Four

Now, among the many things I owe you, is an explanation of what I was doing at a talk given by Donald Kuspit. So at the risk of boring you with the details of my real-world life a little more, let me clear up what happened. I thought of a bit of a fun way to lead you through the story.

This is a good place to start:


What's that? That's the art magazine section at the Union Square Barnes & Noble on May 14, 2010. The numbered circles are art magazines in which I was currently featured: 1. International Artist, 2. American Art Collector, 3. Art+Auction, and 4. Modern Painters. I took the picture because "four" is a personal record.

Of most interest to us at the moment is #2, American Art Collector. What am I doing in there? Well, they like to print pictures of paintings that have sold because collectors spotted the artist in their pages. I happen to have just recently sold this painting:


I told you about this back in March. The collector, Howard Tullman, first saw me in American Art Collector. Who is Howard Tullman?

This guy:


We're standing in front of my painting The Shock. I'm the one of the left. Yeah, that's me. There are a lot of scorching hot artists out there. Sadly, I'm not one of them. What are you going to do? I'm pretty happy anyway.

Maidman, you ask, in what room are you standing with a collector from Chicago, and a framed painting of yours on the wall?

Funny you should ask. That's a large meeting room at the Roger Smith Hotel, in midtown Manhattan. The reason the three of us - me, Tullman, and the painting - are all together there is that that place was hosting The Great Nude Invitational Figurative Arts Fair (first annual):

Plus also, I smoke.

I participated in this fair, with two paintings, The Shock and the larger Red:


That's Red in the middle there, by the bartender, who was an incredibly nice guy. And while I'm at it, here's me outside the hotel with the model, Lillian (on the right), and another model, Claudia, whom I am looking forward to working with, and who writes a just wonderful blog on art and modeling, which I have recommended to you before:


Back to the point. One of the organizers of this fair is - well, let's call him Professor Kuspit. He is a professor, and I think Mr. doesn't really indicate the amount of substantial critical and analytic work he has generated over time. Which is a lot. My mom was reading him when she was getting her MFA.

Not to imply I have an MFA. I don't.

So this panel discussion of which I speak, which touched on matters of Mondrian and woman-hating, was part of the art fair. The panel included Professor Kuspit and Vincent Desiderio, who is quite an accomplished figurative painter and a friend of Kuspit's. Clearly very fond of one another, they have developed a smooth patter consisting of dropping nuts on each other. This is delightful to watch, because they fall into a classic comedic counterpoint: Kuspit plays the slow-speaking, thoughtful, kind of crotchety elder. Desiderio plays the hot-headed, impassioned youth. Both have a good sense of comic timing, in terms of pauses and in terms of when to let the personae drop. This dynamic led to the single funniest moment in the panel, when both deployed our old friend, wit, to reply instantly to a question:


So that's how I wound up attending a panel where Donald Kuspit was speaking. Next we'll get back to talking about art, and I promise "next" doesn't mean "when hell freezes over."