New York - The Novel

Gallery was on Fifty-fifth Street. It had only opened in 1946, but it was already famous. Partly, no doubt, it was Betty’s character. Born into old money, she’d followed the prescribed path, married young and respectably. But then she’d rebelled. She’d gone to Paris, and set up house with another woman. In the thirties she’d lived in Hollywood, and been a friend of Greta Garbo. Finally, an artist herself, she’d set up her gallery in New York.
    And in the 1950s, if you were interested in modern art, New York was the place to be.
    There had been American schools of art before: the Hudson River School in the nineteenth century, with its magnificent landscapes of the Hudson Valley, Niagara and the West; the American Impressionists, who’d often gathered in France, around Monet’s place in Giverny, before returning home. But good though they were, you couldn’t say they’d invented any new kind of painting. And indeed, the huge movements of modern abstract art, from cubism onward, had all been European.
    Until now. Suddenly, a crowd of artists with huge, bold abstract work, unlike anything seen before, had burst upon the New York scene. Jackson Pollock, Hedda Sterne, Barnett Newman, Motherwell, de Kooning, Rothko—“the Irascibles,” people often called them. The name of their school: Abstract Expressionism.
    Modern America had an art that was all its own. And at the center of it all was a small, indefatigable lady, born into the world of New York private schools, and summers in Newport, but who preferred the companyof the most daring artists of her time: Betty Parsons. And her gallery, of course.
    It was a group show. Motherwell was there, and Helen Frankenthaler and Jackson Pollock too. Charlie brought Sarah over to meet Pollock. Then he and Sarah looked at the work.
    The show was magnificent. One Pollock they particularly liked—a dense riot of browns, whites and grays. “It looks like he rode around the canvas on a bicycle,” Sarah whispered.
    “Perhaps he did,” said Charlie, with a grin. Yet it seemed to him that, as usual, in that apparently random, swirling mass of abstract color, you could find subliminal repetitions and complex rhythms, which gave the work amazing power. “Some people think he’s a fraud,” he said, “but I think he’s a genius.”
    There was a fine Motherwell, one of his
Elegy to the Spanish Republic
series, with great black glyphs and vertical bars on a white canvas. “It feels as if it’s resonating,” Sarah said. “Like an oriental mantra. Does that make sense to you?”
    “Yes,” said Charlie, “it does.” It was funny, he thought, it hardly mattered whether someone was older than you or half your age, when there was a real meeting of minds. He smiled to himself. Money and power were supposed to be the biggest aphrodisiacs, but shared imagination was just as strong, it seemed to him, and lasted longer.
    They both saw people they knew, and drifted apart to talk to them. He said a few words to Betty Parsons.
    He liked Betty. When he looked down at her neat New England face, with its small square jaw and broad brow, and brave spirit, he almost wanted to kiss her—though she probably wouldn’t have welcomed that.
    An hour had passed when, glancing across the room, he saw that Sarah was deep in conversation with some young people of her own age, and with an inward sigh, he decided he’d better slip away. He went over though, to say good-bye to her first.
    “You’re going home?” She looked disappointed.
    “Unless you’d like to eat? But you should stay with your friends.”
    “I’d like to eat,” she said. “Are you ready?”

    They decided on Sardi’s. It was still early, long before the after-theater crowd would fill the place. They didn’t even have to wait for a table. Charliealways liked the theatrical decor of the place, with its cartoons of actors all round the walls. Out-of-town people might go to Sardi’s because it was so famous, but it was still a lot of fun.
    They ordered steaks and red wine, and soon needed a second bottle. They didn’t talk about the show. Charlie told her about his outing with his son, and then they discussed the city in the thirties. He told her his feeling about Rockefeller and Roosevelt, and the ancestral New York spirit.
    “But don’t forget Mayor La Guardia,” she reminded him. “He saved New York too.”
    “That is absolutely true.” Charlie grinned. “Thank God for the Italians.”
    “La Guardia