The Studio
On Fifty-Ninth Street (1942-1955)
I think I should begin this very important chapter
in Ary's life and mine by quoting from two letters, which I
received in response to the booklet sent out by the Foundation
early in 1968.
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Blue Accent
1951
|
Paul Burt, a New York lawyer and long-time friend of Ary's,
wrote, in part:
"…the brochure of Ary's paintings. How marvelous
they appeared even in the reflected view of photos of the original
oils and how full of memories that I count among my most precious....
I saw once again that old brownstone building on 59th Street,
the worn steps leading up three flights to a door, which opened
on a studio warm with the spiritual and intellectual essence
of a singular man and a singular woman with whom I was bound
by ties of deepest affection. There on walls or hiding modestly
in a corner were paintings, masks, curios of all kinds and a
piece of two of tapestry. Then there of course was Ary ever
ready to enter into warm talk on any theme and give a visiting
friend the delicious warmth of his sweet sincerity. Of course,
and let's never forget it, you would bustle in around five and
make straight for that tiny kitchen to heat up a pot of tea....
"...I have come to understand that Ary was a powerful influence
on me in developing my insight and mature judgment, such as
I have, and that he showed me infinite patience to my brash
youth and blatant opinions. He was in many ways my guide and
mentor and so subtly that it was many years before I even came
to know that he had showed me the way."
The second letter was from Oscar Weissbuch, a friend about Ary's
age, an amateur painter who spent most of his free hours following
the exhibitions in the galleries on 57th Street and there-abouts:
"...The Stillman-Lack Foundation — it's Ary's life
and feelings — to help others. As I looked through the
pages the pictures transported me back to the 59th Street Studio
where I enjoyed such wonderful evenings… And then came
the pleasant shock — the photo of Ary — what a pleasing
likeness and that smile. The smile brought back memories of
one particular evening when I asked Ary if he suddenly acquired
one million dollars what's the first thing he would do. Frances,
do you remember, he said, "I would buy 3 pairs of slacks."
(But Oscar didn't remember quite accurately. I remember that
evening myself, and Oscar's question. Ary's answer was "I'd
buy a pair of slacks.")
So that was the essence of 59th Street. We had acquired the
studio about six months after we were married. Before that time
we had lived in Ary's tiny little bachelor studio a block further
East, and had spent the summer in a storybook little house in
Harmon, on the Hudson River. I had been opposed to renting the
place at first, for the price frightened me — an increase
of 100 percent, from $30 to $60 a month. But Ary was confident
we could make it, and of course I gave in. It was a row of old
brownstone buildings, studio apartments upstairs and the Plaza
Auction Gallery, Caruso's Restaurant, a jewelry store and a
cafeteria down below. Various painters lived in this row of
houses — Mondrian had lived in one —at 15 E. 59th
Street, I believe, and the story was that the lawyer who was
his benefactor continued paying rent on the studio some months
after Mondrian’s death, because Mondrian had made some
paintings on the walls, and the lawyer couldn't bear to part
with them. Boris Margo and his wife Jan occupied one of the
studios for a time, and Theodore Brenson had the studio above
us. He wasn't a very welcome neighbor because invariably the
telephone would ring just as he had let the water run for a
bath, and he would answer the phone and forget about the water
until we would hear it drip down into our bathroom and we would
have to go up and bang on his door.
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Kingston, New York
1941
oil on canvas
20 x 16
Foundation Collection, TX |
The apartment consisted of a studio room, with
north light — the room about 27-1/2 feet by 14 feet, a
tiny little bedroom, large enough for only a single bed, a small
kitchen, small bathroom and a narrow little corridor. We had
practically no furniture to bring to it, but shortly after we
moved in, when I came home in the evening, Ary announced that
he had bought some furniture at the Plaza Auction — he
wasn't quite sure just what it was, but they were good pieces,
from a nice estate, and he had paid $50 for the lot. When the
furniture arrived the following day it turned out to be two
single beds with wonderful, almost new mattresses, a large bureau,
a chiffonier, and a small desk, all in beautiful, heavy dark
wood, and in excellent condition. Ary said I must have a very
nice bedroom, a place that would be my very own and that I would
enjoy, and he set out to make it so. One of the beds, the bureau,
the little desk and a couple of chairs made up the furniture,
and the little bedroom gradually was fitted up most elegantly
— really luxuriously — all from the Plaza, of course.
