residents. Their hideous houses, gilded furniture, polyester clothing, overcooked food and mottled skin-all evidence of their pathetic aspirations, their mean and vulgar taste. Back in the darkroom he deliberately slops on chemicals to make his prints look ragged and handmade. He makes one print of each shot, destroys the negative, then encases the print in an incredibly expensive frame. The idea, you see, is that what is tasteless in someone else's house can be turned, by being photographed, into a precious tasteful artifact. The person who buys a Johansen buys cultural superiority. And by making each print unique, Johansen negates one of the great strengths of photography, which is that a photograph is endlessly reproducible.
She raised her eyebrows when I finished my tirade. It was a while before she spoke.
'Maybe you're right, Geoffrey. I trust your taste. But I worry about you when you talk like that. You sound bitter and ungenerous, as if you feel the success of younger artists takes something away from you. Thing is, I bet those kids consider you a hero, and I don't mean just for the PietA either. For your night scapes, your portraits, the pictures you've been taking of me if they could see them. You've told me art isn't a zero-sum game, that there's room in the galleries for anything that's good. You are good, Geoffrey. You know it too. Maybe you lack the ruthless streak it takes to make it in New York these days, But I think that's something I might be able to help you with…' God!
She knew how to make me feel good!
She got me an invitation to her dinner party, and whei we got there and I discovered who was giving it, I wa surprised-I hadn't known she moved in such exalted circles.
I Our hosts were the painter Harold Duquayne and his society wife, Amanda. Duquayne was famous, one of the young 'New York heroics.' It was alleged that he and Amanda were possessed by an insatiable craving for publicity. Certainly one read about them frequently enough. I had seen numerous photos of the pair, including one on the cover of New York that showed Duquayne, intense and bearded, clothing spattered with paint, glaring at the viewer while Amanda, wearing a black leather jumpsuit, gazed at him with sorrowful longing.
A recent Duquayne painting filled the background, instantly recognizable because all his work looked pretty much the same. He painted on an enormous scale, but his drawing was not very good, with the result that his canvases usually looked better in reproductions point made by several critics when they reviewed his midcareer show at the Whitney.
His stylistic trademarks were borrowed from painted icons of the Eastern Orthodox Church: gold leaf applied to the backgrounds and the heads of his figures surrounded by halos. However, Duquayne's figures were never engaged in spiritual pursuits but in the most mundane contemporary activities: housewife vacuuming a flight of stairs; high school kid in prom dress greeted by her date, etc. The contrast between these trite actions, the mannered postures, and the disks of radiant light surrounding the figures' heads created a strange and troubling effect.
The Duquayne loft took up an entire floor of a castiron building on Spring Street. The moment we entered I was struck by its luxury: chairs and sofas upholstered in glove-soft leather, and superbly lit large-scale contemporary paintings on the walls. I counted a Schnabel, a Fischl, a Bacon and a very good Kitaj. There was also a collection of framed photographs, vintage prints by Arbus, Outerbridge, Mapplethorpe and Man Ray.
Amanda Duquayne greeted us warmly. She and Kimberly embraced like very close friends. Harold Duquayne turned out to be stocky and short. He spoke in a gravelly whisper, and twitched his nostrils the way cocaine users like to do.
The other guests were the distinguished and elderly art critic Philip Treacher; his sluttish student-lover, Ivan somebody; and a husband-wife writing team, specialists in cooking and luxury, whom I recognized from the photo on the front jacket of their book The Good Life: Entertaining with the Vanderkamps.. With the arrival of the soup course, a California version of mulligatawny, the Vanderkamps launched into a vicious attack upon a well-known restaurant critic.
'Have you seen her lately? She must weigh two hundred pounds.'
'She loathes salt. She adores desserts.'
'We hear she takes bribes. Don't quote us, of course.'
'No other explanation when she gives four stars to that fraud Desforges.'
Philip Treacher interrupted.
'We ate at Desforges the other night. Thought it was pretty good.'
The Vanderkamps exchanged a look.
'He uses bottled Maggi instead of stock.'
'I didn't know that,' Treacher said.
'He says, 'Zee Americans don't know zee difference.'
'All these French chefs-when they come over here they think they're slumming.' And meantime,' added Mrs. V., 'they make carloads of money!'
The Vanderkamps continued to interrupt each other, each vying to make the better bon mot.
'Course they're all hypocrites. Only decent places left to eat are in Chinatown,' Mr. V. proclaimed. 'Except for a certain divine little Mexican bistro tucked away in Chelsea. We use it as our local canteen.'
'What's it called?' I asked. Mr. V. brought his finger to his mouth.
'Can't tell you. Word'Il get out and the place'll be ruined.' I looked over at Kim. She smiled and rolled her eyes.
'Well, I like greasy hamburgers,' I said.
'And I love greasy anything,' Ivan added, turning to Treacher, running his tongue across his upper lip. With the pasta course, borne by a beaming Hispanic woman, the conversation turned to the current art scei about which Harold Duquayne made a little speech, gist of which was that the new painters, the ones still in,their twenties, had no guts because they had no appetite for money.
'they rebel against my generation by tightening down their scale. The latest fad is to paint small and be trivial. And they try to make a virtue out of being noncompetitive. they call us 'overblown,' say we're consumed by money, fame, rivalry and envy.'
'But you are, dear boy!' Treacher said.
Duquayne laughed wickedly.
'Stick it up your ass, Philip. You know more about envy than anyone in the room.' He turned to me. 'What do you think, Barnett?'
'I think you've got a point,' I said, not wanting to tangle with the little tyrant.
Isn't it the same in photography? The way the level of ambition keeps dropping? Just wait-in a couple of years you'll be grateful for anything that isn't a Polaroid.'
'I noticed your collection,' I said.
'Who do you like in photography?'
'No one. I detest photography. I collect only for investment. No tactile experience. Everything's glossy and small. to me the talent of Arbus was in finding all those freaks. Then it was just stick it in their faces and 'Pretty for the picture!'
He was taunting me. I glanced again at Kim, who encouraged me with a nod. When I turned back to Duquayne and saw his smirk, I decided to take him on.
'If it weren't for photography,' I told him, 'you wouldn't have anything to paint.'
He flushed.
'What the hell're you talking about?'
'All those little scenes you blow up so big-the girl mashing down the lever of the toaster, the father barbecuing hot dogs on the patio. You got those images from print ads in magazines. In other words- photographs.'
For a moment he looked stunned. Then he said, 'But look what I do with them.'
'You gussy them up with ideas you got from looking at photographs of Greek and Russian icons.'
'Well said, lad.' Philip Treacher beamed. He and Ivan were holding hands.
'I think you're being a little hard on my husband, Mr. Barnett.' We all turned. Amanda had been quiet till then.
'Well, isn't that the essence of New York?' I said.
'We warm up tearing into the latest eateries, then go on to tearing up each other?'
'Hey! That's it, man!' Duquayne liked me now.
