Cheyney Fox (9 page)

In her search Cheyney witnessed modish “Happenings,” as thrilling as any great painting she had ever seen, which needed a museum, and a wealthier gallery than hers to support them, constructions, interesting as a form to show, but not the ones
available to her; sculptors who used magnets to conjure shapes as beautiful as any Brancusi; and artists endlessly experimenting with new ideas, new techniques, new concepts in art. She gave the best of them she found group exhibitions. Even a private exhibition for one of them, who painted by machine, held in the garden of the gallery one late afternoon. She watched several dealers’ faces grow pale with fright as they saw an artist push a button and in seconds a machine paint a canvas. As one of them left, he shook her hand and said, “Cheyney, you’re braver than me.” A critic who didn’t even bother to shake her hand told her, “We’re all searching, Miss Fox, but this is not going to be it.” Cheyney heard the death knell of her gallery in the words of those two men.

Rauschenberg and Johns broke away from the Abstract Expressionists. Everyday images and objects of a bourgeois life — a Coke bottle, a light bulb, a boot — were painted but devoid of the artist’s own reactions to it. Roy Lichtenstein was doing comic-strip paintings: Nancy and Sluggo and Mickey Mouse were suddenly fine art. They were emitting the message, “Instant recognition, instant gratification, instant art. No thinking, no feeling necessary. It is what it is, and that’s it, fellas.” Freedom and happiness, the happiest times of one’s life were in the cards. All that was needed was the ability to read them, and play. Hooray, we’re all going to be children again. No wonder the American art market was in trouble, the dealers trembling with indecision.

There had been other signs in which people chose to foretell some kind of revolution. Bill Haley and the Comets rocked around the airwaves for four years and more. Elvis Presley with his steamy good looks and his electric guitars, drums, an amplified vocalist for backup, helped narrow the message of liberation to that of more noise, more sex. The bumping and grinding and amplification shouted: Let yourself go, get free. And Cheyney hadn’t understood until then that what the public at large wanted in art and politics, music and relationships, was instant recognition and pleasure. They had tired of works of art that made you think or qualified feeling. And there was the core of the American art scene’s problem. Cheyney doubled her efforts to find the painter who could paint it away.

Chapter 9

S
oon after the gallery opened, two young men, lovers, who collected works of art returned often to Cheyney’s gallery to see what there was new to buy. Tom and Paul did the rounds of the galleries every Saturday afternoon. They clearly found Cheyney an exciting dealer, and Cheyney, once she had been to see their store of paintings and sculpture, marked them down as important collectors with an excellent eye. But they were more than that: they were good people, intelligent and kind. It was easy to like them. With not a great deal of money, they were assembling an interesting collection of contemporary art of the New York School.

One Saturday afternoon they brought a friend. A seemingly innocent, naive, or hollow (it was difficult to tell) creature, cadaverously ugly, with his fleshy Slavic nose, narrow, empty, dark eyes, and plague-like, erupting skin. A coarse pasty face topped by a cheap, badly fitted, grimy, white wig. He seemed not quite of this earth, with his old clothes, his silent, vacuous air.

He appeared orphaned, a lost soul, next to the two pretty boys who emanated sweetness and love. One of society’s natural aliens. He sighed pathetically when Cheyney shook his limp white hand. She instantly felt the need to be kind to him, protective even, she wanted to supply whatever might fill the emptiness whose victim he appeared to be.

“Nice gallery.”

“I’m pleased you like it, Mr. Warhol.”

“Andy. Everybody calls me Andy.”

The three went through the gallery looking at the paintings and asked the price of several works. Tom and Paul bought a small Taunton. They were all of them excited by the purchase. Dora brought the men tiny cups of espresso, a bright yellow streak of twisted lemon rind floating on the hot black liquid.

A famous critic arrived to review the show. The sculptor David Smith and the painter Acton Pace. They kissed her and joined the three men for a coffee, then eyed the collection of ten small Henry Moores that Cheyney had purchased. Each of the pieces, five of which were seated or reclining figures, filled the palm of the hand. The artists congratulated Cheyney on her clever buy and left. But not before David Smith put his arm around her and kissed her, stroked her hair and said, “Cheyney, you’re not nearly mean or hard enough to be in this business. Take care.” Kissed her once more and was gone. He was a big, handsome bear of a man, strong, powerful.

Tom, Paul, and Andy had stood by silent, taking it all in. “Wow,” gasped Andy. “I wanna be a famous artist like them.”

“You are,” said John kindly. “A show at the Bodley and one at Serendipity.”

Andy ignored that. “Jasper is such a star. He and Rauschenberg think I’m too commercial. I’m no more commercial than they are. All I need is a good idea and I can be a star like them, like those guys that just left, like you, Cheyney Fox.”

“Andy, I’m no star, just a struggling dealer.”

“You’re a star all right, you just don’t know it yet, ’cause it’s too new.”

