Letter

A couple weeks ago, during Saturday gallery hours, a couple young guys came in to take a look at my show. They looked too young to be art collectors but after a few minutes the blond one took out a wad of twenties and started counting them out. Then he came over and asked if I took cash, pointed at the painting of the beer cooler at Bernice’s and started peeling off bills.

Generally, it’s customary to wait until the end of an art show to deliver sold pieces, but I could tell this guy wasn’t in a waiting kind of mood. Then he told me how he came by that stack of bills. His brother, who was in the military, had killed himself and left the surviving family members his money. His brother was choosing to honor his memory by buying my painting. I took the painting off the wall and he and his buddy walked out. I didn’t even catch their names.

I’ve been painting and drawing seriously for over thirty years but the mental and emotional inner workings of collectors remain a mystery to me. I rarely know why they’ll buy one piece over another. My own connection to my work pretty much ends after I’m done making it. In an ideal world, someone would show up at my door and take each one away the day after it was completed. But it is all but the opposite of an ideal world; so in the one I live in I have to also be the salesman, which I hate and am no good at. At least I’ve learned not to talk people out of buying pictures by pointing out flaws. Now I just keep my mouth shut and hope for the best.

A couple hours after the guy left with his new painting my friend John came by. I told him about the weird sale and he told me he was just coming back from the funeral of his friend’s son, who had been in the military and had taken his own life. It’s such a small world. Either that or it was one hell of a coincidence.

When I was hanging this show, I learned from one of the gallery’s founders that she had a piece of mine hanging in her apartment. We’d never met prior to that day. Apparently, her boyfriend’s parents had bought a couple pieces from me years ago and gave her one as a housewarming gift. Small world…

On the last day of the show Steve from Bernice’s gave me a lift to the gallery so he could see the show. Then John, one of my regulars at that bar pedaled up on his bike. Then Dee and Jimmy from the Rainbo came in and I felt like putting the show up was maybe worth it after all. With a lot of these shows I have I never get that feeling. A couple other paintings sold without my having to do or say much, so that did nothing to hurt my good feeling about the whole thing.

Tomorrow, when I take the paintings down, the good feeling will likely disappear, but for today I’ll try to hold on to it for as long as I can.

Wednesday I went to Kelly’s house so she could show me how everything was situated in her place. I would be dog-sitting Eddie and Ernie till Sunday and there was a lot to know. We decided that rather than uproot their lives further by schlepping them to Bridgeport, I would just stay at her place in Humboldt Park. We watched many episodes of Baskets and ate much delivered Club Lucky grub while discussing all the particulars.

The next morning she asked me to take the fellas on a long walk so she could get ready for her trip in peace. Then, a half hour after our return she was gone. I’ve lived alone in the same place for over two years; now I was in a different place, in a different neighborhood, with two dogs keeping track of my every move. It was kind of a mindfuck.

Knowing that I had to go to a play that evening and leave them in the house alone filled me with anticipatory dread. I recalled the ritual of leaving the house when I lived with Porkchop. We always had to distract him with treats and then get out the door before he noticed. I knew Eddie and Ernie didn’t require the same level of subterfuge and yet it still gnawed at me. When I returned I could hear their whines from the outdoor gate. Then they jumped all over me as if I’d abandoned them for years.

When we were going to bed they suddenly sensed that Kelly wasn’t coming back, there was more moaning and howling, but they eventually found their spots on the bed and drifted off. Thankfully, there would be no waterworks on the nights that followed. 

Each day involved a long walk around the neighborhood, a bunch of time on the couch, then my leaving alone at some point. Saturday I had gallery hours at Hume so we walked all the way over there only to realize at the door that I’d left my regular keychain back at Kelly’s. This is what happens when my regular routine is disrupted. Luckily, Fontaine lives just down the street and was able to let us in. My gallery assistants dutifully barked at every single passerby throughout the afternoon.

Walking through Humboldt Park—a neighborhood I’ve spent little time in over the last decade, and with two dogs in tow—made me feel as if I was in another city. The pace of my stride was largely beholden to the dogs’ gait, which involved endless stops and starts, as every fencepost, bush, and vacant lot warranted investigation. Living among someone else’s things had a similar effect. After a couple days I started to forget most of my everyday life. And yet that life would be waiting for me come Sunday night when I walked into the Skylark for my bartending shift. The idea of that now felt completely outlandish.

Washing dishes, stripping the bed, and packing up the dogs’ gear for the trip to Sheila’s, further on the North Side, it was hard to imagine that this new routine was about to end. I don’t know if I could handle the responsibility of caring for living beings on an everyday basis but it was good to find out that I was still capable of it given the chance.

In a few hours I’d be back to the solitude I’ve come to know all too well.

Monday evening I went to the Film Center to see a couple movies about artists. The first was a biopic about Egon Schiele, which was very professionally done but which I started forgetting while it was still running; the second was a documentary about Lithuanian photographer Vitas Luckus called Master and Tatyana.

There’s a lot to dislike about Luckus. He was a philandering, careless egomaniac. Anyone involved in the art rackets has known dozens of characters like him. And for many of these guys there’s an adoring coterie of women and sycophantic hangers-on who cultivate and sustain their mythos. In Luckus’ case this entourage was and continues to be led by his beautiful former wife Tatyana. She’s seen frolicking—often naked—through dozens of his photographs. She’s also the keeper of his legacy, having hauled his archive to America, and sitting on it until recent years, biding her time until the right moment to revive the photographer’s reputation.

Giedrė Žickytė’s film shifts nimbly back and forth between Luckus’ ’60s-’70s heyday and present-day. She intercuts interviews with those closest to the great man with shots he took of their younger selves in a way which underscores the ravages of time on the human body and illustrates how many of them are living in the past. Because Luckus didn’t get to grow old, his own image is forever left in a kind of magical youthfulness and vitality which none of his friends do anything to undercut. Even those who criticize the man do so with a measure of envy which serves to build the pedestal he’s on ever higher. 

After the screening there was a Q & A with the director and Tatyana. At one point Tatyana’s current husband—a silver-haired American gentleman who looked like an investment banker—stood up and acknowledged the clapping of the crowd. Someone had asked whether her current husband was also an artist and she emphatically answered that he was not. I wondered what it must be like for this nice man to compete for her love with a dead monster like Luckus; a man who had stabbed a guest in their home, told her he loved her, then jumped out the window to seal his immortality.

Much of the film is devoted to shots of Luckus and his gang in various states of revelry. Because these young bohemian types are about the age of my parents, I couldn’t help but draw parallels. From interviews it’s clear that these people’s lives were also severely restricted by the totalitarian society into which they were unlucky enough to be born, but there’s a lot of joy evident in many of those faces in spite of that. Young artsy people seem the same the world over, no matter the century or country they live in. The shambling way they dress themselves, the pretentious facial hair, the decor of their living spaces; all are familiar from the nearly three decades of my own adult life in art land.

I’m not qualified to judge Luckus’ photography, though there were certainly a number of compelling images which have tugged at my coattail throughout the week since I saw this film. The documentary’s title has to be a reference to Bulgakov’s great portrait of life under the Soviet regime, though unlike Margarita, Tatyana is married to her Master. She’s the faithful keeper of his flame. Whether Luckus was the devil, a genius, or just a self-absorbed moderately-talented man undeserving of immortality, he’s lucky to have such a faithful muse and disciple to introduce him to a new generation of potential admirers.