Ary would make it a point to go in there on rainy afternoons,
when there wasn't much of a crowd, and he would make the most
fantastic buys. They were all from collections or from estates
of very wealthy people. My bedroom curtains were panels deeply
covered with hand-made lace designs; the bedspread was taffeta
of the finest quality; the glassed-in shelves on the wall were
filled with ancient Chinese and Persian pieces. An early pencil
drawing — a handsome nude — of Ary's was on one wall,
and above my bed Ary's painting of a lonesome street in Kingston,
New York (painted in 1941) with a bridge in the background,
and a forlorn little figure of a man, with slouched hat, on
the otherwise deserted street. This painting, reflected in my
mirror, was the first thing that would meet my eyes when I opened
them in the morning. Once Ary's brother Eli and his wife Elizabeth,
on a visit to New York, wanted to buy this painting, and Ary
agreed, but when he took it down to pack it I cried so at the
thought of losing "My little Man" as I called it,
that he wrote them and asked if he could send something else
instead. He sent them an interior from the summer cottage in
Harmon, which Emily Genauer had said in the World-Telegram reminded
her of Bonnard, but she "liked it better than any Bonnard
she had ever seen." Anyway, the "Little Man"
was saved, and from that time on we never parted with him —
he went to Europe with us in 1955, and later to Mexico and for
our five years in Cuernavaca, and now he hangs on my bedroom
wall in Houston.
On the door of my closet in the bedroom hung a Mandarin coat,
which Ary had picked up for a few dollars at the Plaza, and
which he thought "would be nice for me to slip on after
my bath." But when I looked at the heavy silk garment magnificently
embroidered with various designs, all of which Ary said had
a traditional meaning, and when he further informed me that
he believed it was several hundred years old, I couldn't see
myself using it as a bathrobe.
In the studio itself Ary gradually built up a fantastic collection.
There were Spanish tapestries on the wall, small Oriental rugs
on the floor, Chinese and Persian bowls and vases and tiles.
(And what linens we had — the finest damask and percale,
the most exquisite luncheon cloths of Italian drawn work —
all bought for a song, on rainy afternoons at the Plaza.)
“Ary would stand in line
for tickets for Horowitz, Heifetz, Kreisler, Landowska, Serkin,
Casadesus, Menuhin, Millstein, etc. to be listened to from
the top balcony at Carnegie.”
In this studio, with its cherished surroundings,
and with a companion who was thrilled to share his life, Ary
was very happy. I was at work during the daytime and the place
was his, to work, to dream — and then at the end of the
afternoon he would look forward to my coming home. Usually he
would meet me at the bus or the subway, then upstairs for a
glass of wine and an hour to talk or rest, then dinner. We were
terribly poor at first, and there was little money for entertainment.
But Tuesday evening and Sunday afternoon there were movies at
the Modern Museum — we would hurry dinner on Tuesday so
as to get to the museum at 7:30; and after seeing the film we
would stop in at Childs on 5th Avenue for cake or ice cream
and coffee, and it was a wonderful evening indeed. Sunday afternoons
before the movie we would have tea in the Museum's penthouse,
then make a tour of the museum, to whatever exhibit was currently
showing and also to the floors housing their regular collection.
Saturday afternoons there were the galleries, of course, and
there we would always meet many friends. Monday evenings in
the early days we would go to Miss Francis' open house, at her
gallery on East 57th Street. There were long walks — along
Fifth Avenue in the evenings, weekends a hike across Washington
Bridge or Brooklyn Bridge — an occasional visit to the
Bronx Zoo — we would make a day of it, bringing our lunch,
and getting drinks at one of the open air refreshment places.