A few days later he stopped in at the gallery again. Alone this time. He bought a painting and went on endlessly worrying whether it was a good investment or not. Several days after that he was there again to ask Cheyney to lunch at Serendipity, a restaurant-cum-shop, all Tiffany lamps and palm trees, feather boas, clever gifts, large floppy felt hats trimmed with paper flowers. On sale were original Andy Warhol drawings of shoes made for his I Miller account and Andy’s books. It was over-the-top, crazy fun, and suited Andy right down to the ground. Cheyney found it amusing. Introduced to the boys who ran it, she was made a great fuss of. Once their order arrived and they were left alone, she took Andy to task.

“You set me up, Andy. What did you tell those boys?”

“Just that you’re the newest, the hottest dealer. A star. Everybody loves a star, Cheyney. Being a star in the art world is almost as good as being a movie star.”

Cheyney shrugged her shoulders, and said, “Andy, seems like you have a problem about fame, and, I dare say, fortune. Being a star is not everything.”

He looked over the large glass
coupe
filled with an extravaganza of ice cream, cherries, chocolate fudge, whipped cream, and pecans, and said, “Now there you’re wrong, Cheyney. It
is
everything, there is nothing else.”

That shocked Cheyney, actually sent a shiver through her. Walking home from Serendipity, she tried to forget Andy Warhol and that look of near-religious belief in what he had said that had briefly animated his pasty face, the momentary tremor in the voice as he bleated, “Make me a star, Cheyney.”

He was there again with two friends a few days later, asking for her autograph. She had been too embarrassed to refuse. Then the calls and the visits became a habit, as did the invitations to luncheons and parties and dinners. And always there was “do you want to go shopping?” He endlessly wanted her to do the shops with him.

She did. But only just once on a bright sunny day with a nip of winter in the air. Tom and Paul and Andy called for Cheyney in a taxi. “Where shall we have lunch?” asked Paul.

“Serendipity,” answered Andy.

“Not again!” exclaimed all three.

“How about Chinese, in Chinatown,” suggested Tom.

“You never meet anybody eating Chinese,” complained Andy.

“We’re talking good food, not people, Andy.”

“Serendipity’s good food,” Andy answered defensively.

“Do we always have to eat in a shop?” asked Tom.

“I
love
eating in a shop. It’s fun. And anyway, shopping is better than eating, and at Serendipity’s we can do both.
And
I’ve got an account there.”

Tom jumped in with, “Andy, are you telling us this lunch is on you?”

“I didn’t say
that
. Dutch treat. We always go dutch. Except
we invited Cheyney, so we’ll split her lunch three ways, Okay? Then it’s Serendipity’s?”

Paul was firm. “No Andy. We’re going Chinese. How does that suit you, Cheyney?”

“Chinese sounds great to me.” She agreed, looking embarrassed over the fuss being made over the cost of a lunch.

Not to be put off his shopping, Andy insisted, “Oh, all right, but there’s no rush. We can taxi-shop on the way. I saw a terrific tin tub in a camp boutique on lower Third Avenue. If it’s still there, I’ll buy it. And there’s a guy not far from that shop that’s got a shoe fetish. His whole back room, nothing but shelves of fabulous famous people’s shoes. Judy Garland’s, Mae West’s, a Ronald Coleman brogue, a pair of Errol Flynn’s sneakers. He told me he was on to a Carmen Miranda platform shoe topped with a miniature bowl of fruit that she wore in the last number she sang with Xaviar Cugat’s band. You know, cherries and plums and grapes and a miniature banana all dribbling over her tiny toes. If he gets that shoe, I’m going to buy it. Boy, I wish I could find the guy who’s selling her hats.”

Saturday lunchtime in New York. It seemed like half of the city was out shopping. The streets appeared to be crawling with sharp, hard-nosed buyers, half of whom were professional lookers. The taxi crawled down the avenue and between Sixty-third Street and Chinatown. Cheyney, Tom, and Paul followed Andy in mad dashes into and out of sixteen shops. Andy never gave up. It was a constant: “Stop: That’s a sensational beaded curtain. Oh, look. I love that wooden pair of giant-size eyeglasses. I’ll have them
and
that stuffed panther. I don’t know anybody that’s got a stuffed panther. Stop: I’ll have that and those. Those dishes,
not bad
. That’s not a real Tiffany lamp. I’ll take it anyway. Too expensive. You’re overcharging me. I haven’t got my checkbook, so charge it. Call me if you can do a better price. I’ll have to think about it. I want it. I have to have it. I love it. It’s mine.” They were exhausted before they got to Chinatown and then in the restaurant all he had to say was: “There’s nothing but food to buy here.”

Cheyney offered, “There are a few shops we can to go visit after lunch, Andy.”

His reply, “What jade? I’d rather have a diamond, an emerald. The service here is too slow. The food is too hot. We
shouldn’t take too long over lunch. I could buy some jade, what do you think, Cheyney? If you think it’s a good thing to buy, I’ll buy jade. Yeah, maybe jade.”

