Song and Dance

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass;
it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

― Vivian Greene

When students at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts demanded tuition refunds this week, insisting online classes aren't satisfactory, Dean Allyson Green responded by sending them a video of herself dancing.

According to The New York Post, the students claimed classes hosted on Zoom "are not worth the school’s $58,000-a-year tuition."

Green notified students by email they would not receive a refund, attaching the curious video.

She told The Post, "What I meant to demonstrate is my certainty that even with the unprecedented hardships of social distancing and remotely-held classes, it is still possible for the Tisch community to make art together."

Encore

Yippee! I've sold two paintings. 

And launched an "encore" career.

I'm heartened as well to learn "it takes only a few people to make a career," according to New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz.

It takes as few people as 12:

• One dealer who pushes your work and "who’ll be honest with you about your crappy or great art."
  

• Six collectors. "Even if you have only six collectors, that’s enough for you to make enough money to have enough time to make your work."
  
  
• Three critics "who seem to get what you’re doing."
  
  
• Two curators "who would put you in shows from time to time."

"Surely your crappy art can fake out 12 stupid people," Saltz says. "I’ve seen it done with only three or four supporters. I’ve seen it done with one!"

It doesn't take a village to succeed.

At Jasper Johns' very first show, the Museum of Modern Art bought three of his works. The artist also landed on the cover of ARTnews.

Elizabeth Peyton’s breakthrough show took place in an empty room in the Chelsea Hotel, where visitors could see 21 of her charcoal-and-ink drawings. 

"According to the hotel ledger, only 38 people saw the show after the opening,'" Saltz says.

"It doesn’t take much."

Today Peyton's works sell for a million dollars. 

Painting by Bob James

Silent Killers

Al Wesch (left) was one of 25,000 soldiers stationed at Camp Dix in 1918.

While serving his country during World War I, my grandfather was deployed to Manhattan from nearby Camp Dix, New Jersey, to aid in removing the bodies of Spanish flu victims from the city's hospitals.

Unbeknown to his commander, Major General Hugh Scott, the men of Camp Dix were spreading the deadly disease to New Yorkers.

Between 1918 and 1919, the Spanish flu killed 675,000 Americans. 

Soldiers like my grandfather were the first to come down with the disease, and the chief carriers of the Spanish flu nationwide.

Soldiers at Camp Dix gargle with salt water to prevent Spanish flu, September 1918. Find more photos here.

Cracks

After (in her words) "crossing the line" and offending a respected colleague and Facebook friend, I have resolved, for civility's sake, to stop posting jabs at Trump.

After the president's lazy and inept response to Covid-19, I think my posts are spooking even the most unremitting Republicans among my followers.

Given I've been publishing―with impunity―"never Trump" sarcasms for over three years, my Republican colleague's reaction comes suddenly.

I'm spotting visible cracks in Republicans' denial.

About time.

Republicans' denial to date has been a colossal wall against reality.

It has resembled less your garden-variety credulity than a desperate avoidance of inconvenient truths―a brush-off to the problems of greed, inequity, hate, ignorance, disease and global warming.

But the wall's about to come tumbling down.

The Secret to a Longer Life

The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. They're always looking ahead to something new and exciting.

― Norman Rockwell

New research published in BMJ shows that patrons of the arts live longer.

Daisy Fancourt and Andrew Steptoe, both behavioral scientists in the UK, tracked 6,700 seniors (average age 66) for 14 years. 

They found that seniors who visit art museums, galleries and exhibitions, or attend plays, concerts or operas at least once a year have a 14% lower risk of dying than seniors who don't; and that seniors who engage with the arts more frequently―every few months or more―have a 31% lower risk of dying.

Their findings don't depend on race, ethnicity, gender, wealth, health, education, mobility or other activities, such as exercise, club membership, hobbies and church-going.

The researchers concluded that the arts might have a "protective association" with longevity.

"This association might be partly explained by differences in cognition, mental health, and physical activity among those who do and do not engage in the arts, but remains even when the model is adjusted for these factors (italics mine)."

Simply put, the arts protect you from dying.

Painting by Bob James