The Missing Tooth

Alice Neel’s life spanned most of the twentieth century––she was born in January 1900 and died in 1984. The twentieth century was a century of automation. Automated birth, automated life,  and automated death.

It was an also a century of automated art. Obviously it was the century of the automated imagery of the photograph, and the movie, but it was also a time when mass production affected the cost and availability of almost every type of commodity, including artist’s materials, and that had an affect even of on the kind of painting that was produced. Huge experimental canvases by Ellsworth Kelly, Barnet Newman, and Mark Rothko would have been unthinkable in the nineteenth century. It was an era when the photograph ruled portraiture, and paintings were vast fields of formless color.

Yet this was the era in which Alice Neel produced some of the century’s greatest art. Modest sized, oil-painted portraits. Unfashionable in subject matter, unfashionable in size, and even unfashionable in life-style.

How did this seemingly frumpy woman from Pennsylvania make her voice––not just heard, but heard with resonance, in an arena dominated by the glamorous giants of the industrial age?

The truth, of course, is that she didn’t. For almost half a century, from her first paintings as a teen at around the time of the First World War, right up until her discovery, at around the time of the Vietnam War (the twentieth century being defined by its wars), Alice Neel painted in almost complete obscurity.

We, the educated American, gallery-visiting public ignored her. Perhaps we chuckled at her out-dated figurative art when we passed by the little small-town galleries that would show her work.

Were we wrong to ignore her? Was her eventual rise to fame during the 1960’s just a freak of fashion? Just something to appeal to the more conventional among us for whom the works of Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell were a little too avant garde? We had to lionize one or two figurative painters, so why not Alice Neel?

Or was Alice Neel’s eventual recognition justice served? Is there really something to make us tremble in her work?

Let’s look at just one of her paintings. This is a portrait of her daughter, Ginny, completed in 1969. It is painted in oil on a canvas 60 inches tall by 40 inches wide.

A painting of this size is designed to attract the attention from a distance, and the first element that we notice is the eyes. They call to us. They plead with us, not just from across a few yards of a gallery but from across time. This is not a happy sitter. She begs us to listen to what the painter, her mother, Alice Neel, will not hear. She does not want to be painted. She does not even want to be in the same room with her mother, and yet she has no choice. Her mother, by this time a celebrity, demands that she remain in this uncomfortable position in the stool. With what threats could Alice Neel have forced Ginny to remain? No supper? Early to bed? Probably not. Ginny appears to be around sixteen. It’s unlikely she would care about these things. And perhaps there lies the motive.

Here is Ginny in a too-short skirt, and a new top, with her hair artfully dishevelled. Ginny at a moment in her life when she is completely and utterly consumed with her social life and her appearance. Perhaps she went out, and stayed out too late. Perhaps the punishment of her going out is being a model for her mother. The Alice Neel equivalent of being grounded, and what else can this picture be but a punishment.

And what a mother!?

The pose makes the worst of the too-short skirt (in 1969 a shocking new fashion). Another inch would reveal her underwear. Is poor Ginny desperately trying to push the hem of the skirt down to cover her thighs, thighs which her mother is delightfully exposing to history?

Then look at the big hands and feet of the unevenly growing adolescent. The hands revealed as they try to push down the hem, and the feet underlined by just touching the bottom of the frame.

Then look at Ginny’s teeth. Her mother makes her look as though she has a terrible overbite.

Finally it is almost a challenge. Ginny appears to be on the point of standing up and leaving, but for all her lively vibrancy, and appearance of being right in front of us, she is only a painting. She is still sitting here forty years later. It is the viewer who must move on if the spectacle is to end. And yet we are drawn back to the picture time and again, like theater-goers who return to see Macbeth for the umpteenth time in the vain hope that this time Macbeth will not murder Duncan.

There are portraits that have a life-affirming beauty, like those of David Hockney. There are portraits that are like psycho-analysis, such as those of Max Beckmann. Alice Neel’s portraits have been described as interrogation.

She shines a lamp into the faces of her sitters. She makes them reveal something they would rather we didn’t know. We cannot see our fellow beings this intimately. Those we know well we have no wish to offend. Those we know less well we do not want to pry. We cannot see our fellow humans as they really are, so Alice Neel sees them for us.

In theory, we are now safe looking at the paintings. A painting cannot harm us, and yet each picture is a confrontation we would rather not have. We would rather each of her sitters just act like normal human beings.

Or perhaps they are acting like normal human beings. What is so odd about acting oddly? We all do it.

