“We are living in a time of plague” said Fritz Wittels; when I mentioned something called an atomic era “so, like the story-tellers of the Decameron, we must find salvation in ourselves.”
Many unregenerate years ago, before everybody was a little better than everybody else, New York City boasted a phenomenon entitled The Society of Independent Artists; whose yearly exhibitions opened with near riots—partly on account of the fantastic number of exhibitors (for membership fees were moderate) but chiefly because (since no jury existed) an “Independent show” was sure to comprise every not imaginable variety of artfulness and artlessness; plus occasionally a work (or play) of art.
I was wrestling some peculiarly jovial mob of sightseers at possibly the least orthodox of all Independent “openings,” when out of nowhere the sculptor Lachaise gently materialized. “Hello Cumming” his serene voice (addressing me, as always, in the singular) sang above chaos “have you see one litel cat?” I shook my head. He beckoned—and shoulder to shoulder we gradually corkscrewed through several huge rooms; crammed with eccentricities of inspiration and teeming with miscalled humanity. Eventually we paused. He pointed. And I found myself face to face with a small canvas depicting a kitten.
During that distant epoch, pictures which couldn’t be labelled either “academic” or “experimental” were usually pronounced “naive.” But the healthily spontaneous little painting opposite me transcended classification. Bombarded by chromatic atrocities ranging all the way from lifeless nonrepresentationality to deathful anecdotalism, it remained completely and charmingly itself.
“Dis ting” Lachaise reverently affirmed (in the course of what remotely resembled a lull) “is paint with love.”
From the catalogue of a onemanshow at the University of Rochester, May 1957.