox in Birmingham, Alabama to a wealthy Southern family. Her parents were Courteney (née Bass) and Richard Lewis Cox, a contractor.[1] Cox has two older sisters (Virginia McFerrin and Dottie Pickett), an older brother (Richard, Jr.) and nine half-brothers and half-sisters. Her parents divorced in 1974, and her father eventually settled in Panama City, Florida, where he opened a company called Cox Pools, while Cox grew up with her mother and her stepfather, New York businessman Hunter Copeland.
She is speaking out in the link listed below about how her own attitude to her marriage is reflected in her Father’s attitude to his Divorce.
http://omg.yahoo.com/news/courteney-cox-divorce-is-not-an-option/16824?nc
This is the revealing part:
Cox’s parents parents divorced when she was a child. “Before my dad died, he said one of his big regrets was that he hadn’t worked on their marriage enough. I don’t know what the future’s going to hold, but divorce isn’t really an option,” she said.
How much is “enough?” Who knows? Each family is different. What’s right for one person, or family, isn’t right for another person or family. Thing is, the kids are part of the marriage. They also have to live with the divorce for the rest of their lives. Something that the parents don’t really have to do.
Filed under: Birth Order, College Drop Out, Exemplary Children of Divorce, High School Drop Out, Mentally Ill parents, Movies About Growing Up in Divorce, Nutrition, School Drop Out - High School or College, creativity, self injury
Johnny Depp gave an incredible performance of an oldest Son growing up while living with a helpless, obese, single mother and younger brother in the movie: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
Probably not really good Holiday Viewing, though. Just happened to think of it right now.
Johnny Depp is a Child of D. His parents would have divorced around the time that Depp was 15. Here’s an except from his biography on Wikipedia.
Depp was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, the son of Betty Sue Palmer (née Wells), a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, Sr., a civil engineer.[3] He has one brother, Danny, and two sisters, Christie (now his personal manager) and Debbie. … The family moved frequently during Depp’s childhood, and he and his siblings lived in more than 20 different locations, settling in Miramar, Florida, in 1970. In 1978, Depp’s parents divorced. He engaged in self-harm as a child, due to the stress of dealing with family problems and his own insecurity. He has seven or eight scars from practicing self-harm. In a 1993 interview, he explained his self-injury by saying, “My body is a journal in a way. It’s like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself, whether you do it yourself with a knife or with a professional tattoo artist”.[8]
1980s
Depp’s mother bought her son a guitar when he was 12, and Depp began playing in various garage bands. His first band was in honor of his girlfriend, Meredith. A year after his parents’ divorce, Depp dropped out of high school to become a rock musician. As he once explained on Inside the Actors Studio, he attempted to go back to school two weeks later, but the principal told him to follow his dream of being a musician. …
