Provenance: Artist's Studio, Dumpster, Gentleman of Title

The comfortable old wooden benches in the lobby of The Art Students League have served to rest the weary bones of thousands of artists over the years, including many whose days in the sun were behind them.  They enjoyed occasionally revisiting the place that inspired them to begin their lifelong love affair with art when they were young and energetic and ready to conquer the world.  It's the same scene today.  And not insignificantly for all of us loyal to our “alma mater,” you can always count on the League's restrooms if the need arises when you are out and about in the Midtown area.

Often, the last time you will see League acquaintances is when they are sitting on one of those benches.  Some years ago a retired Brooklyn high school art teacher I knew pretty well from the members’ sketch classes was sitting there on a Friday evening looking very pale and extremely worn out.  I asked her how she was feeling and she said she was fine, just a little tired.  It turned out she had walking pneumonia and died a couple of days later.  I still regret not having called for an ambulance right then and there.   An artist I know well told me that a good friend and classmate of his at the School of Visual Arts in the early 1950s was sitting on a bench one afternoon and casually announced, “I’ve got leukemia.”   “Jerry, that’s terrible,” the artist replied.  “Wait right here.   I’m just going to my locker.  I’ll be right back.”  When he got back to the lobby a moment later his friend was gone and he never saw him alive again.   Probably every League artist has a favorite bench story or two in their book of memories.

Many of the bench sitters I got acquainted with in my first years at the League in the 1980s were Second World War veterans who had studied at the League under the GI Bill.  A fair number of them took jobs in commercial art after their training.

One of those veterans was Arthur “Artie” Albert.  He was a bench regular  in the late afternoon for several years, always wearing his Greek fisherman’s cap and holding a sketch book and a pencil or pen in his hands.  Artie, who studied with Reginald Marsh at the League, had recently retired from his work as a comic book artist.   His own work had a somewhat comical slant to it, as well.  He tended to sketch or paint intricate, multi-figured scenes of a surreal nature.  One piece that he was working on for a long time showed a populous nudist colony being buzzed by a low-flying, banner-streaming, single-engine airplane.  The drawing was excellent and it was fun to explore all the action going on within the sketch, accompanied by Artie’s witty “balloon” text.

As he was color-blind, I think he avoided working from live models in his later years.  But he enjoyed viewing the work of other painters, often stopping by the Saturday members’ painting class to take a look at how I and my friends were doing.  He loved to tell stories from his student days.  One I like to retell involved Morris Kantor, a Russian-born painter who taught at the League in the 1940s and 50s.  It seems one of his students, a woman of means, was working on a painting with unusual zeal.  As Kantor walked over, she began babbling enthusiastically about her very original idea, saying it was inspired by a wonderful dream she had the night before.  Kantor took a good look at the painting and said, “It don’t verk!”  And that was that.  In years past, crusty old painting teachers did not mince words if the student work was truly worth nothing, unlike the gentler approach favored by today’s more youthful cadre of instructors.

Artie, a bachelor, had enough money to live reasonably well in retirement, it seems.  And to the best of my knowledge, he made absolutely no effort to market his own accomplished paintings and sketches in his later years.  But he continued to make art until his unexpected death in 1987 at the early age of 68.

Artie's good friend Phil Alfieri, whom I wrote about in a previous blog entry, told me later that when Artie's family came up from Florida to attend to his affairs, everything was thrown into a dumpster on the street outside his studio.  Phil told me that shortly after the disposal, a neighbor was seen rummaging through the dumpster, salvaging a lot of Artie’s paintings and drawings.  The next thing you know, some of Artie's work was being put up for auction.  Ask/ART, a subscription website that tracks auction records for artists, states that 17 paintings in all were put up for auction.  I have no further information about this affair.  All the people who knew Artie well are probably gone by now.  And I’m not about to pay Ask/ART for the privilege of delving deeper into their scant auction records and zero biographical information on Artie,  who they confidently say was “known for: genre, figure-dance-nude, surreal.”

I never saw any of Artie’s finished works, but I knew he could draw as well as anybody, inspired by his teacher, Marsh, a famous American artist celebrated for his figurative line work.  And I learned in researching this tale that Artie was an excellent painter as well.  He was a pretty private guy and apparently just enjoyed making art without all the hassle of the New York gallery scene.

Arthur Albert, "Sin," Dimensions and Media Unknown

Arthur Albert, “Gallery of Faces,” Pastel, ink and pencil on paper. Back of sheet inscribed in pencil Arthur Albert ,  5 1/8 x 10 ¾”.

I could only find two images of his work on the public Internet.  One of them, titled “Gallery of Faces,” was listed in Sotheby’s auction archives as part of Lot 999, “Arcade Furniture and Decorative Works of Art: Including a Fine Collection of Fine Canes and Chess Sets from a Gentleman of Title.”  I’m guessing that this "Gentleman of Title” was not the person who allegedly did the dumpster diving to salvage Artie’s work. Estimated at $600 to $900, the work sold for $1,200 at auction on June 16, 2004.

Ask/ART tells me that the highest price for one of Artie’s works was recorded on June 1, 1989, two years after his death.  I don’t know the amount, but you could find out for yourself if you pay them their “economy” artist rate of $16.50 a month.  And you could then see six other images of his work on their website.   

Arthur Albert, “Artie” to his friends and acquaintances, isn’t one of those artists who become famous after their death, but at least he got his name listed in Sotheby’s auction records.   That is a fact worth noting for those of us on the waiting list for a dumpster.