Several winters we went quite regularly to evening lectures
at Cooper Union; later on when we weren't holding on quite so
tightly to every penny there were poetry evenings at the Young
Men's Hebrew Association, with poets such as Dylan Thomas, Truman
Capote, Carl Sandburg, etc. reading their own poetry. And of
course concerts — Ary would stand in line for tickets for
Horowitz, Heifetz, Kreisler, Landowska, Serkin, Casadesus, Menuhin,
Millstein, etc. to be listened to from the top balcony at Carnegie.
And then, in later years, Sunday afternoon Friends of Music
Series at Town Hall. Music was to Ary almost as important part
of his life as painting. I can recall twice seeing Ary weep
at beauty —once when a priest in Siena brought us into
a private room to show us a gem of a Lorenzetti Madonna, and
once when Wanda Landowska played a Mozart concerto in Carnegie
Hall. We heard younger musicians quite a bit since Ary's niece
Fredell Lack was studying at Juilliard and she and her friends
such as Bobby Mann, Lee Hambro and others, also the Juilliard
orchestra, made tremendously spirited and beautiful music.
“Art and music were closely
intermingled for him; his painting was very rhythmic, and
when people would look at one of his non-representational
paintings and say, ‘But I don't understand it,’
he would say that they shouldn't try to understand, they shouldn't
think that he had a literary type of idea in painting —they
should approach it as they listen to music.”
Ary always had the radio going — the music
stations — while he was working and he painted to the accompaniment
of symphonies, concertos, chamber music or opera. Although he
didn't know a note of music, he could recognize a composer after
hearing him several times, from the structure and tonality of
the composition. Art and music were closely intermingled for
him; his painting was very rhythmic, and when people would look
at one of his nonrepresentational paintings and say, "But
I don't understand it," he would say that they shouldn't
try to understand, they shouldn't think that he had a literary
type of idea in painting —they should approach it as they
listen to music. He was quick to appreciate contemporary composers
such as Stravinsky, Shoenberg, Bartok, Prokofief, especially
after he became so engrossed in working in abstract vein.
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Arabesque #4
1950
lithograph
Foundation Collection, TX |
Ary had a drawing board
with a special lamp, and often, especially during the long winters,
he would work late into the night at drawings. In 1953 he did
a number of woodcuts, and these seemed to go especially well
at night. He would go out after dark and look for pieces of
wood that had been discarded on 59th Street, and choose some
with a grain he fancied. It annoyed him to have to repeat himself
in his work, so every woodcut reproduction was a bit different
than the others, in respect to his use of color. And he would
usually use his finger to press on the color, rather than a
roller, as it gave a more intimate touch. Usually he made only
3 or 4 copies from any one design — the most was about
7 or 8. It was only a few months that he was occupied with this
medium. He also made two lithograph stones, at the urging of
Margaret Lowengrund, who had gotten together a group of seven
artists — Ary, herself, Jon von Wicht, Hans Moller, Boris
Margo, Sue Fuller, Will Barnet, to form a group. But he begrudged
taking the time from his painting to do any kind of mechanical
process, so he begged off, after the group had held a couple
of exhibitions.
Ary's first exhibition after our marriage
was in December 1942, at the Andre
Seligmann Gallery, on 57th Street just off Fifth Avenue.
