When it comes to art, I know what I like.

I’ve been collecting for thousands of years now and I’ve assembled a body of work that would make any docent weep for joy. It’s not because I particularly enjoy contemplating fine paintings; it’s just that I adore artists and, in response, they tend to give me things: their love and lust, their works, their souls and eventually their lives.

Of course I don’t mean the unfortunately prolific trust fund dilettante artists,  so tediously sure of themselves and their mediocre talent. Content to dabble in coffee shops and support groups, all struggling to become “commercially successful” and “build their connections” and “network.” So pretentious, pedestrian and preening; so lacking in vision and far too self-absorbed to be worth my attention.

I’m a true fan of the poor, tortured artist. The ones that can’t help but create, who live in squalor just so they don’t ever have to compromise. Those who are driven and mad, those who paint and those who have lunacy running in their veins. They willingly suffer for their art. I knew many of them. Munch, Blinky Palermo, Gauguin and Pollack. Van Gogh and Warhol …

Well, maybe not Warhol. Of course, The Factory was indeed a delight, but not so much for artistic reasons. Rather, it was a never-ending parade of diversions with the drug addled runways and sexual boundary pushing aesthetes; so lonely, so alone, so young and smooth, so instantly replaceable. So delicious. But ultimately it was all about superficial enjoyment with no lasting sustenance.

The same goes for Warhol’s art, sadly.

The thing I love about real artists is the depths to which they can feel, and I mean truly feel. In the old days, they suffered just waking up in the morning, hung over and reaching for more wine and a smoke, cursing their maker and their squalid lives. Imagine how they suffered under my tender ministrations. The agonies they inflict upon themselves are only surpassed by the agonies I inflicted upon them.

There was a time when a willingness to pose nude gave me access to the inner chambers of some truly damaged artists. In those days, I fed almost exclusively on painters. I called it my red period. I painted the town, the bathtub, my sheets and occasionally even a canvas or two deep, vermilion red.

I don’t like to brag (I like others to do it for me) but I’m pretty sure I taught Pollack his splatter technique. Of course, it wasn’t with paint.

The art institute down the street offers late night classes for the working crowd. While I miss those glorious, delicious lunatics of years gone by, the earnest young artists rebelling against mommy and daddy are certainly pleasing to the palate. I hear they are looking for a nude model. Color me curious.

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