I CHANGED MY MIND on reading the New York Times, where I found a review of an exhibition of Sax’s work at the Sidney Wallace Gallery. Not many paintings: the portrait of the black woman, an officer of the Queen’s Grenadier Guards sprawling in a chair, the artist’s white dog, a naked male friend lying on a bed, his pregnant daughter, a little grandchild … I was curious to find out if the daughter and the grandson were the ones we had seen in London at Tony’s or if it was Lidia with my friend Paul’s son.
We went to visit Sidney Wallace. He received us in his office: a big room with three desks and two sofas. We talked about Sax right away. I told him how I had followed Sax various times to suggest that he hold an exhibition in Venice or give me an interview. I didn’t say that we had seen him twice at Tony’s and I hadn’t dared speak to him. Wallace wouldn’t have understood my insecurity. Nor was there any need to speak up in Rossa’s presence, because she may have confused my hesitance with my tendency to voyeurism. Without hesitation, Wallace said:
“Not to worry, if Julian is stand-offish and doesn’t want to talk there’s nothing personal about it. He has no time for interviews. He lives like a monk, and thinks only of painting. He works early in the morning, then takes a break for lunch, has a nap and goes back to work until the small hours. He doesn’t want to see anyone, he never gives interviews, and he doesn’t even attend the openings of his exhibitions. You have to take him as he comes. He is obsessive and unpredictable. For example, he hates money yet he earns piles of it.”
“How much is one of his paintings worth today?”
“It depends, but I’d say several million dollars. But I repeat, he wastes money. For years he played the casinos and the horses just for the fun of losing. You know, not so long ago, in Paris, he took a fancy to a man whose face intrigued him. He started to paint his portrait but then, out of the blue, he changed his mind. He called me in the middle of the night and said: ‘I don’t like that man anymore, he means nothing to me, I never want to see him again.’ ‘But he has already paid.’ ‘Give him his money back.’
“I remember a Swiss banker who wanted Julian to paint his portrait at all costs. Every week he would travel from Zurich to London and sometimes he would pose for hours. Julian made him wait and then maybe he would tell him to come back another time because he didn’t feel like working that day. But the banker was so determined to have that portrait that he put up with everything … In the end Julian finished it.”
“That seems very arrogant to me,” said Rossa in irritation.
Yet I knew that she too would have agreed to sit for him, out of defiance, vanity. She would have made Julian fall in love with her and she would have had the courage to say:
“Please keep the money I have given you, but I don’t like the portrait, it doesn’t interest me, and I don’t want it.”
Sidney Wallace talked about Sax as if he were a genius.
“I had wanted to work with him for years. The relationship was forged bit by bit and now I can say that he trusts me.”
In saying ‘he trusts me’ he revealed the pride of a man who had won the great privilege of deciding what should be done with the work of this extraordinary artist. His was the responsibility.
I added:
“I wanted to suggest to him that he hold an exhibition in Venice.”
“That’s a good idea, but I think someone has already thought of that.”
“Who?”
“I don’t recall. I would have to ask one of my sons who dealt with that proposal.”
“So, if I have understood correctly, someone is already working on an exhibition in Venice and you think it won’t be possible to interview Sax?”
“I don’t think so, but with him you never know.” I took Rossa to Vladimir’s place. He was an American friend of Russian origin whom I hadn’t seen for years and whose parents I had met. His mother, Tatiana, was an eccentric who had been playing canasta for a lifetime with another Russian woman, Sonia. They couldn’t do without each other, but they also loathed each other because they both claimed to have been Mayakovsky’s mistress. That evening in Vladimir’s house there were some art critics I hadn’t seen for a long time. One of them was an Englishman who lives in New York and has been working on a monumental book on Picasso for years. When I went up to greet him he was talking about Sax to a young man. Not without vanity, he was saying:
“Julian calls me every evening, he wants to know the jet-set gossip here in New York. Either he calls me or he calls Charles Bloom.”
I said hello and broke into the conversation, saying straight off:
“I saw Sidney Wallace today, he says that all Sax thinks of is work.”
“Yes, he’s been like that since he stopped gambling.”