Seligmann had seen one of Ary's paintings in a group show, and
had asked Ary to join the group he was getting together. Others
in the group were Jon Corbino, then at the height of his success,
Frederick Taubes, Henry Botkin, Isabel Bishop, and others. It
was a handsome gallery, and one of the nicest features about
it was Seligmann's assistant, Faith Waterman, a beautiful, highly
intelligent and overall lovely person, who has remained our
close friend through all the years. Seligmann himself was suffering
from a heart ailment and was a highly emotional individual,
crushed by the German occupation of Paris, which had forced
the Seligmann to give up the well-known Paris gallery which
the father had founded. Ary was able to cheer him up and to
lift him out of his despondency many times, but when the war
ended Andre went back to Paris, and finding everything so changed,
was more than ever despondent, and finally a heart attack caused
his death. While it lasted a few short years, the Andre Seligmann
Gallery had some outstanding group and one-man shows. Ary had
a very good press from both his one-man show and various group
shows.
When Andre Seligmann left New York Ary found himself high and
dry. Mr. McIntyre and his assistant Hazel Lewis at the old and
well-known Macbeth Gallery liked Ary's work and took several
of his canvases to exhibit in group shows. One of them, "Fishing
Village," shown at Macbeth in July 1945, was chosen by
Carnegie Tech for its annual exhibit "Painting in the U.S.
1945" and the following year it was shown in Pepsi-Cola's
"Paintings of the Year." Meantime however, Ary's painting
had undergone a radical change.
“Ary was, of course, profoundly
shaken by the war, by the enormity and brutality and hideousness
of it, and especially by the tragic fate of six million European
Jews. He was in an emotional upheaval that affected every
phase of his being, and of course this included his creativity
as an artist.”
This had been brewing ever since the early part
of World War II. Ary was, of course, profoundly shaken by the
war, by the enormity and brutality and hideousness of it, and
especially by the tragic fate of six million European Jews.
He was in an emotional upheaval that affected every phase of
his being, and of course this included his creativity as an
artist. I remember long walks we would take in Central Park
on Sunday afternoons; we would wind up in some secluded spot
and then Ary would give voice to his thoughts and feelings.
He would say "I cannot continue to paint the way I have
been doing. I am sure that every creative person will have to
make some change. For me, the world of surface realities is
no longer paintable. For nothing is as it formerly seemed. It
is not the surface of things— the look of things —
that is real — it is that which is hidden beneath the surface
— an inner reality of some sort, that is real. And that
is what I must search for. I can no longer set up a still-life,
or paint the view of a city street, no matter how much of my
own perception and sensitivity I put into the painting. I shall
have to dig down deep within myself — back to my subconscious,
if possible — and bring out what will be an inner reality.
And then suddenly Ary had made the leap into a new means of
expression. Whereas his "Fishing Village" had hung
on Macbeth Gallery walls in July 1945, his entry in the Federation
of Modern Painters exhibit at Wildenstein's two months later
was called "Vista
Mystique." Emily Genauer, in the World-Telegram, wrote
about this show: "What is it within the past year or so,
when the war was a constant, spiritual burden and many artists
were beset with serious personal problems brought on by the
dislocations of war, that has led them on to find new strength
within themselves, to seek a whole new approach to their art,
to experiment with new techniques? Is it the times, which have
tapped new wells of creative energy in them? And why? There
is for instance, Ary Stillman, represented in the Wildenstein
exhibit by a picture called "Vista Mystique" . . .
"Vista Mystique" is an abstraction, done in the juiciest
of paint, in color that glows like a stained-glass window, in
patterns that swirl and churn in expressionistic fury. It's
complex and highly emotional and I think altogether fine."
In January 1946 Mr. McIntyre of Macbeth Gallery came to see
Ary at the studio one afternoon, and asked to see some of his
abstract canvases. Ary had thrown himself headlong into his
new painting, and had a number of canvases to show. At that
time Ary was not occupied with form— he was engrossed in
color, and wanted whatever unity and whatever impact the canvases
had to come from his use of color. McIntyre looked over this
recent work and then said, "I want you to have a one-man
show in three weeks. An exhibition we had planned has been cancelled,
and I want you to show your new work."
When I came home that evening Ary was terribly excited. It was
extremely short notice for a one-man show, but he had enough
canvases on hand. However, Macbeth was a very old and conservative
gallery, and to have an abstract exhibit was something unheard
of for them!
