The Art Lover
Page 20
It is 3:45 and it is raining lightly, a gray afternoon in late November. What the light looks like is an angel. What the light looks like is a cross and a man nailed to it. What the light looks like is a woman on her knees turning before our eyes, as the light changes, into stone.
Max, sometimes I’m so afraid of what the light looks like.
It is noon in August in Greece. His hands pull from the earth shards, scrolls from the lost world, and he turns them over and over in light.
We are in a disco, years ago on Twelfth Street. A place that allows women in as well as men. We are still unused to doing things separately. We’re just eighteen. Drinking age. There’s a ball at the ceiling that cuts light and spins it in a thousand directions. You are moving through a thousand specks of light. You are dancing through smoke and space and light. Each gesture frozen for a fraction of a second by the action of the strobe. What the light looks like is the entire galaxy, you unattached, moving through space, your one head larger, more perfect than any planet, than any star.
It is 2:00 in the morning in early spring. I look up and I see a bear in the stars. I look up and I see a teacher in space. I look up and I see a box in the sky. I look up and I see a green monkey in a tree. I look up and I try to picture paradise.
It is 8:35 on the 3rd of June and I am walking uptown on Seventh Avenue carrying a bottle of champagne. I am a little late, but not too late. What the light looks like is hoops of gold wrapped around your body like a Macy’s Christmas tree.
Author’s Note
In the end I was only hands to him. The last thing I ever heard him say was, “Are these Carole’s hands?” My hands on his hands. “Yes,” I said. “I am trying to help you with this. I wish I could help you.”
He had lost the hearing in his left ear, then sight in his left eye, which he liked to call his dog eye. A few months earlier he had winked at me with that eye, as we stood with a person I wanted his opinion of. “Did you see me wink?” he asked later.
His left hand went numb and began to curl like a claw and he put that on the list of things that needed to be fixed. There were other things he had to do. There was a suit he had to pick up at Barneys, he said. A dinner party somewhere. There was a church he had to finish building.
A few days before he died, he said, “Carole, you’ll never guess what.” He was so thrilled when I came to visit him that day. “What is it, Gary?” I asked.
“It’s the most miraculous thing,” he said. “I can see again!” I put my left hand on his left hand and waved my other hand in front of him and realized that both his eyes were darkened now with his wonderful and perfect sight.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my love to the following people without whom this book could not have been written: Lillian and Charles Falk, pillars of courage; Michael Boodro and Patrick Goodman, who held my hand in the dark; Helen Lang, who taught me how to say good-bye; Ilene Sunshine, in love with light; and my parents, Rosemarie and Kenneth Maso, who showed me that the dark is not so dark, and the stars are not so far.
My gratitude to those who helped realize this project: Barbara Ras, my editor, who was always smart, meticulous, and best of all not afraid to break the rules; Amy Einsohn, who understood what I wanted; David Bullen and Amy Evans, who did the design and layout; and Louis Asekoff and Barbara Page, who read the manuscript first.
My appreciation to those who helped hold back some of the chaos for a while; Zenka Bartek, Robin Becker, Georges Borchardt, Christine and Ben Brown, Joan Einwohner, Nancy Fried, Angela Galardi, Cathleen and Jay Giannelli, Judith Karolyi, Michelle and Ken Maso, Kristi and Michael Maso, Kit and Douglas Maso, Laura Mullen, Christina Schlesinger, Dixie Sheridan, Jack Shoemaker, and Daniel Simko.
My thanks to the following for their generous support: The W. K. Rose Fellowship of Vassar College, the MacDowell Colony, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Cummington Community of the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
And for their courage and vision, my admiration and respect to Jean-Luc Godard and Max Frisch. And to Donald Barthelme, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Thomas Bernhard, in memory.
Credits
Page 9: Photograph of farmhouse door. Courtesy of the author.
17: Detail of Noli me tangere, by Giotto. Courtesy of Alinari/Art Resource.
24: Detail of Noli me tangere, by Giotto.
27: From Giotto and the Arena Chapel Frescos, James H. Stubblebine, ed., copyright © 1969 by W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
29: Details of The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci. Courtesy of Alinari/Art Resource.
30: Photograph of fanlight. Courtesy of the author.
“Sky Watch,” New York Times, June 23, 1985. © 1985 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
34: ‘The Red Wheelbarrow,” by William Carlos Williams, Collected Poems, Volume 1. 1909–1939, copyright 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
37: Sign language card. Courtesy of the author.
39: Photograph of wooden gate. Courtesy of the author.
40: Lost parrot poster. Courtesy of the author.
40–41: From “The Great Figure,” by William Carlos Williams, Collected Poems, Volume 1. 1909–1939, copyright 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
43: Sign language card. Courtesy of the author.
49: Detail of Noli me tangere, by Giotto.
57: Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, by Vermeer. Courtesy of Alinari/Art Resource. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Head of a Young Girl, by Vermeer. Courtesy of Giraudon/Art Resource. Mauritshuis, The Hague.
58: Text from A Study of Vermeer, by Edward Snow, University of California Press, 1979. Reprinted by permission.
Detail of Head of a Young Girl, by Vermeer.