Alice Neal’s portraits remain to haunt us. At a time when we all want fame they stand as a warning. We can compose ourselves in the mirror, but the painting is not a mirror. It is the reflection before we have had time to compose our features.

It is as well to bear in mind that it is not just the sitter who is revealed in the portrait painting. Alice Neel appears as ogre or jester in all of her paintings. She is as clear as if there were indeed a mirror. One which is placed behind the sitter.

3:00 AM: 
I am woken by  a phone call. I ignore the call, but the caller leaves a voice mail. It’s a colleague. I play the message. It’s the muffled voice of my colleague screaming for help, followed by several loud impacts.
 I play it to Lisa.
 We call back, but there’s no response.
 We both have visions of the colleague lying in the middle of the street in a pool of gore.

Lisa calls the cops, but they don’t know what to do.
I call my buddy, Luis, who does ghost tours, and stays up late. He answers on the first ring.

We dress, jump in the car, pick up Luis, and head downtown to the colleague’s apartment.

We ring the bell. We look through the windows.

Nothing.

We call the cops again, then stand around and wait for them. 
Finally, at 4:00 AM, the colleague appears, staggering down the street. 
No gunshot wounds.
 No broken bones.
 No massive trauma.
 Merely three sheets to the wind.
 Apparently, there was a brawl outside McDonough’s.
 My colleague tried to intervene, and his cell must have clicked on.
 It was somebody else screaming for help.
 The cops had come to McDonough’s, and everything was okay.

We end up going to Parker’s for coffee.
 Coffee in hand, we head home.
 We pass McDonough’s, which is all closed up and quiet.
 As we turn into Whittaker Street, my headlights illumintate a guy lying half on the curb, half in the street.
 I slam on the brakes.
 The guy sits up and waves at us.

Happy July 4th from Savannah,

BRIANT, Ed. Choppy Socky Blues. 264p. CIP. Flux. 2010. pap. $9.95. ISBN 978-0-7387-1897-2. LC 2009030491.
Gr 6–10—Jay, 14, is tired of everyone comparing him to his father, who deserted the family. He wants to distance himself from everything he associates with his dad, including karate, which he used to love. But when he runs into a girl who makes his heart jump, he finds himself in the middle of a lie: he tells her that he is also a green belt about ready to test for his next rank. Tinga invites him to take part in her test, and he has to swallow his pride and ask his father, a movie stunt man and karate instructor, to train him. Worse, he discovers that Tinga is actually the girlfriend of an old pal, and that he is on the road to stealing her away and breaking up their relationship—something his father would be inclined to do. The concerns of a teen wanting to express himself as an individual are universal. Using language authentic to the South of England setting and with an authentic narrator, the story is likely to appeal to reluctant readers, but the Briticisms might be difficult for that audience. The martial-arts angle will draw an audience in areas where karate is popular.—Alana Joli Abbott, James Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford, CT

FLUX is giving away free copies of my new YA novel, CHOPPY SOCKY BLUES, and also BUCCANEER’S APPRENTICE by V. Briceland.

All you need to do is to go to:

http://www.facebook.com/FluxBooks

and tell them who you think would win in a fight between a pirate and a ninja.

Today, April 1st 2010 is the official publication date for my novel CHOPPY SOCKY BLUES.

Funny. It looks a lot like most other days, but I suppose in its own quiet way it must be a kind of pinnacle of my life in many respects, at least in terms of my creative work.
It’s certainly the culmination of every novel I’ve ever written.
I know this for a fact, because I just went back and looked through the six previous novels-that-didn’t-quite-make-the-cut, and I’ve used bits and pieces from all of them in CHOPPY SOCKY BLUES––even if it’s only a paragraph here and there.
Someone suggested that the publication date was like giving birth, but actually the birth happened well over a year ago. It’s actually more like the first time you send your book off to school on its own.
Will it be okay on it’s own?
Will it get bullied by novels for older readers?
Anway, if you want a copy you can click HERE, and buy one from Amazon, or if you can’t afford one I have a whole box, so I’ll send you a copy.
Hurry. Supplies are limited.

Just attended a lecture by Christopher Chabris that was fairly astounding.
He showed the video that should link from this page, and which relates to his eponymous, upcoming book “The Invisible Gorilla…”
More interesting though, were his thoughts on the creative process, and I jotted down a few notes during the lecture:
We think that our memories are more detailed, accurate, and permanent than they really are.
We think that people who have confidence are more skilled, accomplished, and knowledgeable than they really are.
Those with a reputation have what is known as a “Halo Effect.” If you are a genius in one field then your advice will often be sought in un-related fields. Thus Einstein’s advice was often sought on who would win The World Series.
Innovation doesn’t happen on a deadline.
Innovation is often associated with failure.
An aversion to failure may inhibit creativity.
You will be remembered for your successes not for your failures.

