The Burnt Orange Heresy

"In that case, I'll begin without the overall frame of reference and fill in the necessary background as I come to it. I said, I'll begin without the-I see, you don't have any relevant questions and you've decided to remain silent until you do?' Fine. You'll understand my exhilaration about my opportunity to meet Jacques Debierue, then, when I tell you that I've read all, as far as I know, that's been written about him. The scope is wide, but the viewpoint is narrow.

"Only four other critics, all Europeans, have actually seen and written about his work at firsthand. I'll be the first American critic to examine his work, and it'll be new, original painting that no one else has ever seen before. For the first time in my critical career, I'll see the most recent Nihilistic Surrealistic paintings by the most famous artist in the world. It wifi also be possible, afterward, for me to evaluate and compare my opinions with the critiques of those critics who've written about his earlier work. I'll have a broad view of Debierue's growth-or possible retrogression-and historical support, or better yet, nonsupport, for my convictions.

"The incidental factors that led to Debierue's fame during the course of contemporary art history are marvelous. His silent, uphill fight against improbable odds appears, on the surface, to be effortless, but such was not the case. Mass hostility is always omnipresent toward the new, especially in art. Hundreds of books, as you know, have been filled with exegetical opinions about the Impressionists, Expressionists, Suprematists, Cubists, Futurists, Dadaists, and Surrealists of the early years of this century. All of the major innovators have been examined in detail, but there were many other painters who received no recognition at all. And there were smaller movements that were formed and then dissolved without being mentioned. How many, no one knows.

"But it was these minor movements that I was interested in during my year in Europe. It was a way to earn a reputation, you see. And if I could've pinned one of them down, one that got away, a movement that I could've written about and established as an important but overlooked movement in art history, I could've started my critical career immediately instead of teaching art survey courses to bored accountants at CCNY.

"Paris seethed with new developments in art before, during, and after the First World War. Hardly a day passed without a new group being formed, a new manifesto being drafted, followed by polemics, fistfights, dissolvements.

"Three painters would meet in a cafe, argue affably among themselves until midnight, and decide to form their own little splinter group. Then, as wine and arguments flowed for the remainder of the night as they scribbled away at a new manifesto, they detested each other by dawn.

"White-faced with anger and lack of sleep, they'd march off to their studios in the nacreous light of morning, their new movement junked before it was begun.

"A few of these lesser movements caught on, however, lasting for a few days or weeks after a scattered flurry of press publicity, but most of them died unheralded, unnoticed, for want of a second-or for no discernible reason. The fortunate, well-publicized movements lasted long enough to influence enough imitators to gain solid niches in art history. Cubism, for example, a term that pleased the reading public, was one of them.

"Paris, of course, was the center of the vortex during the early twenties, but forays into new and exciting art expressions were by no means confined to France.

"During my single year in France, as I tried to track down tangible evidence of these minor movements without success, my side trips to Brussels and Germany were even more tantalizing.

"In Brussels, the Grimm Brothers, Hal and Hans, who called themselves 'The Grimmists,' spent months in dark mines collecting expressive lumps of coal. These were exhibited as 'natural' sculptures on white satin pillows. Within two days, however, shivering Belgians had pilfered these exposed lumps of coal, and the exhibit closed. The Belgians are a practical people, and 1919 was a cold winter. In their own way, the Brothers Grimm had originated 'Found' art-"

"James-when you say that you have no superego, or conscience, does that mean that you've never done anything bad, anything you've ever been sorry for, later?"

"Yeah. Once. There was an assistant professor I knew at Columbia, an anthropologist, whose wife died. He had her cremated, and bought a beautiful five-hundred-dollar urn to keep her ashes in. He used to keep the urn on his desk at home, as a memento mori. Anthropologists, as you know, are pretty keen on ritual, burial ceremonies, and pottery- things of that nature. His wife died of tuberculosis.

"I never knew his first wife, but I met his second wife, who was one of his graduate students. Men, like women, are usually attracted to the same type of person when they remarry-"