My Abstract Period

How one eighth grade art novice became a master

Painting with Green Center, 1913, by Wassily Kandinsky, via Art Institute of Chicago

“I wish I could draw,” I mumbled to myself. It wasn’t the first time I’d muttered those words, and it wouldn’t be the last. It usually happened when I was flipping through comic books, walking through a museum, or passing one of those weird 1970s New York City poster shops with framed Warhols in the window. In the summer of ’76 there was a place on 6th Street and Sixth Avenue that had a steady supply of Andy’s colorful prints of Mick Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor, and the classic soup cans.

Although I lived in Harlem, what would years later be referred to as “the hood,” my mom was comfortable in every part of the city, from the Barrio to Bed-Stuy to the streets of the West Village, and she had introduced the various sections of town to me when I was a small boy. She read New York magazine and The Village Voice, and always knew of some cool arty event.

My first trip to Greenwich Village was many years back, when I was about six, and the annual sidewalk art festival was happening. For blocks and blocks and blocks there were paintings leaning against brick walls, hanging on fences or lying on the concrete. Some of the artists had seats like the lawn chairs old men sat in when they played dominos on Broadway. There were many different art styles on display, but six-year-old me didn’t know surrealism from modernist to pop, but simply loved staring at them all.

“He looks at these paintings like an old man,” one of the artists said and chuckled. “That kid has been here before.”

Mom smiled and patted my head. “He’s an old soul,” she said. Walking down the street there were long-haired hippies, guitar strummers, barefoot white women, and other oddities that I’d never witnessed in Harlem. Inside Washington Square Park there were folk performances, conservative white men reading The New York Times, bald Hare Krishnas dancing, and weed dealers of various nationalities buzzing through the crowd chanting, “Loose joints, loose joints, loose joints.”

Mother sometimes credited herself with my love of art, telling me how when she was pregnant in 1962 she went to MoMA to see the Pablo Picasso 80th birthday exhibition. Later, I read about the little Spanish man whose giant painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was supposed to be so brilliant. I could imagine mother standing in front of that massive image studying it closely as embryo me kicked inside.

“Working at Doubleday bookstore in the 1950s was my college and the gay men that worked there were my professors,” she explained years later. “They taught me about culture, books, and art. They got me into D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Picasso, and I took it from there.”

Though too bougie to go full bohemian, she had taken some of her bookstore check and bought oil paints. After a few days passed she painted an impressionistic picture of an ocean using mostly blue. “That was from my Van Gogh period,” she laughed. She repeated that line whenever we saw the picture, which hung on the wall of my godfather’s apartment. “I gave it to Hans for safekeeping.”

When I saw a real Van Gogh, I understood what mother tried to do with her swirls of blue. If she had stuck with it, perhaps she would’ve been great. Thankfully, her lack of artistic talent didn’t hinder her from exposing me to the great works hanging in the Met, MoMA, or the Guggenheim. Come Monday morning, when the teacher asked what the class had done over the weekend, my stories of Dali paintings, Rodin sculptures, or buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright were always the best.

Photo by Claudia Lorusso on Unsplash

Still, for me art wasn’t just about pictures hanging on museum walls, but also about the images I saw on the newsprint pages of the comic books I bought every Tuesday afternoon after class at St. Catherine of Genoa. Every week when the comics were delivered to the newsstand on 157th and Broadway, four blocks from school, I blissfully faced the front of the big box on the corner.

I got great joy out of seeing the many magazine covers, piles of newspapers and, inside on the left of the nameless man, was the rack that held the four-color amusements that were my hobby. While most boys stuck mostly with Marvel action heroes, I had diverse tastes that led to Archie, Richie Rich, and DC “mystery” comics, which were really horror stories.

Though some of my friends and classmates could draw any comic book character, I was never able to draw figures as sharp as theirs. The best I could do was a giant head man who looked like Fred Flintstone. “That’s not bad,” mom said when she saw the picture. I knew it sucked but appreciated the encouragement.

Five months into my last year, a Catholic school art contest was announced at the beginning of February 1977. Sponsored by Catholic Youth Organization (CYO), my teacher, Miss Barry, announced that anyone interested in submitting work should sign up after class. Miss Barry informed our class that their art was to be submitted by February 25th, the last Friday of the month.

“I’m going to do that,” I told my friend Tony Cafiero.

“Why are you signing up? You can’t even draw,” Tony laughed.