60: Lost dove poster. Courtesy of the author.
64: Untitled, by Gary Falk. Courtesy of the Gary Falk Estate.
71: Photograph of Brown tombstone. Courtesy of the author.
75: This Is a Picture of Space, by Kristi Maso. Courtesy of the artist.
82: “Sky Watch,” New York Times, July 21, 1985. © 1985 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
87: Photograph of fanlight. Courtesy of the author.
90: Young Woman Sleeping in Rumanian Blouse, by Henri Matisse. Copyright Succession H. Matisse/ARS N.Y., 1989.
94: Math workbook page from Math Subtraction I. Grades 1–2, © 1984 Western Publishing Company, Inc. Math by Matthew Dawson.
97: The Dance in the City, by Auguste Renoir. Courtesy of SCALA/Art Resource. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
100: From “J. S. Bach . . . ,” by Harold C. Schonberg, New York Times, November 24, 1985. © 1985 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
108: From “Van Gogh at the Met, the Artist Triumphant,” by Michael Brenson, New York Times, November 28, 1986. © 1986 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
119: Detail from The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci.
120: Correction to the recipe for Chiu Chow braised duck, New York Times, Magazine Section, February 15, 1987. © 1987 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
From “Scholars Re-examining Rembrandt Attributions,” by Michael Brenson, New York Times, November 25, 1985. © 1985 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
122: Untitled, by Gary Falk. Courtesy of the Gary Falk Estate.
123: From The Arrival of Halley’s Comet, 1985–86, by Paul B. Doherty, Barron’s Educational Series.
129: Illustration of an AIDS cell, New York Times, March 3, 1987. © 1987 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
130: “Sky Watch,” New York Times, September 15, 1985. © 1985 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
139: Young Woman Sleeping i
n Rumanian Blouse, by Henri Matisse.
142: Red Desert, by Gary Falk. Courtesy of the New Museum of Contemporary Arts, N.Y.
144: “Sky Watch,” New York Times, January 31, 1988. © 1988 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
145: From Impressionism, by Pierre Courthion, 1974. Reprinted by permission of Harry N. Abrams, Inc. All rights reserved.
146: Text from Impressionism, by Pierre Courthion. House of Dr. Gachet at Auvers, by Paul Cézanne, courtesy of the Louvre.
151: Untitled, by Gary Falk. Courtesy of Charles and Lillian Falk.
152: Lost ferret poster. Courtesy of the author.
153: Photograph of fanlight. Courtesy of the author.
161: Guerrilla Girls posters. Courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls.
162: Untitled, by Barbara Kruger. Courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery, N.Y.
163: Letter from Isa to the author.
166: Homefront, by Gary Falk. Courtesy of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
168: Head of a Woman, by Henri Matisse. Copyright Succession H. Matisse/ARS N.Y., 1989. Photograph courtesy of Art Resource.
173: Baby Grand Larceny, by Karen Beckhardt. Courtesy of the artist.
175: Young Woman Sleeping in Rumanian Blouse, by Henri Matisse.
177–78: From “A Dutchman’s Quest for a Black Tulip,” by Alice Furlaud, New York Times, March 20, 1986. Copyright © 1986 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
178: Head of a Woman, by Henri Matisse.
178–79: From “Comet Puts on Biggest Show . . . ,” by Sandra Blakeslee, New York Times, February 11, 1986. Copyright © 1986 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
192: I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, by Charles Demuth. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.
206: Untitled, by Gary Falk. Courtesy of Charles and Lillian Falk.
215: From “Picasso Survey, the Late Paintings,” by Michael Brenson, New York Times, March 2, 1984. © 1984 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
217: Self-Portrait, by Pablo Picasso. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y./SPADEM. Photograph courtesy of Giraudon/Art Resource.
230: “Sky Watch,” New York Times, March 9, 1986. © 1986 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
From “The Lost Son,” Copyright 1947 by Theodore Roethke. From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, by Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam, Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
234: Crows over the Wheatfield, by Vincent van Gogh. Courtesy of Collection Stichting Rijksmuseum.
238: From The Arrival of Halley’s Comet, 1985–86, by Paul B. Doherty.
239: Detail from sign language card. Courtesy of the author.
Detail from Noli me tangere, by Giotto.
240: Virgin and Child on Starry Background, by Henri Matisse. Copyright Succession H. Matisse/ARS N.Y., 1989.
241: Red Dawn, by Gary Falk. Courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
From “Data Shows Nucleus of Halley’s Comet Blacker Than Coal,” by James M. Markham, New York Times, March 15, 1986. Copyright © 1986 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
244: Carole and Gary, Cummington, Massachusetts, 1982. Photograph by Helen Lang.
Special thanks to Katya Stieglitz for her assistance. And again my gratitude to Helen Lang, who went about the huge task of securing these permissions with her usual optimism and persistence.
Copyright © 1990, 1995 by Carole Maso
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
First published in a cloth edition by North Point Press in 1990
First published in a paper edition by The Ecco Press in 1995
First published as New Directions Paperbook 1040 in 2006
eISBN 9780811218399
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011