Serial Reading: Just like Suicide pt. 7

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[cont.]
In a recession, artists and galleries have two basic choices. They can hunker down by getting more conservative and try to market work that has a broader appeal. That was Tut’s approach with the animal paintings and the sweet landscapes he was showing now. Or they can take risks and aim for more publicity in anticipation of better economic times. Odessa chose the latter strategy. She was really thankful she had that option. She honestly didn’t think she’d survive a month working in the same room with bad paintings.
One of her first shows in the fall was of an older man. A critic said the man “had worked diligently for decades under the radar.” In fact, he had worked for decades in his garage at night after teaching philosophy full time at a conservative private college north of Santa Monica. When he retired, he painted full time. Odessa came upon him by accident. One of the luxuries of not running a gallery is the time to go see exhibits, not just attend the occasional opening reception. Once she had decided to wait and reopen in the fall, she indulged herself by seeing every summer show in the area, from Torrance, Riverside and Santa Ana to Santa Barbara, Pasadena and Pomona. Summer shows tend to be largish group shows so she was able to view a greater variety of artists than she would normally. One Saturday, she went to Bergamot Station in Santa Monica and halfway through the galleries heard her stomach grumbling so she marched herself over to the café in the complex for food. A line of casually dressed art lovers snaked down the ramp, all waiting patiently for lunch. She stood behind an elderly man who muttered to himself. She always ordered the Greek salad and Penny’s fresh mint lemonade, with one drink to go for Dennis. She had to remind herself to only order one. The old man ordered the lemonade too and because it was so busy they had to share a table outside. They got to talking and Odessa, always in search of intelligent conversation, was tickled by his descriptions of his work and the art world. People who didn’t go to art school and who weren’t active in the conversation perceive the art world very differently from those who did. His observations reminded her in a way of Russell Childers, an Oregon man incorrectly condemned to an asylum as a little child who maintained his sanity by carving figures remembered from those few years before his confinement. When his talent and true condition were recognized late in his life, a successful sculptor championed his work, took him on trips to galleries and museums, and asked him to do a piece about the art world. Russell Childers carved a park restroom facility complete with toilet paper and urinals, with a wad of footprints visible in the dirt floor. Some were rather shocked with what they saw as an insult to contemporary art. Odessa saw it as a metaphor of the creative process – artists living with an acute awareness of what others ignore, leaving footprints behind in the muck. Or as Paul Klee put it, artists like mathematicians cannot ignore negative numbers. Art is messy, just like life. Childers understood that and folded his limited experience of the art world into a context remembered from his childhood.
This old man, while denigrating as vacuous the art he obviously did not understand, tried simultaneously to fold what he painted into what he knew, describing himself as a visual epistemologist. He scoffed at conceptual art as having neither valid concepts – “they toy around with a gimmick and conflate that with having an idea.” – nor any artfulness. “Slapping paint down erratically is not painting.”
He insisted that she see his work. “I make real art,” he exclaimed without realizing what a cliché that statement was. Nonetheless, she decided to play, scheduling a studio visit at his bungalow in Topanga Canyon. It was a revelation. The artist had created a lexicon of shapes, each signifying a specific feeling, and an elaborate gradation of colors to clarify the intensity of those feelings. For instance, a bright red triangle within an equally bright orange square represented rage. “Feelings are not knowledge; however, the analysis of the ephemeral nature of feeling is a form of knowledge.” Each tiny painting was made of a precise grid and the total squares represented all of the feelings experienced in a day or an hour. Every single one was dated on the back. The man literally had thousands of small paintings carefully delineating his emotional responses over time. His house was basically a storage unit for the work. Stacks of paintings filled the rooms floor to ceiling, leaving only narrow walkways to reach the bathroom, kitchen and bed. “Worked diligently” didn’t begin to describe it. This was pure obsession.
Odessa spent the entire opening reception worried that her artist would die on the spot, but 81 is a lot younger than it used to be. The man’s laugh was surprisingly piercing and frequent, pitched perfectly for horror films. Every time he laughed, everyone else automatically stopped talking. It really was comical, both the laugh and how enormously full of himself he was. This little bit of fame had really gone to his head. He told one of the most perceptive art writers in the area that she was cerebrally inadequate to comprehend the complexities of his work. Odessa had rolled her eyes behind his back and then sent the critic an apology the next morning.
The following weekend Lawrence Cotter walked into the gallery. He was taller than she remembered and much thinner and greyer and all the arrogance was gone. He offered her his hand, a delicate hand. He told her that he had come to offer condolences on the death of her husband and to apologize for being such an ass at that party. He never actually did either but that was ok. He really came because his wife had encouraged him to see the exhibit after reading the review. She was intrigued by the work. She had just been released from the hospital after the surgical removal of lymph nodes. He thought a painting might get her mind off what was coming next. After her surgery for ovarian cancer, she had only needed chemo but that had made her so sick and weak. With the spread into her lymph system, both radiation and chemo treatments would be commencing the following week. Odessa walked him through the show, explaining the process, taking a few paintings off the walls so he could read the dates on the back. He bought a painting for each day of the week, each one selected because it was done on a day special to his wife. “I’ll present them to her one day at a time. To encourage her, you know.”
“It’s a very thoughtful plan. Please tell her I look forward to seeing her in the gallery when she’s up and about.” He looked at Odessa with such forlornness that she, without thinking, placed her hand upon his and lightly squeezed it.
After he charged it all to his credit card, she did what she always did upon the completion of a sale. She called the artist to tell him the good news. The response surprised her.
“You must cancel the sale.”
“Whatever for?”
“His novels are the epitome of everything I despise about this culture. I don’t want him to own my work.”
“They aren’t for him. They’re for his wife.”
“He is a degenerate and she should have kicked him out years ago.”
Odessa had never had an artist react this way. She knew many artists who were picky about who purchased their work but not at the emerging artist level. Emerging artists are usually dumbstruck with delight when anything sold.
“In this economy, you should be ecstatic to sell anything.”
“I am not in this for the money. This sale tarnishes my reputation. You are a charlatan if you do not perceive that.” He really thought museums in New York would come in and buy work from his first show ever. When she gently explained that reputations are built upon successful sales as well as successful work, he actually yelled at her and called her an administrative parasite.
He demanded that she void the transaction. She politely reminded him, “I can’t do that. All sales are final. I can’t go back on it. Please realize that this sale will spur other sales.”
“It is my work, my ideas. All you do is put it up on the walls and wait for anyone to come in to buy them. I am indignant about your lack of respect for my genius. I insist that you return all of the paintings to me now or I will sue you.”
Lord save us from amateurs. Sometimes artists have no gallery and make no sales for a reason. It took her a good long time to cajole him into even considering the sale. But that’s the beauty of working with difficult people: they make you put so much time and energy into mollifying them that everything else in life gets pushed to the back burner.


 
Return on Friday for the next chapters of Just Like Suicide.

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