go to the opening at Halcyon Gallery tonight,” Charles said. “It’s the new work by Julia Brownell and I saw a piece of hers that I liked at the restaurant last night.”
Charles McKenna could be counted on to get me out of the house and off to summer events in Santa Fe. He was an old friend who visited me every summer for a month or so, savoring the change from his patterns in New York City. His choice in activities usually differed widely from the staid, museum-centered events of my own life.
“Very well”, I said, “but let’s not stay. It’ll be a crush of people, hot and steamy. And Halcyon never has good wine.”
“Art would wither if you were left to water it,” he said.
“I’m not sure art is what we’ll see at a Brownell showing.”
“Envy, envy.” He shook his finger at me.
Charles hit the nail on the head. I was envious of Julia Brownell, a fellow painter in Santa Fe. Her vast success had eclipsed all the other young painters of the time, including me. Some years she had two exhibits a year, selling everything on the walls with collectors arguing loudly over a popular piece. This was at a time when there were few galleries in Santa Fe and keen competition for representation. Some were happy for her, but her patrician, overbearing demeanor and arrogant behavior set most against her. It seemed vastly unfair that she had beauty, ability and success all on her side. I held that art should entail struggle, deprivation, and lonely travels in the wilderness, none of which guided Brownell.
Charles and I walked down to the exhibit at the gallery just off Santa Fe’s plaza. Although it was only five in the afternoon, the crowd spilled out the front door onto the sidewalk and we could hear the roar of gallery talk from down the street.
“Let’s make straight for the bar,” I said. “It’s always in the far back.”
“Follow me,” said Charles plunging into the gossiping throng.
I learned from experience to keep moving in an opening night crowd until you made it to the far innards of the gallery. Then, with a small glass of white wine you could slowly work your way to the street. This was the sociable part of an art exhibit where you exchanged opinions with other artists, I preferring the anti-Brownell faction on this night.
It was hard to see her work since only narrow vistas were available between the gossiping groups. I pushed my way to the outside perimeter between the throng and the paintings, a narrow walkway on which I could view the work itself. The large paintings, six feet square, had a theme of gold and gilding. Brownell gold-leafed sections of these panels, while other portions she filled in with gold radiator paint from a spray can and commercial, grainy golden paints. All of the paints she used were sloppy and wet, long drips falling straight down to the bottom of the pictures, now dried with small nubbins at the end of each drip.
The canvases were entwined in circulations of string and small rope, which in turn were gilded or covered with golden papers right over the twine. Sections of deep yellow wood, faux gold, had been pasted on here and there, and many golden rings of varying diameters were enmeshed under translucent golden gels. More areas of gel had glitter imbedded in them. Long strips of gilded masking tape went this way and that, taped right over the welter of other elements.
I was appalled. She had paid no attention to the traditional methods of painting, flaunting any attempt at technical excellence. Charles had quite an opposite view.
Above the din he said, “I think they are brilliant. I must have one.”
“Why in the world?”
“I can just imagine one of them in my new apartment. New and exciting. My New York friends will be so envious.”
“Not people from Santa Fe?”
“No, I wouldn’t think so. We New Yorkers are more concerned with ideas and new concepts as the origins for art. You Santa Feans are more comfortable with simple landscapes of local nature, thematic work, and Indian related canvases.”
“Ouch. Are we really that provincial?”
Avoiding an answer, Charles pulled away from me and my opprobrium, and by evening’s end he was the owner of Brownell’s “Gilded Square No. 9”. After the purchasing paperwork, he insisted that we go talk to her, that I introduce them. When the circle around her dissipated for a moment, we closed in for a talk.
I made the introduction. “Julia, this is Charles McKenna.”
“Oh, they told me you just bought Number Nine. The best of the lot, I think.”
Charles beamed with satisfaction. “I think you’re wonderful. Such intriguing work. So joyous and exuberant.”
“You have a good eye, Charlie,” she said.
“The use of gold was a clever idea.”
“I loved doing them, finding ever cheaper paints. The best were the golden poster paints from Woolworth’s. They have chunks of unmixed glitter and they drip with lovely, riverine abandon. These paintings will become nightmares for art restorers.” She laughed.
At least she admitted they were archivally poor. What would happen to that masking tape and poster paint in a few years? Peeling up and falling off in expensive drawing rooms the nation over.
“Are you ever in New York?” asked Charles.
“Next month, Charlie.”
“Call me, I’ll take you to lunch.” He gave her a card.
She smiled, saying neither yes nor no. We pressed through the crowd to the cool street outside.
Charles went back to New York that Sunday, and he asked me to take delivery of the painting at the end of the exhibit. Since he was between apartments in the city, I offered to warehouse it for him until his new place was ready. The men from the gallery helped me in with the large panel. Charles had suggested that I hang it on the wall of my entry hall, but I liked the entry exactly for its emptiness. I relented, however, because there was nowhere else for it and I asked the gallery men to hang it where he indicated.
It immediately commanded attention in my hallway, catching the morning rays of the sun and projecting an Egyptianlike radiance in my small adobe. In the cooler hours of the early evening, portions of it contracted, emitting twanging and plucking sounds like a primitive ceremonial instrument. My exquisite Mexican Colonial pine table in the hallway seemed to hiss in disapproval when I walked between it and the new Brownell.
My three cats, a testy old female and two younger more active males, inspected it in turn, standing up on the wall to smell the bottom. When I discovered a piece of the painting on the floor, I accused them of pulling it off. My disapproval was faint-hearted as I was secretly pleased they shared my dislike.
When other pieces fell off on their own, I had to apologize to the cats for my suspicions. Small sections continued to cascade down onto the floor from time to time and I regularly glued them back on, sometimes hunting without success for their original sites.
The work on Charles’s apartment spread from weeks into months, but he called regularly to update me on its progress. He always asked if I now liked the Brownell better, feeling uneasy with it in the hands of an infidel. I assured him I was a trustworthy bailee, but one with strongly differing
