Charles Bird King:
The Vanity of the Artist's Dream (1830)

Former Title: The Anatomy of Art Appreciation
Former Title: Poor Artist's Study
Former Title: Still Life, The Vanity of An Artist's Dream

Gallery Text:
In this humorous still life, King pokes fun at popular taste and laments the plight of the arts in America. A masterful example of trompe l’oeil illusion, the painting depicts a cupboard filled with the possessions of an ambitious and well-educated but financially unsuccessful painter. Brushes, drafting tools, treatises on art, and a cast of the head of the Apollo Belvedere, the celebrated antique sculpture, are crammed in next to stacks of unpaid bills, letters from parsimonious patrons, and a “last prize” medal. Behind the loaf of bread, a fictitious news report complete with typographical errors ridicules the unsophisticated tastes of the era, and makes clear that America was a difficult place for painters like King who wanted to emulate the arts culture of Europe in the new republic: "The exhibition of a Cats Skin in Philadelphia produced TWELVE HUNDRED DOLLARS, totally eclipsing its rival the splendid portrait of [Benjamin] WEST by Sir T. LAWRENCE, the later we regret to state, did not produce enough to PAY ITS EXPENSES. OH’ ATHENS OF AMERICA. I, American (Newport, RI 1785 - 1862 Washington, DC)"

"I was usually successful when staying his hand!"

Being Exiled necessitated resolving many long-settled dilemmas. For instance, I'd encountered the necessity of finding a barber shortly after we moved into our temporary quarters. This might have once been a trivial challenge, but no longer. Now, the field seems crowded with pretenders, people who might hang their shingle without the first idea of how to barber. Some characterize themselves as "stylists," a meaningless term strongly suggesting someone who chose beauty college over learning the barbering trade. Stylists tend to call their shops "salons," as if to announce that they are different, hugging to the higher end of style and service when, in fact, they're mostly beauty parlor operators. According to some long-ago misplaced agreement, men were never supposed to break the sanctity of beauty parlors, and women were to respect the neutrality of barber shops. Greying this boundary has radicalized what was once a simple hygiene activity, turning it into a cultural statement accompanied by many seething resentments.

I'd maintained the same stylist in Portland for over a quarter century. After entering business school, I met her when I finally decided to cut my long hair. At the time, she was an apprentice in one of the better salons in downtown Portland. I followed her when she left that operation to open her own shop, which was located in a space she shared with a tattoo parlor on one of the sleazier side streets. She eventually moved further upscale before finally opening a grand salon off the lobby of a newly-furbished downtown hotel. For nearly thirty years, I never had to describe that utterly indescribable: how I wanted my hair cut. I have no perspective or opinion on that question. Nyla, my stylist, initially agreed to cut my hair the way it wanted to be cut, then merely retained that style whenever we met. She's now semi-retired and owns a salon in a suburban retirement apartment building. She was a godsend and an essential part of my support system of professionals.

I found a shop near our temporary apartment that advertised as a barbershop. I scheduled an appointment and showed up innocent at the appointed hour. Inside, a line of four chairs was doing an assembly line business. The styles were uniform enough to give me pause. I submitted anyway but instantly regretted my decision. I returned to the apartment with sidewalls and essentially a military cut. I reflected that that shop was spitting distance from the Pentagon so that neighborhood was likely swarming with people who naturally sought military-style haircuts.

This was merely one example of the dilemmas that arose for re-solution once we'd been Exiled. Who would be the dentist, doctor, butcher, optometrist? Each would require discovery and selection; some would be subjected to insurance company restrictions. This was before The Affordable Care Act, so insurance companies still maintained many ridiculous restrictions. Even so, I eventually found The Muse a dentist and a nearby GP. Optometry was dispensed by a chain that had reduced personal service to a science. I learned we lived near a hospital after The Muse experienced what appeared to be a stroke one Sunday morning during our first Fall of Exile. She was diagnosed with Transient Global Amnesia, a usually non-recurring and quickly recovered from loss of short-term memory sometimes caused by stress. I drove her to that untested hospital, feeling ten thousand miles away from everything. I've never felt further from civilization.

My sense of place seems immersed in these small solutions to little universal dilemmas. Without a reliable barber, I feel like I'm drifting in space. Without that list of trusted providers, we might just as well be wolves. It would take years to complete that list, driven mainly by necessity. When The Muse needed a hospital, I had no doctor to call for a referral. Nor was I disposed at that moment to paw through paperwork to discover which hospital's services her insurance might prefer. I mustered faith or hopelessness and drove her to what I figured might be the nearest hospital, then relied upon the emergency room Gods to provide care. This is how Exiles must initially survive.

Most of these eventual reliables get discovered by trial and error, EssentialErrors. There's usually no way to test reliability without just tasting the sauce. Some percentage of them will initially taste like shit; then, one can only go on to the next with the understanding that they remain vulnerable. That sense of security that eventually surrounded me after Exile came at the cost of often painfully rediscovering Paradise Lost, for I had been Exiled and divorced from my former reliable providers. Most of the eventual reliables emerge as if by accident, much as we discovered our more permanent lodgings in Takoma Park. Regardless of how it might first appear, The Universe doesn't seem to be conspiring to leave anyone with sidewalls. It offers choices. Initial ones are always the least informed, but with iteration, by which I mean committing continuing errors, better-informed choices prevail. What doesn't kill us might better inform. I learned to beware of any barber within spitting distance of any military installation. I eventually stumbled upon a genuine old-school barber shop run by an Italian immigrant named after Christmas, Natale. He ran a disciplined ship complete with a drawer full of dirty magazines for his older patrons. My only complaint about Natale was his proclivity in trying to rub my freshly sheared head with a cologne worthy only of some Lower K Street bawdyhouse. I was usually successful when staying his hand!

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled