All the Paintings in the World

I remember helping a friend move out of his one-bedroom apartment and finding a Picasso in his closet, leaned with a pile of other frames up against the back wall, and hidden below a few dusty blazers. The drawing was small but unmistakable—the scribbles and signature had been done by the Spanish master. Up until that point, I'd thought that my friend's most valuable possession was his rusted-out second-hand car.

"Yeah, it's funny," he said. "Sometimes museums call to ask if they can show it."

Funny is one word for it...

* * *

"Hmm," said another friend at the Brooklyn Museum this weekend, looking at a painting. "This is the first time I've seen the original." He studied it for a minute. "I don't like it as much."

As much as the poster.

"Me either," I agreed.

We moved on.

* * *

There's a new painter in a gallery I like, and the owner and I are talking about the exhibition:

"He's really—"

"The colors, the delicacy of them—"

"The way he throws them against one another—"

"It's so—"

"Subtle," we both say.

The owner smiles at me and leans in: "He really is a painter's painter."

His phone rings and while he takes the call, I look at a painter's painter's paintings. Then he hangs up and comes back to me. "What were we saying?"

I have absolutely no idea.

* * *

I've been thinking a lot lately about Art (the kind with a capital "A"). Maybe it's because last week, I got a letter from an alma mater welcoming me to what is apparently a small and exclusive club: the alums to have successfully repaid a student loan. (I guess the art business isn't what it used to be...) "Your contribution makes future art possible." Contribution?

It's a subject that is bound to come up whenever I see other graduates of the school—art, that is. Usually it comes up in the context of, "Was it worth it?": the first "it" being Art, the capital "A" kind; and the second being Debt, almost always with a capital "D".

What is the value of art?, is the question.

When it comes up, I often think of a painter friend of mine laughing while trying to rescue a whole set of watercolors from a sudden unexpected rain: he managed to get about half of them into his car before giving up, and just let the rain pour over the others. "All the paintings in the world," he said, "can't touch the smell of rain in the summertime."

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