Art or Artist for Sale?

Years ago I spent an hour in the basement of a N.Y. gallery where I worked, during the opening night of a one-man exhibition taking place upstairs.

It was a glitterati affair: major collectors mingled with artists, and that period’s foremost art critic, Hilton Kramer of the N.Y. Times, had arrived to review the show of this up and coming painter. His words, read by countless people across the world, could change an artist’s career. The gallery owner wanted Kramer to meet the artist. There was just one problem: the artist, who had arrived earlier, could no longer be found.

That’s because he was hiding in the basement.  I discovered him sitting in one the rectangular painting bins, stacked with the stored artworks like a painting for sale himself.

Therein lay his conflict he confided.  Shouldn’t the artwork upstairs stand on its’ own?  The review should be in response to his art not his charm. This was a point of pride.  He was not for sale.

Meeting Kramer would also be too big for him, he disclosed. We discussed how rare it is to be aware that a present moment could profoundly alter your life, rather than realizing it in retrospect.  In addition, he felt to be there at that moment’s inception would toy with the proper order of things, like when humans step into nature to save one species from another.

He stayed in the bin. I sat on the floor next to him until I knew Kramer had gone. Then we went upstairs. “Where have you been? You just missed Hilton Kramer! It’s too late now,” people shouted.

The review came out.  The artist’s show went on to be a success. “It was right for me to be a painting that night,” he said to me as we were taking his show down. “Yeah,  I replied. "Good call."

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