Growing up was not always easy

I recently wrote about my parents' flair for mixing high art and folk art, but it wasn't always this way. There were many bumps along the road.

As young hipsters who came of age in the early sixties, my parents went through the requisite period of naked art. This period coincided with my childhood and really got horrible when my brother and I were teens. There was a nude to be found on every floor of our house. It was not always easy to invite friends over when you knew they would see the enormous painting in our living room of Red-Haired Lady. Ghostly pale, ample-hipped, lovely-boobed, and vagina-ed. Head too small for body. Cruella-de-Vil-ish. Crimson. Just imagine being 13 with that one taking up a whole wall in your living room.

Status: Still in their house, but banished to the basement thank god.

Then there was the dining room, with its Nigerian Ibeje statues. To them: high art. To us: more naked people. More than naked, erect. Conical boobs and rod-straight penises sticking out from their bodies, just hanging out with us while we ate. Now in this case, I cannot say we wanted them gone (and thank goodness they’re not gone, because they’re really valuable). We called them “the guys.” They provided hours of entertainment, and we’d arrange them in poses to best highlight their appendages.

Status: Now commanding an entire side table in the dining room, still joining us for dinners and delighting the newest generation of kids. "Guy" pictured here is one of the more discreet in the collection.

Perhaps most egregious was "Angelica." You’d bring your friends up to the third floor and there she was, staring down from the walls on the staircase, just holding her wolf mask over her face as one does, very serious and of course buck naked. Why, we would ask, why do we need to have such mortifying things?

Status: Still in their house, on stairs leading up to attic, still just terrible.

There was little to do but suffer. Mercifully it was also the time of Corey Hart's Never Surrender. Haywire's Black and Blue (Sandra Woodbridge!). John Waite's Missing You. To these artists I owe a great debt. It is possible my brother chose different sources of solace, though I can't imagine why.

Blurry but still highly watchable videos attached for your viewing pleasure.