I don’t think so. Art who? Being that most of my teachers in many years of Catholic education were priests and nuns, I’m certain I was never a student of a Father Art or a Sister Art.

I was never familiar with works of art while growing up, nor to the best of my knowledge was any member of our household. There was one framed painting in the house and the subject of that was a river stream somewhere in the world. It was huge object that covered the wall from the front door to the stairs at the end of our foyer. I think it was left there by a former tenant. No one in our house paid any attention to it, except the adults were probably grateful that was one wall they didn’t need to cover with wallpaper. The only other paintings that ever were in our house were paint-by-number works that I created. They actually were quite good, and they were smartly framed and hung in our living room for visitors to see and enjoy. That, however, and possibly tracing something are the limit of my ability to do anything artistically. I have never been able to sketch or depict anything from scratch, even to this day. I am the world’s worst Pictionary player. I’m unable to draw a gun even if my life depended on it.

As i matured I did at least start to recognize famous paintings. And I often would appreciate paintings of people and scenes. But never the so-called abstract art. I can’t think of any more waste of time than to walk from hall to hall in a museum or a gallery and stare at some stupid painting of colors, shapes and numbers and wonder what does it means, what is it telling me, what am I to learn from this. 

There were plenty pictures in books and movies of the da Vinci Mona Lisa, which many say is the Greatest of All Time. Personally, I wouldn’t vote for a painting which no matter how many times you look at it you cannot ever tell whether that woman is smiling or smirking. She does not give the appearance of being lovable. I would question the acclaim that it is the G.O.A.T. of the art world, especially when you consider Michelangelo’s ceiling paintings in the Sistine Chapel. That is truly awesome. Did he paint the ceiling lying down, or did he day after day have to climb the tallest ladders in the world? I’ve learned that Van Gogh was a prolific artist, but if I were to see any of his paintings I probably couldn’t get past an imagery of him as a psycho who cut off his ear. Then there was Rembrandt. I saw pictures of many of his works in my college Theology books, such as the famous Sea of Galilee painting. 

Of all the familiar artworks my favorite has been the American Gothic painting of a woman and a man holding a pitchfork on their farm. They both look so grim, if not angry. And when you look at it carefully it’s really a portrayal of Granny and Jeb that was painted a couple of decades before the Beverly Hillbillies first aired! Another favorite of mine would be the paintings and illustrations of Norman Rockwell which adorned the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. My family regularly looked forward to reading that publication and Rockwell’s depiction of American life was right on and often humorous.

I know that I have so far only conveyed my personal feelings about art, and you shouldn’t be surprised that I’m essentially uncultured. But I do have a story to tell about my entry into the art world, and it involves a client (Bettye Wood), the Director and lawyer for the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Betsy Braun and Charles Robinson), and Marc Chagall, a famous French artist. The opening scene of this story is Bettye’s penthouse apartment at the Watergate. Bettye’s husband was in-house counsel for General Electric. He and Bettye were avid art collectors. He died suddenly in his 50’s, leaving Bettye with the Watergate apartment, some shares of GE stock, and the artworks which they collected during their marriage, but little cash. Bettye enjoyed the Watergate lifestyle and the opportunities she had for going to the theater and fancy dinners with her very well-to-do neighbors at the Watergate. But her money was fast running out. I suggested to her that she had a lot of wealth hanging on the walls of her Watergate apartment and at a Rehoboth Beach apartment which she owned, and that we could turn many of those paintings into cash by donating them to a museum which would then sell the paintings under an arrangement for an annual annuity to be paid to her. To implement this plan Bettye and I met with Betsy and Charles from the American Art Museum, and they recommended an appraiser to value the artwork for determination of the annual annuity payment to Bettye.

To celebrate this plan, which worked very well for her benefit, Bettye invited Betsy, Charles, and me to join her at the Watergate apartment for some wine, cheese, shrimp, and crabmeat, all of which were purchased at a Watergate store, so I’m sure it was expensive. This occurred a week or two before Christmas in the mid-2000’s. For whatever reason we all bared our souls that night, with Bettye discussing her husband’s premature death from a heart attack after playing tennis at the Homestead resort, and Betsy talking about her divorce and having to raise her daughter without much support, and Charles speaking about how some people shut him off when they learned he was gay, and me discussing my wife’s diagnosis and treatment. It was the closest I ever came to being in a group therapy session, and without a therapist. We continued to have a pre-Christmas gathering at Bettye’s apartment for another 5 or 6 years until Bettye moved to Baltimore. It was a chance to catch up on our lives, although for the most part, Bettye, Betsy and Charles would talk about art shows and new exhibits, while I just sat there eating the shrimp and crabmeat and drinking that fine wine.

The one hitch that came up in the arrangement with the Smithsonian concerned a Marc Chagall painting that was included in the donation to the American Art Museum. As i recall, It was appraised at about $35,000. But when the Museum tried to sell it there was no original Certificate of Authenticity to deliver to a buyer. The painting was on exhibit at a gallery in Georgetown and Bettye claimed that the owner of the gallery had the Certificate. She made me accompany her to that gallery when it had an exhibition one night, which was the first time I ever entered an art gallery. The owner denied having the Certificate. There is a Chagall committee in France that determines whether a work is an original or a copy. I corresponded with them, but to no avail. About a year later the owner of the Georgetown gallery moved the gallery to Manhattan. When Bettye found out I was going to New York for a meeting with Dr. Scott, she pleaded with me to visit that NY gallery, which I did, and the owner continued to deny that he ever received the original Certificate of Authenticity. The Chagall painting was returned by the Museum to Bettye, and after her passing her nephew selected the painting as part of his inheritance from Bettye. He told me he was going to hang it in his parlor.

While circumstances have given me some exposure to the art world, it is clear that now at my age I will remain a person who lacks culture, although I still would enjoy paint-by-number. And oddly enough, while I’ve never been a student of art, I am now living in a North Hollywood Artist Colony!