Just shy of four o’clock, the Fitzgerald family pulled into the porte cochère at the entrance to the main house at The Creeks, a Mediterranean-style villa with a cool green tile roof and stucco walls painted a light beige to reflect the summer sun. To get there from the highway, they had driven down a half-mile private road that wound through landscaped grounds, past the carriage house-cum-garage and pergola, and around a circular drive enclosing a fountain surrounded by a lush rose garden, now past its best but still impressive.
“¡Hala!” exclaimed TJ with characteristic enthusiasm for all things new and different. “This is some place! You say only two guys live here? I bet they have a whole bunch of servants to take care of it, like those fancy houses in the movies.”
“Let’s go in and find out,” said his father as Ossorio came to the door to greet them. Nita introduced him to her son, whose hand he shook with courtly formality. She noted that his arms, revealed by his short-sleeved sports shirt, showed no evidence of wounds made by a woman’s fingernails. Nor did his face.
“Welcome to all three Fitzgeralds,” he said with a smile. “You may leave the car right there. We’re not expecting anyone else until later. Some of Jackson’s family will be here this evening.” He ushered the trio inside.
The entrance foyer led up three steps to a two-story hallway that spanned the living and dining rooms. Glass doors opened onto a brick-paved terrace overlooking Georgica Pond, providing cross ventilation and a spectacular view across the pond to the ocean beach. With a gentle breeze activating bamboo wind chimes hung in the open doorways, and the afternoon sun sparkling on the placid water, the arrangement conjured the world of genteel summertime leisure and pleasure for which the estate had been designed.
Knowing that the Herters intended to use it only as a seasonal residence, the architect, Grosvenor Atterbury, had capitalized on the site’s proximity to the ocean. Within a symmetrical plan, he placed the living room, dining room, and bedrooms in matching wings on the house’s south side to take maximum advantage of the view, with the service areas, the music room, and the couple’s art studios on the north side, where indirect sunlight was most advantageous. Since everything would be shut down by October and not reopened until May or June, there was no need for storm windows or an extensive heating system.
At first the lack of winterization was a challenge for Alfonso and Ted, who planned on living at The Creeks full-time. In heavy sweaters and long underwear during the day, and under an eiderdown comforter at night, they shivered through the winter of 1952, their first year in residence. By closing off the upstairs rooms they were able to maximize what heat there was, and the southern exposure helped warm the downstairs on sunny days.
Gradually they had renovated and insulated to the point where the building was now a cozy year-round home. There was enough space for Alfonso to indulge his penchant for collecting eclectic furniture, exotic artifacts, and modern art—even for him to house the collection of “raw art” by the self-taught and the insane assembled by his friend, the French painter Jean Dubuffet, whose plans for an Art Brut museum in Paris had fallen through. And the spacious barnlike main studio, custom built for Albert Herter, was a great improvement on Alfonso’s small loft in the MacDougal Alley carriage house where he and Ted had lived before moving to The Creeks.
“Please wait here a moment while I ask Ted to put the kettle on,” said Alfonso. “He’ll make some iced tea while I show you around, then we can all have refreshments on the terrace.” Raising his eyebrows, he turned to Nita. “And you can tell me to what I owe the pleasure of your visit.”
As soon as he was gone, TJ tugged at his father’s shirtsleeve. “Hey, Dad, look at that!” He pointed to a grimacing African mask staring down menacingly from the wall above them. It reminded Fitz of the mask that had covered the face of Wifredo Lam as he lay dead on the floor of his Greenwich Village studio thirteen years earlier. In spite of himself, it gave him the shivers, though he didn’t let on to TJ.
“If you wanted to scare away the Fuller Brush man, that would be your guy,” he joked. “I’m glad he’s up there and we’re down here. I hope he’s nailed to the wall.” He glanced at Nita, who was also remembering the photographs of Lam’s body in its “exquisite corpse” costume.
