De Niro And His Painter Father
Robert De Niro, Sr. (pictured), the father of the actor, was a highly regarded painter in the 1950s. He was also gay, and part of New York’s lively poet-painters scene in the post-World Two period. His actor son has maintained his father’s studio in SoHo, fifteen years after the artist’s death. I love the way this article refers to the 1950s NY scene as “bohemian,” which is the ridiculously outmoded word for “artsy with a queer edge.”