The Italian Teacher(77)

In various guests Pinch discerns physical features of Bear. Several are of mixed races and some speak no English, which prompts Pinch to hasten over and interpret. During the service, siblings offer remembrances, most of which follow a pattern: slightly funny, slightly awful, plucky smile, throwaway conclusion: “But hey—that was Dad, right?”

To everyone who asks, Pinch diminishes his role in Bear’s life. Yes, I sometimes had his phone number, but not always. Yes, I visited the French cottage, but it’s hardly a villa. Bit of a dump: freezing, full of bugs, miles from anything. His relatives resent him, and they’re not wrong to do so. For Pinch does consider his link to Dad more significant than theirs. He flashes to that final conversation with Bear. Dad chose me. Pinch’s stomach drops. And his gaze falls too, fixed on the floor, all these strangers’ shoes. Dad picked me. Queasily, he glances up, as if everyone could hear these thoughts.

“To speak frankly, Charles, I cannot understand why you cremated the body without consulting anyone. I do not get how that was okay.”

“Sorry, Ivor. I didn’t mean to upset anyone. I had to make a decision in the moment, and I was overwhelmed.”

“But sprinkling Bear’s ashes in France, without even checking what I thought?”

“Or what I thought?”

“Yeah, not cool, man. Not cool.”

That night, Pinch and Birdie meet at the hotel, escaping their siblings for a room-service dinner of roast chicken and buttered spinach. “The thing is, a nicer person, an easier person, would never have painted like that,” Pinch argues.

Birdie grimaces. “What bull! I know this is supposed to be a mourning period, Charlie, but I am going to speak ill of Dad.”

“Why change the habit of a lifetime?” he jokes.

“You know I only bad-mouth him to you, right?”

“I know,” he assures her. “I know you loved him.”

“I was so busy trying to win an argument with Daddy that I hardly even think I met him. What pisses me off is I can’t help smiling sometimes when I think of him, goddamn it! Mostly stuff from when I was little. He loved us when we were cute, right? Not so much when we developed opinions.”

“Luckily that never happened in your case.”

She snorts with laughter.

“There’s this thing my mother always said about Dad,” Pinch tells her. “Imagine if your neighbor was Leonardo da Vinci, okay? Only, he’s an absolute pain in the neck. Complaining about noise, about the smell of your food, writing complaint letters that he slides under your door. He’s awful every time you see him, whether you’re sick, with a broken leg—doesn’t matter. A nasty piece of work. But if you somehow knew what he was going to contribute to the world, how he treated you would seem minor. You wouldn’t even mind. It’s irrelevant.”

“Wait, wait. Are you seriously comparing Daddy to Leonardo da Vinci?”

“Of course not; there’s no equating artists. But Bear was significant in his way. The bad behavior only matters as art history now.”

“Even if a man’s important,” she argues, “he doesn’t get to live by different rules.”

“Isn’t society based on that premise?”

“Well, then I don’t like society. And I didn’t even like this thing today—not that a memorial is for liking. But I keep wondering what it was even for. Certainly not closure. And I arranged the damn thing!”

“The purpose was to see you again, Bird,” he says. “Speaking of which, we need a toast. What do you say?” He raids the minibar, returning with a miniature bottle of bubbly.

As her plastic cup froths over, she sips fast and raises it. “To the worst best artist I ever knew,” she says. “And to the son who takes over.”

“I’m not taking over,” he scoffs.

“Oh, you’ve taken over all right,” she retorts, twinkling. “The question is, Mr. Bavinsky: What becomes of you now?”





1998




61


Art in America magazine runs an appreciation on Bear’s life and career. The article, by Connor, is written abominably in Pinch’s view, and rises to its preachy climax in the conclusion:


When meeting him a few years ago, Bavinsky spoke to me of surviving the talons of Clement Greenberg, who mythically accused him of being a reactionary. Later, Bavinsky even overcame the embrace of Life magazine, whose photo editor published an image of a naked sitter. Gee whiz, shocking. Well, shocking for 1948.

Throughout, Bavinsky painted “those meaty miracles,” as collector Mishmish Shapiro dubbed them in a BBC documentary on her phantasmagoric life. Even today, viewing Bavinsky behemoths such as Shoulder III (1954) is to ask oneself: By what alchemy can an artist paint a part of the body and depict more than the whole? Spread your eyes over 1961’s Thigh and Hip XII (pictured, above right). No feeling person can remain tearless when this painting is met with live. I use the word “live” advisedly, because the body almost literally moves off the canvas, whose materiality is stripped more bare, one swears, than the unclothed model herself.

It is not only because of his unique facture that discussions of “a Bavinsky” envelop such auratic resonance, referencing both pictorial empathy and a depth of portraiture achieved by few during our current century. Bavinsky bypassed the tentacles of Pop Art and Op Art, Conceptualism, Fluxus, and Minimalism, and even bludgeoned away our fin de siècle anxiety, driving on through to the other side, untouched by the hype wafting from the coruscating distant shores of the so-called Art World. He was what only the greats have the courage to be: yourself.