ARTISTS IN LOVE, part three

Eugene von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983) was a small man who worked the night shift at a bakery near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He and his wife Marie lived a humble life in a tiny home where Eugene painted and wrote poetry.

Eugene and Marie were shy and kept mostly to themselves. The neighbors never guessed that within the confines of their meager shack, Eugene and Marie managed to structure a life as a god and goddess.

The couple were devoted to each other and during their forty year marriage enjoyed a rich fantasy life. Eugene made crowns and elaborate jewelry for Marie out of clay which he dug himself. He used the bakery oven as a kiln to fire his creations late at night when no one was watching. He also made tiny thrones out of chicken bones which he painted gold.

Eugene's paintings and sculptures were pretty mediocre, and his poetry was no better. His real art was his several thousand pictures of Marie as his queen, muse, glamour girl, goddess, siren. He scavenged floral print wallpaper or scraps of fabric to create exotic backdrops for her. He adorned her in sarongs and togas and bikinis. Many of these photos he later colored by hand.

Eugene created montages with Marie's face in the sky, in the sun, and in the trees.

I don't imagine many Milwaukee housewives in the 1940s spent their days posing for their husbands in nothing but a tiara. But then, Eugene and Marie don't seem to have felt constrained by the time and place in which they lived. Their love seems to have made them feel transcendent.

Eugene's artistic focus on Marie reminds me of the line by the great Walt Whitman:

I will leave all,
and come and make the hymns of you.

The world didn't learn about Eugene's collection of images until after he passed away.  He never achieved fame or fortune during his lifetime but today he is regarded as an important outsider artist.  Whatever you may think about the song of Eugene von Bruenchenhein, there are definitely worse ways to live your life.