Small Town

Turning from him, she said, “I had a background in art history and went to work for a traditional gallery on upper Madison Avenue. I worked for several galleries, and I got married and divorced, and I lived with an artist for a while, which is something no one should have to do, and when that ended I went to Switzerland for two weeks. I’d been to Europe several times, of course, and I’d spent a few days each in Zurich and Geneva, so I went to a few other cities this time, I got a rail pass and just bounced around, and I read in one of the guidebooks about a museum in Lausanne devoted to art produced by the insane. After six months with Marc Oberbauer I inclined toward the belief that all art was produced by the insane, but this was different. This was the most exciting work I’d ever seen in my life.”

“And that got you started?”

She nodded. She was able to look at him now without seeing him as she had a few moments ago. He was a nice polite young man now, that’s all. Undoubtedly attractive, she had to admit she was more than a little attracted, but that didn’t mean she was going to act out, or let her imagination run wild.

“I came home,” she said, “and learned everything I could. I’d always been drawn to folk art, I did my thesis on Colonial weather vanes, but now I was seeing it all differently. Now some of it looked cute and amusing, while the work that really moved me came from somewhere deep within the person who made it. And it didn’t have to be folk art. When I went to the Prado in Madrid, the work that most affected me was Goya’s series of Black Paintings, all created late at night during a period when the artist was profoundly disturbed and quite possibly ill. Goya was hardly self-taught, he was arguably Spain’s greatest painter, but the Black Paintings would have been right at home in La Musée de l’Art Brut in Lausanne. Or in this gallery — his Cronos Devouring His Children might have been painted by Jeffcoate Walker, if Mr. Walker had had the advantage of formal training and a classical education.”

She was telling him too much. What did he know about Goya or the Prado? But he seemed interested.

“My artists rarely know how to talk about their work,” she said, “if they talk at all. But how many artists can speak intelligently about what they do? If you’ve ever read the silly statements they prepare for their show openings—”

But he wouldn’t know what she was talking about, he wouldn’t have been to an opening, might never have been to a gallery. She shifted gears and said, “I went all over the country looking at things, including an outdoor shrine in Iowa that a priest spent his life creating, with shells and crystals and semiprecious gemstones. And the Watts towers, of course, and a house made entirely of Coke bottles, and, oh, all sorts of things. And I came home and sold everything I owned and opened this place.”

Enough life history, she thought. Cut to the chase.

“I’d like to show your uncle’s work, Reginald. I’d like to give him a one-man show sometime in the fall. I’d love it if he could supervise the installation and come to the opening, but that’s not a requirement. The work speaks for itself, and I’ll be here to speak for it.”

He nodded, taking it in. After a moment he said, “I don’t know what he’ll want to do. I don’t guess he’ll mind parting with the work, on account of he’ll give a piece away if anyone tells him they really like it.”

“Don’t let him give anything else away, okay?”

“No, he hasn’t been doing that lately. On account of not talking to people, you know, and keeping to himself.” He pointed at the wall, where Jeffcoate Walker’s dragon loomed a few yards from Aleesha MacReady’s Moses. “I didn’t see anything there about the prices.”

“It’s considered a little crass to post them. This” — she crossed to the front desk, brought back a price list in an acetate sleeve — “is considered more discreet.”

“These the kind of prices you’d put on Uncle Emory’s things?”

“I’m not sure. Pricing’s tricky, there are a lot of factors to consider. Artists command higher prices as they gain a reputation, and your uncle’s unknown.” She gave him a smile. “But that won’t be true for long.”

“He gonna be famous?”

“Well, is Aleesha MacReady famous? Or Jeffcoate Walker? Perhaps, but to a relatively small circle of collectors. Howard Finster’s fairly famous, you may have heard of him. And you probably know Grandma Moses.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t be specific about prices,” she went on, “but I can explain the way we work.” And she told him the gallery took fifty percent of sales proceeds, noticing as she spoke that he looked tense. Well, why shouldn’t he? Fifty percent was high, but it was standard, and it was hard enough to come out ahead in this business, and—

But that wasn’t it. “I got to ask this,” he said, “so there won’t be any misunderstanding. We won’t have to come up with any money in front, will we?”

“Money in front?”