1/ On stories: This painting, along with my explanation of it and the artist who painted it was the genesis of @trengriffin's idea to do a story and their lessons episode of @InfiniteL88ps with the 2 of us. Tren's stories were so good, we never got to this one, so here it is: 
2/ Should come as no surprise that first @trengriffin but then @rorysutherland as well wanted to know about this painting, so I told them the story of how we came to buy it:
There's also a story that goes with the painting. We met Anne through artists friends here in NYC.
There's also a story that goes with the painting. We met Anne through artists friends here in NYC.
3/ When we visited her studio, she was quite ill with pancreatic cancer and broke. She begged us to buy a work and this was the painting she had just finished working on. I said "how about that one?" She replied that it might be her last work and she wanted to live with it for
4/ the little time she had left. I gave her a check and told her to pick out one she thought we'd like and she agreed. She died not long after and hadn't sent us a painting but we didn't mind as she was a fascinating person
5/ Flash forward nearly 30 years and my wife and I were at a gallery here in Manhattan and my wife noticed they handled Anne's estate. My wife asked if we could see her work. They showed us what was in the racks and while we liked a few very much, we asked if there was
6/ anything else. The woman said yes, but it was large and still rolled up. We asked to see it. As she unfolded the painting my wife gripped my arm and started to cry--yes, it was this painting that we had loved so much 30 years earlier.
7/ I bought it immediately as both my wife and my emotions went right back to her studio, our conversation with her and our love of the painting.
I also remembered that I had recorded our visit in my journal. So I went searching and got another lesson in our memories being
I also remembered that I had recorded our visit in my journal. So I went searching and got another lesson in our memories being
8/ "unreliable narrators." I could have sworn that we visited her studio in 1989, before we moved to NYC. But, after scouring all of those journals, I took my own advice and found it in June 2, 1992, recorded by the 32-YO me more than a year after we moved here. Here it is:
9/ We went to Anne Tabachnick's for a studio visit yesterday. She lives in West Beth, a building for artists on the lower Eastside overlooking the Hudson that Ginnie used to live in. She’s had an interesting life. She’s currently battling pancreatic cancer.
10/ She was raised in New York City by her poet father and her literary mother and it was always assumed that she would become a writer. In fact, she still harbors a desire to write, having written three novels to date. She decided that she would be an anthropologist in college,
11/ but the selection of her father's best friend as chairman of the committee that would decide who would get a fellowship at a prestigious institution dissuaded her from applying…She knew she would automatically get it and didn’t want to get it that way.
12/ She studied art under Hans Hoffman. She still uses the same paint supplier as when she started, owing to the fact that he carried her for years after her husband left her. He even went to the point of cashing post dated checks for her. She said that without him, the abstract
13/ expressionist movement could not have happened, as he was always extending them vast credit for their paint.
She told us about her husband, from a family that owned Half of Detroit and whose men were such layabouts and playboys that a “perpetual trust “was created to
She told us about her husband, from a family that owned Half of Detroit and whose men were such layabouts and playboys that a “perpetual trust “was created to
14/ provide income, but no principal, to heirs only. No young wife’s please. The money kept her husband a perpetual adolescent, squashing any ambition for anything other than drugs and women. He was a silversmith of talent. In fact, a large shell of silver as art included his
15/ works and the New York Times featured only his works in a large photo spread in their Sunday magazine. In poured orders from Tiffany’s, European stores, etc. but he never finished another work after that. He abandoned the company, his wife and son, for the companionship of
16/ drugs and other women.
Something that hit home for me was her tale of how he always kept his back to his wife and newborn son to write letters all day to his father, telling him what a horrible father he had been. (Oh, the irony) because he never tried to be a
Something that hit home for me was her tale of how he always kept his back to his wife and newborn son to write letters all day to his father, telling him what a horrible father he had been. (Oh, the irony) because he never tried to be a
17/ decent father himself. The sins of the father are visited upon the son. He and his brother eventually figured out a way to ransacked the perpetual trust, by creating a dummy corporation and having the trustees transfer trust assets to their "management" company. They went
18/ through all the money quite quickly.
Character is the only way to preserve family wealth. We talked about lots of other issues, art, the Lifespring cult that had snared 2 of my family members, EST, and on our perpetual searching for meaning in life.
Character is the only way to preserve family wealth. We talked about lots of other issues, art, the Lifespring cult that had snared 2 of my family members, EST, and on our perpetual searching for meaning in life.
19/ She told us of a German woman who used to live there, who created an “empire” by sweeping the floor. I.e. she always kept working, when one thing was finished she moved onto the next. Anne‘s current work is the human herd. Showing human-like figures around a watering hole,
20/ much like you see the animals in nature series. Anne has spirit, but I fear she is not long for the world, such is the tragedy of life. I really enjoyed the visit.
Tren loved it, saying "Your journal entry is a fabulous short story in the style of W. Somerset Maugham."
Tren loved it, saying "Your journal entry is a fabulous short story in the style of W. Somerset Maugham."
22/ It also gave him the idea to do a podcast which was nothing but stories that offered great lessons, which we recorded this week. The @InfiniteL88ps "story" podcast with Tren drops next month.
This also is an example of there are so many interesting people and stories in
This also is an example of there are so many interesting people and stories in
23/ life. You've just got to learn to ask and then really listen to what they tell you.
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