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Dieter Gloop
Dieter Gloop was born in 1952 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to German immigrant
parents. A mere 32 years later, Gloop died from
complications as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
At the time of his untimely death in 1984, Gloop had not sold so much as a single piece of his artwork, having spent
the entirety of his career working in obscurity. In fact, it is generally agreed
that Gloop worked in complete secrecy without ever having shown the
first story or sketch to another living soul. We know as much
from the entries in his extensive diaries, as well as the from the
statements of his landlady, Mrs. Edith Blanch, believed to have been Gloop's only
contact with the outside world during the last ten years of his
life.
Dieter Gloop was an only child for all intents
and purposes. Gloop's older brother Franz had died as an
infant from whooping cough just a few years before Gloop was
born, and his mother Olga was emotionally scarred by the
loss. As a result, Olga became terrified of germs and routine
illnesses, and she obsessed constantly about young Dieter's health and
cleanliness. Sadly, Olga's obsessive paranoia progressed to such
an extent that eventually she was institutionalized.
We know
from Gloop's diaries how unbearable Olga's obsession with
health and cleanliness had been for him as a child. If
little Dieter so much as sneezed,
he was not allowed out of the house
for a week, and then only if
he were bundled so
tightly he could scarcely breath or see. Playgrounds and public
restrooms were forbidden. Olga boiled little Dieter's sheets and clothes daily, and he was not allowed to speak
to or touch another child. If Dieter's father Heinz objected in any
way, he managed to do so without
giving the child the first indication that he even noticed that anything was
wrong.
Then one day when Gloop was nine, there
had been an incident. Olga was watching from the
upstairs window while little Dieter played on the sidewalk below
when a little girl with a runny nose suddenly ran out from the apartment
building next door. The little girl reached out and
grabbed Dieter in a bear hug as children will sometimes do when
they play, but this everyday scene drove Olga into complete
hysterics.
Olga ran out onto the sidewalk
screaming and crying, yelling at the little girl with a runny nose as if
she had been a wild dog. There had been a scene. The girl's
mother and other neighbors tried to calm Olga down, but it was no
use. Something in Olga had finally come unhinged.
She dragged Dieter back inside the apartment and straight to the
bathtub. There she stripped Dieter naked and scrubbed him with
chlorine bleach, causing chemical burns which later required
hospitalization. Only then did Dieter's father Heinz begin to accept that
Olga needed help.
Olga Gloop was institutionalized on June
6, 1963 when Dieter was just eleven. The day was a
watershed event in Gloop's life, and the artist would forever
be plagued with guilt over how it had made him feel, specifically the
incredible relief he felt at finally escaping Olga and her obsessive
regimen. Gloop's extensive diaries and early work with prison
themes clearly indicate how traumatic the event and its aftermath had been
for him, but we also see an ambivalence, one that seems to celebrate the
destruction of the erstwhile tormenter. Works like "The Severed Cheek" and
"The Importance of Knives" come to mind.
Of his father Heinz,
we know much less, at least from Gloop. All other accounts describe
Heinz as a distant man, emotionally inaccessible if not
downright cold. We often see father Heinz in Gloop's
domestic works, but only as a looming shadow or dark silhouette
in the background, completely separate from the scene in the
foreground. The most well-known work that makes use of the "dark father" motif has
to be "Now We Are Flame." Surprisingly this work was painted as a birthday
gift for Heinz's fiftieth birthday. Like all of Gloop's
work, "Flame" is loaded with a sense of irony and despair which
only increases with the more that is known about the context
of the piece.
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