DIARY OF A SEDUCER
ARSHILE GORKY, 1945
First thing that hits you: it's gray. Not dead gray. Warm. Smoky. More like the color of being slightly outside yourself. There are bodies in here. Or pieces of them. Nothing quite finishes becoming a body. Then the yellow, buried in the gray like yolks. And then, just right of center, inside the black: It's looking at you. An eye, maybe. Could be an ear. White, almond-shaped, little lashes coming off it, with a red slit down the middle. Now look for red anywhere else. A smear at the bottom. Maybe another, if you hunt. But the hottest color in the painting is trapped inside that eye-ear thing. The last thing you notice is the wire. Thin, nervous lines floating over everything, tangled at the top like handwriting. Then you get the title. Diary of a Seducer. That's Kierkegaard. From a book called Either/Or. Basically the diary of a guy who turns desire into a full-time job. He studies it. Plans it. Watches himself feeling it. Not because he has to. Because that's the part he likes. Gorky painted this in 1945, during a year when his life finally seemed to be working. Married a few years. Two little daughters. After decades of nobody caring, the paintings were landing. His first major solo show. This is the part where you think: okay. He made it. And this is what he painted. Then everything goes bad, fast. A fire took a chunk of his work. Then cancer. A car crash broke his neck. Around the same time, his wife had an affair with Roberto Matta. There's a Matta hanging in this room, by the way. Three years after he painted this, Gorky took his own life in a shed in Connecticut. He was forty-four. So the gray isn't a warning. None of that had happened yet. Maybe this is just where he already stood. Slightly outside. Even in the good year. Even with everything working. Part of you is in it. Part of you is watching. Look where he put the red.