The Purple Decades Read Online Free PDF Page A

every fissure, their serious little Culture pouts hooded in Sassoon thrusts and black Egypt eyes—their lubricous
presence, like that of the whalebird, indicating where the biggest fish in the sea is.
    Out in the middle of the bud coveys Bob is talking to Leo Castelli. Castelli, New York’s number-one dealer in avant-garde art, is a small, trim man in his late fifties. Bob is Leo’s number-one customer. Leo is the eternal Continental diplomat, with a Louis-salon accent that is no longer Italian; rather, Continental. Every word he utters slips through a small velvet Mediterranean smile. His voice is soft, suave, and slightly humid, like a cross between Peter Lorre and the first secretary of a French embassy.
    â€œLeo,” says Bob, “you remember what you told me at Jap’s last show?”
    â€œNoooooooo———”
    â€œYou told me—I was vulgar! ”—only Bob says it with his eyes turned up bright, as if Leo should agree and they can have a marvelous laugh over it.
    â€œNoooooo, Bob”
    â€œListen, Leo! I got news———”
    â€œNooooooo, Bob, I didn’t———”
    â€œI got news for you, Leo
    â€œNooooooooooo, Bob, I merely said———” Nobody says No like Leo Castelli. He utters it as if no word in the entire language could be more pleasing to the listener. His lips purse into a small lubricated O, and the Nooooooo comes out like a strand of tiny, perfect satinywhite pearls …
    â€œLeo, I got news for you———”
    â€œNooooooooo, Bob, I merely said that at that stage of Johns’s career, it would be wrong—”
    â€œVulgar you said, Leo—”
    â€œâ€”would be wrong for one collector to buy up the whole show—”
    â€œYou said it was vulgar , Leo, and you know what?”
    â€œWhat, Bob?”
    â€œI got news for you —you were right! It was vulgar!” Bob’s eyes now shine like two megawatt beacons of truth; triumphant, for the truth now shines in the land. For one of the few times in his life, Castelli stares back blank; in velvet stupefaction.
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    That night, the big party—it was freezing. For a start, Spike was very icy on the subject of Jasper Johns; another of their personal tiffs, and Johns wasn’t coming to the party. But enjoy! Who else is even in a position to have tiffs with the great of the avant garde? It was also cold as hell outside, about 17 degrees, and all these people in tuxedos
and mini-evening dresses came up into the Sculls’ apartment at 1010 Fifth Avenue with frozen heads and— kheeew! —right inside the door is a dark velvet settee with a slightly larger than life plaster cast of Ethel Scull sitting on it, legs crossed, and Bob standing behind it. Standing next to it, here in the foyer, are the real Bob and Spike, beaming, laughing, greeting everybody— Gong —the apartment has been turned into a gallery of Bob’s most spectacular acquisitions.
    Everywhere, on these great smooth white walls, are de Koonings, Newmans, Jasper Johns’s targets and flags, John Chamberlain’s sculpture of crushed automobile parts, Andy Warhol’s portrait of Spike made of thirty-five blown-up photos from the Photo-Matic machine in the pinball arcade at 52 nd Street and Broadway, op art by Larry Poons with color spots that vibrate so hard you can turn your head and still, literally, see spots in front of your eyes. That is on the dining room walls. There used to be a Rosenquist billboard-style painting in there with huge automobile tire treads showing. Tonight there is a painting by James Rosenquist on the ceiling, a painting of a floor plan, the original idea being that the Sculls could wake up in the morning and look over their bed and see the floor plan and orient themselves for the day. Over the headboard of their king-size bed is an “American nude” by Tom Wesselmann with two erect