The fact was, the show did encounter opposition, but it was
not primarily from the patrons of the gallery, it was from some
of Ary's artist colleagues! They were among the representational
painters who were putting up strong resistance toward this growing
trend toward abstract painting. They felt that their world was
threatened, and they were very hostile toward the artists who,
they felt, were going over to the "enemy camp." During
the previous months a longtime artist friend of Ary's, at a
party in our studio, had attacked him and accused him of being
"dishonest" in not painting "honestly" what
he saw. Ary had felt hurt by this attack, for anyone who knew
him even casually realized the quality of Ary's integrity, but
of course it didn't deter him in the direction his work was
taking. Now however, at word of Ary's coming one-man show at
the venerable gallery of Macbeth, we learned through the grape
vine that a crowd of artists had decided to put Ary in his place.
Sure enough in the midst of the preview, a group led by deHirsch
Margulies burst into the gallery ready to "let all hell
break loose." What happened I never knew, for at the time
I was deep in conversation with one of the guests. Did Hazel
Lewis, with her great tact, quiet them down, or what? In any
event, although there were some sneering remarks made by the
group, they didn't succeed in breaking up the preview reception.
Although Ary's new canvases attracted considerable attention
from both the public and the press, and he had a number of fine
reviews, it gradually became clear that the conservative patrons
of the gallery were quite disturbed by the radical departure
from the accustomed which had been taken in showing these abstractions.
Miss Lewis reported that one wealthy dowager declared emphatically
"To think that I should live to see the day when Macbeth
would hang canvases like these on their walls!" In any
event, the following months showed that Macbeth was really not
the right climate for Ary's new work.
Meanwhile, Ary worked on, and in the summer of 1948, quite by
chance, he entered into a phase of his work, which was to prove
a very important feature of his artistic career as well as a
great influence on his future work. He had gone ahead of me
to Provincetown for the summer vacation — I was to meet
him in several weeks — and he had ordered canvas and paints
sent on from the art supply store in New York. Somehow they
were delayed in transit, and Ary was impatiently awaiting their
arrival, and to while away the time he bought some charcoal
and drawing paper and started making abstract drawings. He had,
in past years, amused himself by "doodling" small
abstract designs, and some months previously he had made a drawing
to exhibit in a drawing show which the Federation of Modern
Painters and Sculptors was holding at the Chinese Gallery on
57th Street. But he hadn't continued with it. Now however he
became intrigued with the medium; he found that there was such
an intimate contact between fingers, charcoal and paper, and
it was so much easier to convey an idea in this way than through
paint and brush and canvas. By the time the art supplies arrived
he had made several dozen small charcoal drawings, and from
then on through our stay in Paris in 1956, drawings occupied
quite a bit of his time. Later on he felt that the early drawings
had been too centralized, and too hemmed in, and he worked for
a more open, all-over composition. Throughout most of his drawing
experience he was trying to experiment with space and light,
and the 1956 drawings made in Paris seemed somehow to presage
the "space era."
It was in the fall of 1947 or perhaps the
spring of 1948 that Bertha Schaefer opened her gallery on 57th
Street. She had been widely known for years as an interior decorator,
but for some time she had been eager to widen the scope of her
work and to gather around her a group of representative painters.
She wanted to advance the idea that one shouldn't choose a painting
to fit in with the decor of a room, that one should choose a
painting or paintings he or she would want to live with, and
then build the tone of the room around the painting or paintings.
She talked with Ary about this a number of times — they
had been friends for years — and when she was prepared
to exhibit her first group show she asked Ary to send in a painting.
Milton Avery was in that show I recall, and Will Barnet, Ben
Zion, Sue Fuller, Ary and others I can't remember. From this
came a continued association for Ary with Bertha's gallery —
many group shows, and a series of five one-man shows, beginning
in February 1949 through 1954, until we left New York for Paris.
