The peroxide-haired pop-artist whose exhibition I visited this afternoon doesn't have a middle name. Instead today's is the subject of one of his screen-printed portraits. A man who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, he changed his name when he converted to Islam.
His original name (including the middle) was shared with his father, a painter of billboards and signs who played the piano and was described by his son as 'the fanciest dancer in Louisville'.
He, in turn, was named (including the middle) after a founder of the Republican party and friend of Abraham Lincoln who was a leading voice in favour of the abolition of slavery. Unfortunately, this 19th-century politician's emancipationist principles did not seem to apply in his private life. At the age of 84 he married the 15 year-old daughter of one of his tenants. He had to lock her in a room of his mansion to stop her from running away. She reportedly tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the window before he finally granted her a divorce.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, two of his daughters became leaders of the American women's suffragette movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment