Childhood Of The Art Historian, parts 460 - 463

460. I would never have noticed my wife had changed her earrings in a million billion years, and yet Philip noticed it the second she sat down at the table.

461. Now I have to admit, the first thing I thought to myself when Philip the custom furniture maker started screaming for all the restaurant to hear how he loved my wife's earrings, was that he had to be gay, it was so obvious.

462. So you can see from that example; fifty years my have gone by and yet anyone who notices their surroundings is branded as gay in a derogatory way, and people like me think blindness is a mainly virtue, I said, disparaging myself in an unnecessary way.

463. Anyone who has lived through the six months leading up to a divorce knows exactly what I am talking about, I blurted out.

Childhood Of The Art Historian, parts 456 - 459

Richard Britell

456. What you are saying reminds me of something that happened with my wife. Whenever we were going to go out to dinner she would ask me if I liked this or that earrings she was going to wear, and I would never know what to say.

457. Whatever earrings my wife happened to have on I would say, "Those look good," hoping she would stop asking for my opinion. But like as not she would be dissatisfied and try on another pair.

458. One time my wife put on her favorite green earrings and we went out to dinner. We were having dinner with her friend Marsha that I told you about and a man named Philip who made custom furniture.

459. About half way through dinner my wife went to the bathroom and when she sat back down again Philip yells out so the entire restaurant can hear him, "Oh my God, I just LOVE those blue earrings." Apparently my wife had a different set of earrings in her bag and decided to change them while she was in the bathroom.

Childhood Of The Art Historian, parts 452 - 455

Richard Britell

452. He said that If I wanted to be a man, I was not to refer to purple as violet. So, apparently there was a choice involved, I did not know this, and he was unwilling to elaborate.

453. So, it turned out therefore that the Policeman did not have poor color acuity after all, he must have been a person who knew the rules about being a man, and that is why he was unwilling to call the the jacket of the thief 'chartruce and black checked' but in his manly way just called it 'green coat'. Even now the concept is difficult to grasp because it was so obvious that such a system of manliness would make a mess out of arresting the right persons.

454. It was years before I figured out why my mother thought my book was a sissy's book, but for the time being I abandoned the idea of trying to use my color acuity. Color acuity was going to be a curse, rather than an advantage. Just to be on the safe side I decided to go out for the football team.

455. "You Know" I said to Buboni, "I think I was raised with the same sort of ideas about the descriptions of things, and the use of the wrong words to describe colors although I don't recall anyone ever talking about it."

Childhood Of The Art Historian, parts 448 - 451

Richard Britell

448. I knew what my art teacher was talking about when she said I couldn't draw. My hundred drawings of Donald Duck convinced me of that. As far as being an art critic, or an art historian; it was all gibberish to me back then, and I didn't even know what the words meant. But then something happened at home that changed everything having to do with my color acuity.

449. My dear Mother was not impressed with my A+ on my book, The Hundred And One Shades Of Red. "This is a sissy book," she said.

450. It was a sissy book!  It is impossible to understand now, what those words did not mean to me back then. I expected some explanation, but my mother did not offer one, and it was many years before I had an insight into what she was thinking.

451. I went to my older brother for an explanation, since he knew everything, I said to him. "Peter, why would a book called 'A Hundred And One Shades Of Red' be considered a sissy book. "Because", my brother said, "only girls know the different shades of the colors, for boys it is just red yellow and blue, try to avoid purple and under no circumstance refer to purple as violet. That's the rule, if you want to be a man."

Childhood Of The Art Historian, parts 444 - 447

Richard Britell

444. But it didn't matter anyway because at that age I knew next to nothing about art. My knowledge of art was limited to knowing who Michelangelo was, that Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear, and a boy in my class knew how to draw Sylvester The Cat.

445.  I asked the boy in my class to teach me how to draw Sylvester The Cat but he said Sylvester was too complicated and I should begin by learning to draw Donald Duck. Learning to draw Donald Duck was going to cost a quarter so I signed up to learn.

446. The boy who could draw showed me his system. To draw Donald Duck there were about ten separate shapes very similar to letters in a picture drawing alphabet, there was a fish hook shape, and a backwards S shape, and several others. He put all these shapes in a row and numbered them, and I had to memorize them.

447. After I memorized the Donald Duck alphabet shapes I had to put them together in a certain order and the result looked like Donald Duck but my drawing looked like it was stretched out with a very big beak and a tiny head. I had to draw this over and over a hundred times and show him my best drawing. After that he gave me my quarter back

Childhood Of The Art Historian, parts 440 - 443

Richard Britell

440. I will quote from Jackson's biography just so you see what I am talking about, look, here it is on the screen of my ipod, see for yourself; 'While living in Echo Park, California, he enrolled at Los Angeles  Manual Arts High School, from which he was expelled, after having been expelled from another high school in 1928.

441. Most likely back then he was developing the real skills that would lead to his eventual success, heavy drinking and reckless driving. And at the same time he was working on those skills, his class-mates who wanted to be artists would have been drooling over the Post Covers of Norman Rockwell, and trying to imitate his drawing style.

442. Because by studying the drawing skills of Norman Rockwell back in the 1940's they would have the skills, and be in a position to do magazine covers when they grew up. And when they grew up those magazines were no where to be found.

443. That is the reason my art teacher was wrong to tell me I couldn't be an artist if I couldn't draw, but I must not have been an artist anyway because if I was I would have never listened to her.

Childhood Of The Art Historian, parts 436 - 439

Richard Britell

436.  Vasari about Giotto: The great Florentine painter Cmabue discovered Giotto drawing pictures of sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Bondone and asked if he could take the boy as an apprentice. Little Jackson Pollock would read that and be fired up with ambition to study anatomy, and perspective, and then God willing, he would get commissions to paint the ceilings in huge churches in Cody, Wyoming where he was born.

437.  No, yelled Buboni, getting all worked up about his ideas in his usual way, if Jackson knew how to draw like the old masters as a child then today you would have never heard of him, and if he had worked real hard to develop his drawing skills he would be doing the one thing that would ruin his chances in life.

438. You may think that I a joking in what I am saying about Jackson, but I am really serious about this. Many of the things he did in his youth were the opposite of what the successful young student would be expected to do.

439. Take his high school days. Did Jackson study real hard to prepare himself for his eventual prominance in the world of Art in New York City of the fifties? No, he did just the opposite.