“The Federation members
were appreciative of his efforts, and at a dinner they held
in September 1946 they presented him with a beautiful book
on the Italian painter Masolino, which they autographed, and
inscribed: ‘To Ary Stillman, Chairman of the Exhibition
Committee, Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, 1945-46
— In gratitude for your splendid work and your great
contribution in helping us grow.’ ”
The Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors
occupied quite a bit of Ary's attention during this period.
In 1945 he was Corresponding Secretary, and the following year
Chairman of the Exhibition Committee. Often their monthly meetings
would be held in our studio. Ary wasn't the "joiner"
type, but when he was part of an organization like this, he
took it very seriously, and he was eager to help the Federation
function to the maximum extent. As Chairman of the Exhibition
Committee he organized a traveling exhibition of the works included
in the September 1946 show at Wildenstein's. At that time the
American Federation of Arts didn't have the broad program of
traveling exhibitions that it now has, and large museums were
glad to book this show. Ary did all the work himself, with my
help in typing his correspondence. He booked the exhibit with
the Rochester, New York Memorial Art Gallery, the St. Paul,
Minnesota Gallery, the M.B. de Young Memorial Museum in San
Francisco, the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, and the William
Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. The
Federation members were appreciative of his efforts, and at
a dinner they held in September 1946 they presented him with
a beautiful book on the Italian painter Masolino, which they
autographed, and inscribed: "To Ary Stillman, Chairman
of the Exhibition Committee, Federation of Modern Painters and
Sculptors, 1945-46 — In gratitude for your splendid work
and your great contribution in helping us grow." (Edith
Brye, who attended the opening of the memorial exhibition of
Ary's Palestinian paintings at the Herzl Institute in New York
in May 1969, said to me:
"I wonder if Ary ever really knew how much we all thought
of him."
In the early 1950s, while still retaining membership in the
Federation, Ary also became a member of the famous "8th
Street Club" which pivoted around deKooning, Kline, Philip
Guston, Tworkov, and others of the "New York School."
But Ary really wasn't one of them; he had his own individual
ideas. However, he enjoyed the Friday night meetings. In another
chapter I have written about his participation in the discussions.
Now as I thumb through his scrapbook for that period, I find
a notice of a meeting in 1953 — Ary Stillman, Panel Moderator;
John Cage, Composer; John Ferren, Painter; Herbert Ferber, Sculptor;
Frank O'Hara, Poet.
During these years Ary's traveling was limited, for I was tied
down to a job and Ary refused to go away without me, except
for a few extra weeks in the summer. Those summer vacations
we often spent at "art colonies" where Ary was friendly
and mingled with the crowd, but was never part of a "clique."
His essential nature cast him always in the role of a loner.
There were summers at Rockport, Provincetown, Monhegan Island
— a real paradise off the coast of Maine; short visits
to Woodstock. We took trips to Quebec, the Gaspe Peninsula,
parts of Long Island, and to Houston, Texas, where Ary's sister
and brother-in-law and their family were located. Of course
in 1952, with a leave of absence from my job, I joined Ary in
a marvelous trip to Paris, the Riviera, Italy and Spain. I have
recorded all this in a diary,
which is part of the Foundation records.
Early in 1954 Ary gave what was to turn out to be his last one-man
show at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery. It was greeted by the critics
as being his best abstract exhibit to date, and it was quite
well attended. But he had strained himself painting what were
for him large canvases and, never robust, he was weakened physically,
as well as discouraged at the failure to receive really proper
recognition for his work. I personally have always felt that
during these few years his work was going counter to his innate
character; that his own particular genius was for lyricism,
poetry and fantasy, but that, struggle as he always did to remain
true to his own pattern, he was temporarily swept from his path
by the pressures of the bigness and boldness of the New York
School of painting, the action painting which, rightly or wrongly
dominated the scene under the influence of the coterie of artists
and critics who made up the "8th Street Club." As
stated above, Ary was a member of the club, but never of the
inner circle, and his whole nature was very foreign to that
of the leaders of the movement.