“I see you’ve met Caddington,” said Ossorio, returning from the kitchen. “I found him at the Marché aux Puces in Paris. He belongs to the Yoruba tribe, so I’m told. He bears a striking resemblance to the headmaster at St. Richard’s School, where I spent my formative years.” He let them guess at the memories that led him to name the fearsome mask after his former boarding school teacher.
More wonders awaited them in the adjoining rooms, including several African sculptures, intriguing fossils, a rock crystal on a wooden stand, a large decorated whale tooth that Ossorio told them was called scrimshaw, and a shrunken head from Ecuador that TJ silently coveted.
On the walls were abstract canvases by contemporary artists, including Ossorio himself, and a large one by Pollock—roughly seven feet tall and ten feet wide—that took pride of place in the main salon. The room was sparsely furnished, just a settee and two chairs clustered around a magnificent Persian carpet in front of the fireplace, nothing to block the view of the painting. Ossorio told them it was called simply Number 1, 1950. Pollock didn’t like to title his paintings.
“I have several of Jackson’s pictures,” he said, “but this is the largest. I bought it from his one-man show the year it was painted—he was in top form then. That show was full of masterpieces. I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it, but it was too big for the place where Ted and I were living, so I had to wait until we moved here before I could claim it from the gallery. Jackson was thrilled to see it on this wall, with the gorgeous reflected light from the pond dancing on it.” He motioned for them to step closer to get the full effect.
Not sure of what their reaction should be, and with no title to give them a hint, Nita and Fitz limited themselves to noncommittal murmurs, but TJ felt no such constraint.
“What’s it supposed to be?” he asked.
Instead of dismissing the youngster’s frank curiosity, as most sophisticated adults would have done, Ossorio answered him respectfully.
“That is an excellent question, Señor TJ, one that Jackson and I often discussed. For both of us, art is a form of visual communication, but while I tend to use figures and symbols that people might recognize, in paintings like this one Jackson went beyond such devices. He opened up a new world of imagination, one that doesn’t depend on familiar landmarks.”
He stood about six feet back from the painting and beckoned TJ to join him.
“When you stand here,” he pointed out, “your side vision doesn’t quite extend all the way across the canvas, so the painting draws you in.” Together they studied it in silence for a few moments, while Fitz and Nita were impressed by Ossorio’s solicitude.
“Jackson once told me,” continued Ossorio, “that people should look at abstract art the way they listen to music. Just enjoy it for what it is without worrying about what it means. But that’s not to say it has no meaning at all. It really depends on you. What do you think?”
“Golly,” replied TJ, “I’m not sure. The colors are pretty, and I like the way they sorta float on the surface. And it’s all splotchy, like rain on the window.” He turned to look up at Ossorio, who nodded his agreement.
“Yes, I see what you mean,” he said.
Encouraged, TJ continued, “So if I think it looks like a rainy day, that’s okay?”
“Certainly,” said Ossorio. “You’re using your imagination, giving it your own meaning. That’s the important thing. But let’s go closer and I’ll show you something interesting.”
As they approached the painting, Ossorio lifted TJ up to his shoulder so his head was level with the top of the canvas. “Look at the top right corner,” he prompted, “and tell me what you see.”
“Oh, mira eso, it’s a hand!” TJ exclaimed, “and there’s another one!” He pointed to the left. “A whole row of them!”
“Sí, Señor TJ. You can find lots of handprints once you know what to look for. Why do you think Jackson put them there?”
“Did he do it on purpose?” asked TJ.
Ossorio lowered the boy to the floor and crouched down beside him. “Oh, yes. It’s a kind of signature, much more personal than the written one.” He pointed out Pollock’s name and the number 50, the year it was painted, along the bottom edge at the left. “Everything Jackson did on canvas was deliberate. He said there were no accidents, however spontaneous his technique. He had remarkable, almost uncanny control of the liquid paint he used—ordinary house paint, but what extraordinary results he got with it. I can only aspire to his level of intuitive creativity. Perhaps I’ll get there some day, but I have a long way to go.”