November 23, 2012

•  

   

   

  Life Class  

   

  His rich old aunt had traced their family back to Cadillac

  And so in 1914 he felt honor-bound to volunteer at his Louisiana Parish

  He was severely wounded in one of the early battles

  And stayed on in Paris even before the armistice was signed

  Enrolled at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts

   

  He studied skeletons - cut up corpses - learned to draw from plaster casts

  He was bayou-born and bred yet he drank with lost Russian Jews

  The expatriates Soutine and Chagall and Moldovan

  He visited with Picasso and Vlaminck

  And traded cigars and sketches with Rouault

  They became his friends although he did not understand their art

  Especially the deliberate distortions of the human form he loved to draw

  First from casts - later from life

   

  It was as if time stopped for him with each new pose

  With each sensuous curving of flesh and sub-surface bone

  God's handiwork held a continuous fascination for him

  Even after thousands of sketches and finished studies from the nude

  He came to know more anatomy than some young surgeons and smiled from on high

  When one of them got into trouble sectioning a cadaver in the theater

  And had to consult a text

   

  He was a bull of a man - Short and squat

  His shoulders sloped with power and he limped

  One leg shaved down from wounds that earned both Bronze Star and Croix de Guerre

  He was cursed with Lautrec's disease

  The absinthe carafe always at hand

  A battle with himself he eventually would not survive

  But that was still to come

  For now he was a young man in the City of Light

  With lovely girls to draw and love and pulsing streets to roam

  And the conviviality of friends to fill the joyous nights

   

  His inheritance arrived with regularity each month

  In tiny increments at the American Express

  More than enough to sustain his simple needs and also share

  With less fortunate friends

  He had no illusions as to his gifts

  Content to caress the model's contours with just his eyes

  Rarely looking down or lifting his pen from the vellum

  Until each exquisitely-shaped form materialized

   

   Chaim Soutine was his closest friend - Undisciplined and mad

  A chain-smoking consumptive

  He was a mess and his pictures were a mess

  A mindless slop scumbled together in just hours

  Pigment slammed angrily into pigment without first drying

  He mixed his colors such as they were directly on the canvas

  Most notably murderous reds and nauseous greys

  Vicious pictures of bloody abbatoirs emerged

  Slaughtered chickens - sickly choir-boys

  Scarred drunks sprawled in streets teeming with scran

  Wild violent landscapes

   

  One day Chaim took him to Ambrose Vollard's to see crazy Vincent's pictures

  He recognized Chaim's tortured madness in them too

  But there was a difference - Unlike Chaim, Van Gogh could draw

  He brought thirteen of his sketches from the gallery folio

  And a small sunny Provence landscape that reminded him of the fields

  Of his childhood home in Jeanerette

  Chaim told him Vollard had been buying Vincent for some years

  On Modigliani's advice Leo Zborowski and Paul Rosenberg

  Were also buying Chaim - mostly with absinthe

  And hiding his pictures in a warehouse

   

   In the summer of '41 when jackboots and tanks

  Thundered down the Elysee and marched into his beloved Monmarte

  He left Paris on the last free train for Lisbon and Pan-Am's trans-antlantic clipper

  He carried only a small valise of personals and his precious Vincents

  The twelve ugly Soutines purchased from Chaim over the years

  Had been rolled into sealed metal tubes

  And shipped to his friend Yasuo in New York

   

  He was almost fifty now and like Chaim his absinthism had debilitated him

  That damned accursed worm-wood juice had slowly poisoned his insides

  And he'd having blackouts for some months

  He also had to mortgage his inheritance to get him to Manhattan

   

  Kuniyoshi put him up in a corner of his loft

  A five-story walkup - with Marcel Duchamps

  He of armory fame - descending nudes - and fifty chessboards on the floor below

  He started teaching life classes at Cooper Union and the League

  After a few weeks he also found himself a loft and that winter

  He finished the last of the absinthe he'd shipped the year before

  Together with those sickening Soutines

   

   I first met him after the war in '49

  In the back room of McSorley's down the street from the Union

  He was sitting with Kuni listening to Dylan Thomas recite

  For yet another complimentary glass of ale

  I watched his eyes mist as the poet's eloquent voice

  Flowed out his immortal verses

  I was enrolled in Kuni's painting class at the League on the GI bill

  And when Yasuo saw me he invited me to sit with them

  (It was strange to sit opposite a man whose progenitors

  I was taught to hate a few short years before)