Procrastinations within procrastinations.
Spent yesterday trying to drive from Charleston to Savannah whilst listening to the audio of THE LOST BOOKS OF THE ODYSSEY, a sequence of short stories by Zachary Mason.
The premise of the book is that it was compiled from papyrus fragments found in a garbage dump; alternative texts to the official Homer one. A kind of Red Sea Scrolls of the tales of Odysseus.
It’s a great listen for a driver with my attention span, having chapters that are at times no more than a few sentences long.
The down-side––at least for me––was that Mason’s prose is so compelling that I had to stop the car every few miles to jot down some of the choicest phrases, and the journey took about 50 percent longer than it should have done.
My personal favorite is the revelation that Achilles was not actually human at all, but a kind of Ancient Greek Golem, activated and de-activated by Odysseus himself.

Choppy Socky Blues Ed Briant. Flux, $9.95 paper (264p) ISBN 978-0-7387-1897-2
In picture book author/illustrator Briant’s first novel, 14-year-old Jason wants to be nothing like his father, a stunt man who runs a karate dojo and left his family two years ago. But then Jason meets Tinga, who’s training for her blue belt, and Jason immediately says he is, too, which means asking his father for help getting back into shape. This story line loses urgency as the book progresses, but action scenes in the dojo are well drawn. Things are further complicated when it turns out that Tinga is dating Jason’s former friend Malcolm. An uncomfortable scene in the shower leads Jason to think that Malcolm might be gay, but Jason still feels awful when Tinga dumps Malcolm to be with him. He breaks up with her, and his attempt to win her back leads to a confrontation with Malcolm. Although secondary characters like Tinga and Malcolm are less developed, Jason’s insecurities, resentment toward (and gradual peacemaking with) his father, and obsession with girls are believably rendered—he’s the kind of awkward hero readers will be glad to see come into his own. Ages 12–up. (Apr.)

Fourteen-year-old Jason Smallfield comes to understand that things are not always as they seem in a coming-of-age novel that packs a punch. Jason’s father is a well-known movie stuntman, an expert in all things “choppy socky”—karate, defenestration and other fighting skills. Trevor Smallfield, according to Jason, is a man who lied, cheated and deserted his family, and Jason has never forgiven him, but the protagonist comes to realize that his parents, friends and Tinga, the girl he’s falling in love with, aren’t always what they seem. Could this be true of his father as well? Though everything Jason knows about girls comes from porn magazines, his relationship with a real girl named Tinga is appropriately sweet, restrained and tentative, and his growing understanding of the people in his world is subtly evoked. In a field of fine coming-of-age novels for girls, here’s one that boys will get a kick out of.

In one scene in CHOPPY SOCK BLUES, the main character, Jason, is chased and attacked by skinheads, and this particular incident was based on real events.
Skinheads were a big and scary feature of my childhood and teen years in Brighton. They originally began as kind of anti-elitist, Joe-the-Plumber types, reacting against the hippies in the late 1960′s, but by the 1970′s when I first encountered them they were full-blown Neo-Nazis. They were ugly and unavoidable.
One Sunday, when I was about 12, I was playing soccer with a group of friends, when the pitch was over-run by a gang of skinheads. They were all different shapes and sizes, boys and girls, ranging in age from about 7 all the way up about 20.
I was surrounded, and a group of them began punching and kicking me, which didn’t actually hurt at the time (I played rugby, so being punched an kicked wasn’t something I was unaccustomed to).
After a few moments of this the largest skinhead of all broke through the circle of my attackers. This particular skinhead, who might even have been about thirty, pulled out a flick knife, and faked stabbing me with it.
I don’t remember being scared, but I think that was because I was kind of in shock. My rugby training hadn’t prepared me for this kind of thing. Even the most brutish teams seldom use knives.
After a while the skinhead made me get down on my knees, and admit to being an “arsehole.”
Naturally, I complied. What else could I do when the bloke had a knife?
After that they spent a few more moments kicking me, then vanished as suddenly as they had arrived.
Perhaps the strangest part of the story is that I met two of my attackers a couple of years afterwards.
“We’re even, now, Ed,” said one of them. “We’ve put our differences behind us.”
I hadn’t put anything behind me, and I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I didn’t say anything.
I wonder if he’ll know that he’s in my book.
With a different name, of course.
As they say, nothing is wasted on a writer.