Before they reached Oldenburg’s studio, he tried to convince Tom and Paul to buy a male department-store dummy with all its private parts intact (a rare thing, he claimed), a white porcelain arm with two fingers of the hand broken, black leather shorts, a huge painting of the Statue of Liberty, and Cheyney a trashy twenties beaded hat, a penis-shaped ashtray made of pink plastic, a jade bangle, and a wheelchair with cane back and sides. They were all depressed and worn out, and Andy Warhol was energized because, as he claimed, “There was so much good stuff.” Cheyney was dizzy from it all. The endless foraging through shops. The spending and spending and endless dickering over price. The constant reassurance he needed that each item was a bargain, could only be an investment. The telephone calls to his mother to accept the parcels stuffed into taxis and vans (one thing even went by motor scooter) so that everything would be at home waiting for him on his return. The greed!

At Claas Oldenburg’s studio, Tom and Paul bought one of the artist’s pieces, a chocolate bar, from a selection of food sculptures. The ice-cream cones and candy bars and slices of cake and pie cast in metal and painted in vibrant colors had a special kind of life of their own that Andy could not understand. He kept taking Cheyney on the side and saying, “I could have done that, and it’s going to make him famous. Is that what I should do? A cupcake, maybe? Should I buy one? If I don’t and he becomes famous? You’re a dealer, would you buy one? Why don’t you buy one? Why is Tom buying one?” He seemed amazingly confused and unhappy. At another artist’s studio the boys bought a stunning painting that Cheyney would have herself bought had things not been so financially bad at the gallery. It was as if real talent was more than Andy could take; all he wanted was to go home. Worn, frazzled Cheyney swore, never again a day shopping with Andy Warhol. The greediest, stingiest, meanest buyer of them all.

The months rolled by, and the Cheyney Fox Gallery was still in there with a slim chance of making it. The gallery’s reputation grew, but every day was a financial crisis of one
sort or another. The ten Henry Moores, bought as a collection for ten thousand dollars, temporarily bailed her out when she made a profit in excess of twenty thousand dollars by selling them one by one. But deals like that didn’t come every day.

Christopher and she were still together but the relationship showed signs of strain whenever letters came from Kostas. Christopher finally confessed that he should have returned to Europe and his life there immediately after his exhibition had finished, that soon he must leave her. More months went by, more letters, some now from Florence in lavender ink and smelling of violets. Then the phone calls began. And still Christopher put off his departure. Cheyney was happy, convinced that he was still in love with her and New York. Whatever his plans, she imagined she was by now a part of them. She felt they were, after all, a couple.

A dazzling opening night. Art stars. Hundreds of people streamed through the gallery all day and into the evening, and, before the doors closed, twenty of the Betty Parsons paintings and drawings had been sold. Betty glowed. Her quick, petite figure darted this way and that, her shoulder-length bob swishing back and forth from her usually calm, quiet, classically sophisticated good looks. The following evening Cheyney gave a small, intimate dinner party.

The invited guests: Betty, Christopher, Mark Rothko, Alexander Liberman, Barnett and Mrs. Newman, Acton and Reha Pace. Cheyney enjoyed her guests enormously, with the exception of Acton’s wife, who inspired reservations in her. A whiff of Dora’s cuisine: roasting ham with a crown of pineapple and morello cherries and bubbling maple sugar, melting butter and cheddar cheese marbleizing baby potatoes, hot chocolate, indicating a delectable surprise pudding, wafted through the rooms.

Time kept slipping by, the dinner hour had come and gone, and still Mrs. Newman had not appeared.

“Barney, where’s your wife?” asked Mark Rothko.

“She’ll be here any minute.”

“She’s an hour late, more even. Where is she?”

“You know where she is, she’s teaching. Stop worrying, Rothko. Cheyney knew she was going to be late. Dora’s cooking won’t be ruined. You’ll get your dinner, Rothko.”

“Teaching! She’s still teaching a night course! Barney, you sold a painting to the museum a few weeks ago for more than six figures, they say a hundred seventeen thousand dollars. Barney, you’re a rich man, and you’ve still got your wife out there teaching night school?” Mark Rothko was half teasing, half puzzled.

Barnett Newman, handsomely professorish in his black three-piece suit, white shirt and conservative tie, slipped his monocle into place and directed it at Rothko. “Listen here, Mark, all my life I have been kept by women while I painted. First my mother, then my wife. It’s been their life’s work, and” — he shrugged his shoulders and gestured with his head — “and mine. Now, in my late middle age, I sell a painting for a hundred seventeen thousand dollars, so … that’s no reason to change our life-style.”

They were still laughing when Mrs. Newman entered the room, all breathless from the stairs. She asked, “What have I missed?” Then, seeing all eyes on Barney, she added, “Oh, I see Barney’s being clever again,” and gave him an affectionate smile. He rose at once to put an arm around her and planted a kiss on her forehead. “You’re very late. I was beginning to be concerned.”

The evening sparked off gossip, art-world anecdotes, past and present. Conversations were spiced with the insights of artists living under the glare of art-establishment reverence. What it was to know fame and fortune, on the one hand. Not to know whether you can “make it” with the next blank canvas, on the other. The mocking voids of creativity. What, in the end, had fame and fortune to do with that? The transient stars of art could tell you. It cushioned the struggle and that was about it. But that could be no small thing.