The Burnt Orange Heresy

I closed the book, pushed it to one side, and then reached for Volume III. My fingers trembled-a little-as I lit a cigarette. I knew why I had lingered so long over the preschool child piece, even though I hated to admit it to myself. For a long time (I said to myself that I was only waiting to finish my cigarette first), I was physically unable to open the book to my article on Jacques Debierue. Every evil thing Dorian Gray did appeared on the face of his closeted portrait, but in my case, I wonder sometimes if there is a movie projector in a closet somewhere whirring away, showing the events of those two days of my life over and over. Evil, like everything else, should keep pace with the times, and I'm not a turn-of-the-century dilettante like Dorian Gray. I'm a professional, and as contemporary as the glaring Florida sun outside my window.

Despite the air-conditioning I perspired so heavily that my thick sideburns were matted and damp. Here, in this beautiful volume, was the bitter truth about myself at last. Did I owe my present reputation and success to Debierue, or did Debierue owe his success and reputation to me?'

"Wherever you find ache," John Heywood wrote, "thou shalt not like him." The thought of Debierue made me ache all right-and I did not like the ache, nor did I like myself. But nothing, nothing in this world, could prevent me from reading my article on Jacques Debierue . . .

2

Gloria Bentham didn't know a damned thing about art, but that singularity did not prevent her from becoming a successful dealer and gallery owner in Palm Beach. To hold her own, and a little more, where there were thirty full-time galleries open during the "season," was more than a minor achievement, although the burgeoning art movement in recent years has made it possible to sell almost any artifact for some kind of sum. Nevertheless, it is more important for a dealer to understand people than it is to understand art. And Gloria, skinny, self-effacing, plain, had the patient ability to listen to people-a characteristic that often passes for understanding.

As I drove north toward Palm Beach on A1A from Miami, I thought about Gloria to avoid thinking about other things, but without much satisfaction. I had taken the longer, slower route instead of the Sunshine Parkway because I had wanted the extra hour or so it would take to sort out my thoughts about what I would write about Miami art, and to avoid, for an additional hour, the problem-if it was still a problem-of Berenice Hollis. Nothing is simple, and the reason I am a good critic is that I have learned the deep, dark secret of criticism. Thinking, the process of thinking, and the man thinking are all one and the same. And if this is true, and I live as though it is, then the man painting, the painting, and the process of painting are also one and the same. No one, and nothing, is ever simple, and Gloria had been anxious, too anxious, for me to get back to Palm Beach to attend the preview of her new show. The show was not important, nor was the idea unique. It was merely logical.

She was having a tandem showing of naive Haitian art and the work of a young Cleveland painter named Herb Westcott, who had spent a couple of months in Petionville, Haiti, painting the local scene. The contrast would make Westcott look bad, because he was a professional, and it would make the primitives look good, because they were naively unprofessional. She would sell the primitives for a 600 percent markup over what she paid for them and, although most of the buyers would bring them back after a week or so (not many people can live with Haitian primitives), she would still make a profit. And, for those collectors who could not stand naive art, Westcott's craftsmanship would look so superior to the Haitians that he would undoubtedly sell a few more pictures in a tandem exhibit than he would in a one-man show without the advantage of the comparison.

By thinking about Gloria I had avoided, for a short while, thinking about Berenice Hollis. My solution to the problem of Berenice was one of mild overkill, and I half-hoped it had worked and half-hoped that it had not. She was a high school English teacher (eleventh grade) from Duluth, Minnesota, who had flown down to Palm Beach for a few weeks of sun-shiny convalescence after having a cyst removed from the base of her spine. Not a serious operation, but she had sick leave accumulated, and she took it. Her pale pink skin had turned gradually to saffron, and then to golden maple. The coccyx scar had changed from an angry red to gray and finally to slightly puckered grisaille.