Color Theory Green-Blue-Brown

Originally uploaded by Michael MacfeatAlthough he was not an amateur in the fine art of seduction, not even an experienced Lothario could have predicted these events. What were the odds on this girl being a librarian at an art school and a rabid Blinky Palermo fan? He had seen a Blinky Palermo exhibition with someone else's wife in 2003 and it was the greatest art exhibition he had ever seen. It was rare in that the drawings exhibited under glass for installation pieces now gone gave a real indication of the way the artist's mind work rather than functioned as reliquaries. It made a major impression on him. He uncharacteristically purchased an exhibition catalog of the show. It was uncharacteristic because he was sick to death with museums and the art system by 2003. He was at the earliest stages of a self-imposed exile from the art world, the superficiality and the bullshit had worn him out. He had as much respect for the average artist and arts administrator as he did for the average junkie; they would try to steal something from him if left alone long enough. The meeting with the librarian was an offhand gesture, an invitation to his apartment for a late glass of wine. He had seen her before and not without interest but it was his first occasion to engage her in conversation. She was a librarian at the University of the Arts, his alma mater, where he had a reputation as an iconoclast and was considered in polite circles as a troublemaker. He made no attempt to play by the rules, shunned polite society, he hated the rich and the art system passionately and basically did whatever he felt like, including bite the hand that didn't feed him. This approach did little to endear him to them and they shunned him as long as they could. How could he foresee that a catalog could lead to so much trouble?
Someone fucked his exile up in 2010 by writing a book about a local independent artists group. The second half of the book was a history of the origins of this movement and even his detractors could not ignore his importance in that field. He began to hear, second hand from various sources, that half of the book was about him and his organizational efforts to create exhibition venues outside of the official system. Incredibly, neither the writer nor the organization had sent him a copy of the goddamn book. When confronted with this oversight by a writer on the West Coast that had conducted an interview with the monster that was liberally quoted in the book, the writer lied to him and said that I had been sent a copy. A friend of his finally sent him one and even she made excuses about the cause of the oversight, being a high ranking player in the art game herself. It wasn't as if she was clean on this front either. She deliberately left out an anti-art organization he fronted because he insisted on remaining anonymous and lying about his involvement.
He provided archival materials to help with the research of the book a couple of years previously and hadn't thought about it much since. The archival materials were never sent back. What they could not prevent was that now he paradoxically had a reputation for being a revolutionary with a group of kids that had either never seen his work or had only seen his one exhibition in 2008, not within the confines of the independent artists groups but in an officially sanctioned exhibition at the university. A symposium was held to discuss the group and the book and the young people highjacked the talk to discuss the importance of the artists exhibition at University of the Arts, which didn't have a goddamn thing to do with the topic. The system that despised him had slipped the paper under the Golem's tongue again.
The groups that he founded were more popular than anyone wanted them to be and oddly enough, created a viable financial situation for artists whose work was eccentric and not the result of an arts education or a rehash of the styles seen in arts magazines. The more successful the groups became, the more other artists began to despise him for not playing the game yet still making money for him and his affiliated artists. He also inadvertently found that he had a knack for publicity, to the point that by the late eighties his pit bull terrier, Derry, got more publicity than officially recognized artists, which had no effect on the pit bulls since they couldn't read but pissed a lot of artists off. The animosity remains.
Depending on the neighborhood, his reputation was that of an artist or a hooligan. Despite his age he still had a reputation as a ferocious street fighter. The handful of younger people that had seen him engage in that craft fueled his reputation for delivering punishing blows and having fast hands coupled with a killer instinct and a frightening viciousness. He had over 200 hundred fights and he rarely had ever thrown the first punch. He was getting on in years and had no interest in fighting for more than a minute but even the most accomplished street fighters thirty years his junior lost their interest in fighting an extended campaign with a broken nose and ribs. He rarely threw the first punch and always threw the last.
He hadn't lost a fist fight since 1979 and that was against a much bigger opponent with a formidable reputation. In fact, if it hadn't been his boss and he hadn't let him up after knocking him to the floor he probably would have won that fight. As it stood, he let him up and suffered a hellacious beating that caused his head to swell up like a watermelon the next day. The fight wasn't the only thing he lost that day. He was laid off within a few days at the insistence of the boss' wife. His reputation was enhanced even though he took the loss.
His daughter's boyfriend had witnessed him being attacked by a 25 year old kid that was considerably bigger than him. Within minutes the contest was over, the only evidence that wasn't contained on the kid's mug was the copious amount of blood on the sidewalk that lasted as a memorial to the event for months. The boyfriend decided against waking his daughter, given the result and the brevity of the violence. Upon awakening, his daughter was simply told that he had watched his father get involved in an unavoidable contest with a kid half his age. In fact, the kid was fighting one of the waitresses in front of the bar across the street from his daughter's apartment when the artist stepped in by request from the woman herself. When told of the fight, his daughter never asked who had won but simply replied, "He has heavy hands, doesn't he?" The boyfriend referred to his daughter's father as "Mister" from that day on.
The evening had started in a neighborhood that was less versed in his creative efforts than his hooliganism. He was well-read and quiet but he had a very low threshold for aggressiveness and posturing. The sure catalyst to send him into a violent rage was when it came unexpectedly and without merit. As long as he wasn't surprised by the behavior he could deal with it. The writings of Marcus Aurealius inspired him greatly and he would tell anyone with a brain in their scull that Meditations was the one book that had actually had a positive influence in his daily behavior.
One of the problems with him having two seemingly diametrically opposed reputations was that it was difficult for either audience to reconcile the opposite view. He had lived in his present neighborhood for years before people that considered themselves his friends realized that he was an artist at all or the extent of his reputation in that field until his exhibition at the University of the Arts in 2008. A friend of his that had the distinguishing feature of looking very much like the Thing told his new girlfriend at the time upon seeing the crowd at the opening made him wonder if they were at an art opening or if perhaps a grand jury had convened ad hoc.
Lately he was deliberately expanding his field of operations, at least socially. The old haunts were getting tedious as was his reputation, regardless of which version he was known for. He had written all but one bar off in his own neighborhood and had cut down on his drinking quite a bit. He made no bones of his newfound moderation being the result of virtue, he was just fucking bored with it all.
I am going to make it easy for you this time. Only the librarian is a lie. The rest of it, unfortunately, is the truth. I wouldn't have even bothered myself to make up the librarian but it tied the story into the work. The exhibition of Blinky Palermo's is in fact the best exhibition that I have ever seen and I didn't go into it expecting it to be.
I would probably prefer it was the other way around given a choice but a poor man is never given a choice in America. As Bell Hooks so aptly put it, "Being oppressed is the absence of choice." Or as Louis-Ferdnand Celine put it, "Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offense."
I realize that I have just exposed myself as a lunatic but other than some of my stories, I just don't have the energy or the inclination to lie anymore.