Provincetown, My Father, and the Exhibit that Changed the Art World.
Of Old Friends, Forum 49, and Poltergeists in Provincetown
Few places hold me as spellbound as Provincetown, Massachusetts. That’s not simply because it’s a lovely place at the tip of Cape Cod that holds quite a few visitors spellbound every summer. For me, it’s a place where my present and my family’s past collide in odd and sometimes startling ways.
A little background first: I’m here for the week, staying through the largesse of the Fine Arts Work Center, the foundation that supports ten writers and ten visual artists every year with a place to stay and work on their art from October to May (Provincetown’s off-season). I was fortunate enough to win one of these fellowships when I was twenty-seven, and it was here that I finished my first collection of short stories and began my first novel. The Fine Arts Work Center offers its former fellows (among others) the opportunity to rent apartments from them at a steeply discounted rate in the early fall and late spring. That’s why I’m here for the first time in thirteen years or so. The last time I visited Provincetown, I taught in their summer writing program. As with any place after such an absence, I’ve noticed some changes, but there’s much that remains the same. The Old Colony Tap is a bar on Commercial Street that has always been popular with the local community, especially fishers. I remember that in the winter, when the place was boarded up, the wood panels over the windows were painted with the ships that had been lost at sea. The Portuguese Bakery is an unpretentious spot where I used to meet fellow Fellows for breakfast during my residency. Napi’s was one of the few restaurants open during the winter during my time, where novelist Robert Stone drank me under the table as he ordered one Bloody Mary after another during our afternoon “conference” (the Fine Arts Works Center arranged for us to have one -on-one conferences with major writers such as Grace Paley, Denis Johnson, and Marilynne Robinson). And then there’s 200 Commercial Street, a white brick building that might mean nothing to most people, and which now houses a Kiehl’s, but which looms large in my family mythology.
My dad was stationed here during WWII (lucky him) and he met his first wife here. After the war, with the poet Weldon Kees, he ran an art gallery at 200 Commercial Street. The summer of 1949, they organized the first major showing of Abstract Expressionists as well as a lecture series on Abstract Expressionism, known as Forum 49. All the major Abstract artists were represented: Pollock, De Kooning, Alexander Calder, Robert Motherwell (my mother’s teacher at Black Mountain College), Adolph Gottlieb (my father’s first cousin), and many others. The Provincetown Art Association and Museum refers to Forum 49 as “an event that changed the history of art in Provincetown and worldwide.”
When I was a Fellow here, many people who knew my father (who died when I was seven) were still alive, and they would tell me stories about him, and even give me photos from his time here. I also met up with my half-brother Fred and half-sister, Betsy, who had grown up in Provincetown and whom I only saw a handful of times in my life, alas. But while I was here, Fred drove me around and showed me the house where my father and Fred’s mother lived during their marriage. Unfortunately, I don’t remember its location now and I can’t ask Fred or Betsy as they have both passed away. And all my father’s friends are gone, too. Only Forum 49’s legacy remains as a touchstone for me.
Still, I don’t feel simple sadness or nostalgia about any of this. Provincetown seems to care for me in uncanny ways that make me wonder about the many confluences and coincidences I encounter when I’m here. The other day, I decided to go for a lobster roll and headed for The Squealing Pig, a restaurant about a six-minute walk from the Work Center. I was feeling a little alone, but the lobster roll was good at least. After I finished my meal, a couple walked in and sat at the next table.
“Robin?” a familiar voice asked.
It was a friend I hadn’t seen in seventeen years with her husband. They invited me to their table and we spent the rest of the evening hanging out.
“What are you reading?” my friend asked me at one point.
I was reading Yoko Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear. I was almost finished, with about thirty pages to go. Then last night, I noticed it was missing and I searched everywhere in my little apartment for the book. I even lifted the covers of my bed to see if perhaps the blanket had buried it. Nothing. I didn’t really want to buy the book again just for thirty pages. Oh well. When I woke up this morning, the first thing I saw beside my face, two inches away at most, was the book. How it got there, I have no idea. It was definitely not there when I went to bed.
I never visit Provincetown without thinking of Forum 49. Last night, I walked along mostly deserted Commercial Street (tourist season hasn’t really commenced yet) in the fog to Spiritus Pizza, passing the location of my father’s gallery, 200 Commercial St. I peered through the darkened windows as though I might spy my father and the others debating art.
By coincidence (maybe), I happen to have returned to Provincetown after a long absence on the 75th anniversary of Forum 49. The Provincetown Art Association and Museum is holding an exhibit to commemorate the anniversary, which I didn’t know about until two hours ago. https://paam.org/remembering-forum-49-works-from-the-paam-collection/
I don’t know what it is about Provincetown and me. It’s just one of those places that holds me in thrall. So I will be heading to the Provincetown Art Museum now, and paying my respects to my father and all of those great artistic ghosts who once walked these same streets.