Alex Beam
The problem with posthumous success is - well, it's pretty obvious what the problem is. But the works of Boston-born artist David Park, who died at 49 in 1960, are finally enjoying some worldly renown.
The son of a Unitarian minister, Park grew up on Marlborough Street but never really cottoned to the cold roast New England lifestyle. "He simply ignored what disinterested him, which included school, church, and athletics, focusing his attention on drawing, painting, making puppet shows and playing the piano," according to the website "Notable American Unitarians." (!) At 17, Park lit out for California, quickly married and had two children.
In a last-ditch attempt to make peace with the Athens of America, Park taught painting for five years at the Winsor School for girls in the Fenway. Then he moved his family back to Berkeley and joined the Abstract Expressionist art movement. In 1949, he took all his paintings to the city dump (!!) and "introduced the style that would later be known as Bay Area Figurative Painting," a school that "became a distinctive West Coast style of expression," according to San Francisco's Hackett-Freedman Gallery, which has championed his work.
Twice this year, a David Park canvas has sold for more than $1 million, both records. First, at
"Of course I am as prejudiced as I can be," his daughter Natalie Schutz told me. "When I was growing up my father's work sold for $200 or $300, enough to pay the dentist bill and buy new shoes. If David Park, a man of great good humor, were alive today, he'd be rejoicing royally."
After he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Park painted more than 100 gouaches in the last few months of his life. But his wonderfully colored canvases remain rare. My friends over at the Museum of Fine Arts have a beautiful one, "Rowboat," but it's hanging in deputy director John Stanley's office. Free David Park!
Redefining Christmas
Meet richer-than-Croesus hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, from Greenwich, Conn. Dalio shares my sentiments about the sickening commercialization of Christmas, but he is in a position to do something about it.
For the second year running, Dalio is financing a national ad campaign that dares to say: "No sooner does Thanksgiving end, than the loathsome shopping season begins - a monthlong compulsion to buy something, anything, for anyone." In lieu of mobbing the malls, Dalio's ads urge you to "give people donations to their favorite charity. And request that they give donations to your favorite charities. A lot more money would go to people who need it."
Right on! Don't send me a fruitcake; give the money to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals instead. (Use the website justgive.org.) Not only are charitable donations tax-deductible, but they make their way into the economy as goods and services that people need, not in the form of sweaters and never-to-be-read books. Last year, Dalio spent a million dollars in major newspaper ads; this year he will spend $2 million, and advertise each week in December, right up until you-know-when.
Dalio has a lot of money, and he gives a lot away. According to the IRS, his Dalio Family Foundation doled out almost $5 million in 2006 to about 300 different charities. The gifts range from $500 to Connecticut Public Broadcasting to $1 million "to support the good works of David Lynch and the Maharishi University." That must tick off the development wallahs at Harvard, where Dalio attended business school.
A spokesman said Dalio's family "had very little money, and they are very fortunate. They would like to remold the way Xmas works." Me, too.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