“The result was that the
damaged eye did not focus the same as the other one. At the
same time and, I suppose, the cause of the hemorrhage, his
blood pressure, always high, shot up.”
In any event, not long after his show at Bertha
Schaefer's he suffered a hemorrhage in the right eye, and a
scar was left on the eye, which distorted his vision. The result
was that the damaged eye did not focus the same as the other
one. At the same time and, I suppose, the cause of the hemorrhage,
his blood pressure, always high, shot up. He could work very
little, and night after night when I came home from my office
I found him stretched out on the couch, listless and in low
spirits.
The following summer Ary didn't feel able to go far away for
vacation, and we found a room in a house in Brighton Beach,
near the ocean. It was a drab and unattractive house, but Ary
found the beach, crowded, as it was, a very relaxing place for
him. And the house was only a couple of blocks from the subway,
on which he could ride to our studio in New York.
On one of his trips to the city late in the summer, he found
in our mailbox at the studio a letter, which to him spelled
doom. It was an announcement that the half block of buildings
where we had our studio at East 59th Street was going to be
torn down to make way for a skyscraper.
Now, for years Ary had been talking about our pulling up stakes
and going to a foreign country — France, possibly, or perhaps
some country in South America. I had listened by the hour to
him, as he wove his dreams about the idyllic life we would have,
and we had even decided that the coming fall we would begin
to make the break. I myself wasn’t very happy about working
all day and coming home so tired that I would fall asleep after
dinner, so that Ary and I had little time together, to go out
to places of interest and fun, or even to have long evenings
talking together, and so I was very ready for a change. But
I didn't realize that in his heart, Ary wanted nothing so much
as to hold on to the studio. It was his workshop, his home,
his security, and without it he would feel that his world had
collapsed around him.
The following months were painful. Ary arranged for a renting
service to look for an apartment for us, but anything in the
heart of Manhattan was priced at three or four times as much
as our rent-controlled place; and of course we were spoiled
as to location, living as we did just off Central Park, Fifth
Avenue, the galleries on 57th Street, with the museums and Carnegie
Hall nearby. Anyway, nothing could be found to begin to fill
our needs, yet by January 1st we had to vacate the studio.
“Ary couldn't bring himself
to attend the auction. I went by myself, sadly watching as
the pieces, each one so precious to us, were bunched into
lots and sold hastily, casually and for a few pitiful dollars.
Ary remained upstairs in the studio, sunk into a deep depression.
”
We finally decided to go to a nearby hotel for
the winter months and then in early April to set off for Paris.
Packing was a nightmare. Ary felt we should put as little as
possible into storage — just his paintings and a few of
our dearest keepsakes. All the pieces of furniture and art objects
which had made our studio such a fascinating place and so typically
Ary's world, were to go. We sold some, gave some to friends
and relatives, and then at the very end, had the Spanierman
auction house take the remaining tapestries, Persian and Chinese
vases, bowls, art books, etc. to sell at auction. Ary couldn't
bring himself to attend the auction. I went by myself, sadly
watching as the pieces, each one so precious to us, were bunched
into lots and sold hastily, casually and for a few pitiful dollars.
Ary remained upstairs in the studio, sunk into a deep depression.
That depression didn't lift for many, many months — for
years, in fact! In our hotel on 58th Street Ary sat in a chair
in a corner of the room for hours on end. I couldn't help but
think of our aquarium of tropical fish. When a fish became sick
he would retire to a corner of the bowl and stay there, completely
withdrawn, without moving, without eating. So poor Ary was like
one of the sick little fish.
April finally came and we were on the way to Paris, where I
hoped the beloved city would have a healing effect on Ary. I
felt that away from the rat race which New York had become,
in the midst of the beauty and aesthetic sensitivity of Paris,
which was the ambience best suited to Ary's spirit, he would
find his equilibrium again.