   

  Yasuo introduced me and I told him I was thinking of taking his life class in the fall

  He said he needed a monitor for his evening classes on the nights he wasn't there

  And if I was interested I could start tomorrow

  (So this is how I got to know him and know his story)

  That night we all went back to Kuni's for saki

  With Dylan staggering in the lead

  Because he wanted to see those wild re-stretched Soutines again

  They were still stored in a corner of Yasuo's loft

  And screamed at us when we uncovered them

   

   As the months slipped past he slipped fast too

  The absinthe had been replaced by bourbon

  The pain in his shattered leg became unbearable

  He started missing classes and I had to lie to the director

  That he was home sick or that his creole aunt was dying

  And he had gone to visit her in Jeanerette

   

  It was my job to schedule the models and run the clock to time the changes

  (Some weeks a luscious Kim Hunter or Maureen Stapleton

  Or a young Charlton Heston or Marlon Brando posed)

  I also helped beginners master his exceptional course of rapid gestures

  Interspersed with laborious contour images and final studies

  And I critiqued the novices at sessions' end

  No one complained he wasn't there because no one really cared

   

  That summer I went up to Maine for a couple of months

  When I got back I stopped by his place and he was gone

  He had been living with one of the models

  A pretty light-skinned black young enough to be his daughter

  She told me she found him dead one stifling evening in July

  He had been drinking and fallen and broken his head

  I looked for the Vincents but they had disappeared

  She said she didn't know anything about them but I did not believe her

   

  I went to Yasuo's to find out what they did with him

  Kuni said a lawyer had the body shipped to his wealthy aunt in Jeanerette

  The lawyer asked to see me when I got back from Maine

  He told me what little money was left went to the girl 

  He presented me with a detailed summary of all costs

  And that the aunt had paid the remaining balances and his expenses

  And that was almost that except... EXCEPT... he had also willed me the Soutines!

  My God!... Those twelve fabulous magnificent incredible Soutines!

   

  Some years went by and then one quiet August afternoon

  A man representing Paul Rosenberg New York Incorporated

  Acting for a Dr Alfred Barnes of Philadelphia said to be a noted collector

  Came to inquire about my inheritance

  Did I still have the pictures? - Would I consider selling them?

  Was there a proper provenance for each?

  Fortunately my benefactor had seen to it that Wildestein in Paris

  And later in New York authenticated them as works of crazy Chaim

  I wondered about the sudden interest in that maniac's work

  The art critic of the New York Times came through for me

   

  It seems Paul Rosenberg Paris Inc had recently discovered

  A fantastic cache of Chaims in an obscure corner of their vaults

  And had cleaned, repaired and re-varnished all ninety-four of them

  Also according to the Times

  After the appropriate hoopla and interviews with major critics and experts

  A retrospective of Chaim's works was to be mounted

  At New York's Museum of Modern Art affectionately known as Moma to honor

  This long-overlooked Master of the French Expressionist School and anoint him

  With the belated posthumous recognition he so richly and emphatically deserved

   

  Moma-Rosenberg-Barnes lawyers told me they were willing to negotiate

  Enormous sums for me and also declare my Soutines to be on permanent loan

  To Moma Incorporated for tax purposes

  I was told this would inflate my net worth to the sky

  Without the corresponding fiscal penalties

   Soon representatives from other Famous Museums of Contemporary Art arrived

  Asking to see my pictures and when I showed them only slides

  They were disappointed but declared if my Chaims were truly genuine

  They would outbid Moma Incorporated to enhance their own collections

   

  I kept stalling and as the opening of the retrospective drew near

  Their bids soared into the stratosphere

  My benefactor's loft was broken into several times

  As I had picked up the lease after his death and was now living there myself

  My Soutines though had been carefully crated and sealed

  When the furor first arose and now resided safely

  In a fireproof and bonded warehouse way up north in Portland Maine

   

   

  One day while all this was going on

  A friend asked me to accompany her to a much-ballyhooed auction

  Of Artists of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist School of France at the Pace

  We sat quietly in the back listening to the spectacular price pyrotechnics

  When suddenly my benefactor's small exquisite Vincent

  Framed elaborately in carved and gilded wood

  Appeared on the auctioneer's easel

  A noticeable stir arose from the hard-eyed speculators and assembled dilettante

  When the haughty pro on the stage asked the "Ladies and Gentlemen"