“Remember when we were in sixth grade and Miss Belina taught us about ‘where there’s a will there’s a way?’ Well, that’s my philosophy.”

 “I remember that stupid ‘Where There’s a Will’ record that girl brought in to play for class. I also remember you saying the concept was stupid.” 

“Yeah, well, I changed my mind.”

For the next week I wrestled with potential designs, but wasn’t connecting with any of the ideas drifting through my mind. Finally, I went to the Hamilton Grange Library on 145th between Broadway and Amsterdam and discovered the many coffee-table art books. After checking out books on cubism, surrealism, impressionism, and various other -isms, I was excited.

While smart alecks like to slough in front of a Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning or Piet Mondrian and declare, “My five-year-old could’ve done that,” they’re lying. As I soon learned, even art that looked easy was difficult. It also helped if you believed in what you were doing. I explained the dilemma to my godfather, Uncle Hans, the keeper of mom’s impressionistic masterpiece.

Although we were decades apart in age, I considered him my best friend and called him often. “I think you’re taking this too seriously instead of having fun with it,” Uncle Hans said. “Don’t think of it as Art with a capital A. Just loosen up and do what feels right.”

Seven days before the deadline, I returned to the library’s art section and came across a book of work by Wassily Kandinsky that struck me like lighting. Inspired at first glance, I couldn’t get the book home fast enough. I sat on the living room floor poring over the images, struck equally by the spectacle of the new as well as Kandinsky’s genius. His wild styled abstract works that included Several Circles, Composition X, and Swinging were chaotic and beautiful and more real than realism.

Having found my guiding light, multiple multicolored muses disco danced in my mind with each turned page. The following morning, I walked down to the Woolworth on 146th Street, where the air always smelled of frying burgers and popcorn, and bought a big pack of magic markers, two art pads with heavy paper, and colored pencils. I already owned a ruler, compass, and protractor, tools from geometry class that would come in handy.

Between chores, church, and a long walk on Riverside Drive, I spent the weekend in my bedroom making colorful lines, squares, triangles and circles. By Sunday night the Planet of the Apes trashcan was filled with half-hearted attempts at abstract greatness.

Two days before the deadline, sitting on the couch in the living room, I finally created an image I could be proud of—though when I brought it to school the kids laughed loudly.

“What is it?” one of the boys giggled at the mixed media abstract I had named 2001. A more sensitive child might’ve felt stupid from the brutal teasing, but when I saw the many superheroes, apartment buildings, racing cars, and Hudson River drawings by my peers I felt quietly superior.

The picture was framed in a neat black mat and when I told the teacher its name she wrote 2001 on a sticker. I hadn’t yet seen the Stanley Kubrick movie, but dug the trailer, the classical music theme song, and the Jack Kirby comic book adaption. “Remember, we’re competing with every Catholic grammar school in city, so don’t your hopes up too high,” Miss Barry said.

After the school turned over the work, I had no idea how the process progressed or how judgments were passed, but a few weeks later, Miss Barry told the class that the CYO. art competition had been decided. “We didn’t have any first place winners, but your classmate Michael Gonzales won an honorable mention for his picture 2001.” There were a few sore loser groans and a jokester named Tom Lowe screamed, “We still don’t know what the heck it is?”

Seven years later I went with my friend Sharon to the Greenwich Village Art Festival. After walking around for a few hours, the two of us went to Washington Square Park to rest and talk. Though it was still sunny, in the middle of our conversation an obvious junkie approached us, pulled out a knife, and pointed it toward me. “Give me your money,” he said.

Without thinking, I jumped up, held out my right arm as though I was a superhero, and screamed, “What the hell!”

Instead of reacting violently, the junkie ran out of the park. I didn’t get nervous until minutes later when the many possibilities of what could’ve happened occurred to me. “Damn,” I laughed nervously, “you see me over here throwing up my hand like Iron Man, like I could stop a blade. If he had stabbed me in the hand, I would never have drawn again.”

“I didn’t know you were an artist too,” Sharon replied.

“Oh yeah, I used to do a little something something years ago. I was really into abstracts, even won an award once.” Leaning back on the park bench, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I could still see the red honorable mention ribbon pinned to 2001 blowing in the spring wind as I carried the drawing home.

New York City native Michael A. Gonzales is a regular contributor to Oldster, CrimeReads.com, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, and Alive in the Nineties. He has written fiction for The Oxford American, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Killans Review, Obsidian Literature & Arts and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.