  To kindly begin the bidding at three-hundred thousand

  (Very low for a Vincent I agree but remember this was still the 1950's)

   

  After a delay as some technical problems with phone bids were resolved

  It was purchased for five-hundred thousand by a well-manicured gentleman

  Whose company manufactured wind-up toys for early discounters

  Assembled by dexterous children in the partitioned and democratically preserved

  Lower half of the Korean Peninsula

   

  I whispered to my companion

  Of the irony of Vincent's one and only documented sale to artist Anna Brock

  For it was shortly before his death in 1889 that she purchased his "Red Vines"

  For four-hundred francs

  What was the exchange rate at the time my pretty friend asked?

  Approximately ten to one or about forty dollars I replied

   

  But I digress - Let's get back to my Soutines

   

  In the winter of 1913 - two of Chaim's pictures along with the works

  Of the deviants Braque and Brancusi and Duchamp and Picasso and Cezanne

  Along with other Impressionist and Expressionist and Cubist and Fauvist and Dadaist

  And God only knows what other French innovations

  Showed up on a Manhattan dock

   

  These weird works were solicited by the Ash-Canners and other American artists

  To be exhibited jointly with their own

  They were immediately condemned by knowledgeable customs officers

  Who declared emphatically this stuff was shit not art

  Thus subject to various import duties and assorted tariffs

  Fortunately the Constitution did not agree and it was all allowed to be exhibited

  Along with stacked rifles and mortar tubes and primitive tanks and trucks

  Within the sand-stone walls of the huge armory at 26th and Park

  Where everything was promptly vilified and spat upon

  By critics and public alike

   

  And so to make a long sad story short

  After a frenetic schizophrenic aberrant and very lonely existence

  Creating his sick images in relative obscurity

  Some twelve years after his suicide in 1943

  And many long and bitter years after his armory humiliation

  Chaim exploded like a comet all over Moma's hallowed walls

  That's right by God!...

  After all those impoverished disillusioned self-destructive years

  Chaim had finally arrived - Gone "public" so to speak

  He was now a valuable "commodity!"

  He was money in the bank for all the hustlers and promoters and the tax cheats

   

  Chaim's retrospective was an incredible success!

  Prices for his pictures soared as reams of florid and exuberantly critical prose

  Flowed from the pens of the cognescenti

  It was as if his madness had infected one and all

  Punched them in the gut with his brilliant observations of the human scene

  Staggered them with his masterful execution and technique

  Students of Art gazed passionately at his extraordinary imagery and dreamed

  Fashionably-dressed women and impressionable girls

  Wept openly in Moma's galleries

  Impeccably-tailored businessmen and Wall Street bankers were moved

  By the compassionate representations on its walls

  Directors of museums and proprietors of upscale galleries uptown

  Hounded me at all hours with lucrative offers for my treasures

  (The Times reported one of Chaim's lesser works had recently been purchased

  For five figures by the Shah of Iran!)

   

  All that summer I could not work - I could not sleep

  I started drinking bourbon

  I was rich - Incredibly rich and it was driving me crazy

  I could not stand it anymore!

   

  So on a crisp evening in early autumn I got into my '51 Packard

  And drove all night up to Portland to the fireproof and bonded warehouse

  On Commercial Street down by the docks

  I had them load my cases of Soutines into the big car and borrowed a wrecking bar

  I drove up the coast to the State Park at the mouth of the great Kennebec  

  Where once - one hundred and twenty four unfortunate souls

  Commanded by an elderly and frail George Popham

  Were dumped four hundred years before

  It had turned cold and gray and there was no one but their ghosts

  To witness my pitiful act of defiance

   

  I lugged the crates down to the beach and pried them open

  I propped each picture against the rocks

  And there was crazy Chaim

  Displayed for me for the last time in all his frightening glory

   

  I wiped away the tears and stacked the pictures

  And the remains of broken crates into a tall pyre

  I siphoned some gas out of the Packard and soaked everything through

  And lit a cigarette and smoked it down

  And flicked the butt

   

  Later the wind came up

  The sea flowed angrily over the sooted rocks and washed them clean

  Chaim's ashes floated off with the receding tide and

  Dissolved

  Disappeared

  Vanished into the vastness of the dispassionate sea

   

  Wild and crazy Chaim would have loved it!

  I'm sure he really would have loved it! 

   

   

   

   

   

  • 10:29 am
  • 3 Comments