Post-Game Commentary

Basil King
September 2014

Park Slope Pastoral

1982 – 83. Martha was working at Sloan-Kettering. I came along with the staff to Shea Stadium to see a ball game. Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, French Fries, Beer, Cokes, Pepsi. The docs, nurses, administrators and the rest of the staff all sat in the bleachers. The cooking was done in back of the bleachers and Sloan-Kettering paid for everything.

The players were on the field warming up. As they exercised they performed a Martha Graham dance. It was then that I saw Martha Graham with her arms raised out in front of her. She was stretching her back and had her left leg extended behind her. She was looking fierce and was about to cut through space. She turned to Nijinsky, who was leaping as he had done many times before. He put his hand on Merce Cunningham, Viola Farber, and Ralph Lemon. The stadium was slowly filling up. Japanese tap dancers and students with the fans were slowly filling the stadium. It was 1983 and I began my Pastoral .

First I sited two trees. Like the two female figures in Giorgione and Titian’s Pastoral, my trees are unclothed. Two unclothed trees holding up Blue. Between them is a wide avenue. It is down this avenue that the Pitcher will throw his pitch. Blue and Grey will come later.

Liberty show me your breast. It is always better to let Grey comes later. Grey integrates. Manet taught us that. Manet understood Watteau: Watteau taught the French to be cheeky. French painting has always had good table manners. Beethoven wrote into his Pastoral, “Democracy is yet to come.”

I’ve asked myself are there two different women in the Giorgione / Titian painting? Or is there one? Art historians say Giorgione painted the women and Titian painted the men. So be it. Everyone knows that Braque and Picasso worked simultaneously on numerous paintings. But no one is sure if Titian finished Pastoral after Giorgione’s death. Or if the two of them worked on Pastoral simultaneously. Giorgione was Titian’s teacher. So be it.

I think there is one red headed woman in PASTORAL. She posed unclothed standing half turned in front of a tree holding a jar in her left hand. She posed unclothed sitting on the grass with her back to us holding a flute in her right hand. All prostitutes in Venice were required to dye their hair red. Titian often painted redheads. Both females have their heads turned and neither looks directly at either man.

The Pitcher turns to first base, checks third, looks at the catcher, turns. Beethoven wrote into his Pastoral, “Democracy is yet to come.” The runner returns to first base. It’s war, nerves twitch, who will falter? The Pitcher? the runners? or the man at the plate? The Pitcher stretches, kicks his leg and releases the ball. Beethoven wrote into his Pastoral, “Democracy is yet to come.” Liberty showing one breast sails down the avenue and strikes. The batter having swung and missed steps away from the plate. Following the avenue that has been made by avoiding the two women we see the buildings on the hill above the two men. The batter recovers his dignity and returns to the plate.

The Pitcher raises his arms. I draw a left leg. The batter looks around the field. The green fields employ anatomy. Pastoral, the male torsos are clothed. French painting began with Watteau. Pastoral, the men’s torsos are clothed. The Pitcher’s arms are above his head. Pastoral, the city between the trees is an avenue where I strut my art. The Pitcher does not look at the batter, and I draw a right leg. The Pitcher’s body is coiled, and I draw a back. The Pitcher releases his intentions, I draw his face. The Pitcher is trying not to think, not yet, he will wait. He must control himself, and the batter, and every man positioned on the field.

Sixth inning, no outs with a man on third. The Pitcher’s team is winning 6-4. The Pitcher reads the catcher’s sign. He waves his head turns to third base and looks at the runner. The third baseman looks like a bull frog squatting over the base. The runner returns to the bag. The Pitcher leans over and takes another sign. First base, third base, an avenue stretches before him. He sees three people sitting having lunch in the middle of the avenue. A second woman in a shift stands in a pool toying with the water. Behind her the avenue continues for an indefinite length.

An engraving after Raphael’s Judgment Of Paris encouraged Manet to use the same arrangement for his three central figures. Like Giorgione and Titian, Monet lived in a city. Manet in Paris and Giorgione and Titian in Venice. Manet has two men clothed and seated. The third member of the trio is a naked women. She holds her right hand on her chin, her right elbow rests on her right knee. A mature women, she is no Olympia, she services no one.

Is someone taking a photograph of her? It’s hard to tell because she looks out and we are forced to look at her. Her white body, her intelligent face, her knowing eyes. oh, darling disparate you are housed in matter, and like Bizet’s Carmen you know: Purity is the curse of the twentieth century.

If I remember it was 1982 – 83 and Martha was working at Sloan Kettering. I came along with all the staff to their annual picnic at Shea. Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, French Fries and Beer, Coke and Pepsi were served in back of the bleachers.

The players were on the field warming up. Jack Spicer sat down next to me. “You should be inside writing, you should be inside your city, inside your heart. You can’t have my city, my city is far away. But your city sits on this seat next to you. Be by it and love it. Be by it and field your imagination. Learn to throw it without a curve.”

Jack loved baseball. Jack never got to see my baseball paintings. But Tom Seaver did. He toured with Diamonds are Forever, a show that included my Pastoral. He told me that when he first saw Pastoral he couldn’t figure out what I was doing and it bothered him. Then one day he said, “I know what he’s doing. He’s using his imagination. I do that when I pitch.”

Diamonds are Forever toured around the world for three years and, when the show was over, Tom bought Pastoral.

“When I began playing the game, baseball was about as gentlemanly as a kick in the crotch.” – Ty Cobb

Fielding Dawson
Fielding your death left me with an emptiness that I didn’t expect. we had known each other fifty years. We were room mates the first year I was at Black Mountain. We didn’t agree about Olson or Pollock. we sometimes didn’t talk for years at a time. You were Fee, you were Guy Fielding Dawson, You were Fielding the writer who went into the prisons . You hit the longest ball at Black Mountain. You were the patrician who was furious when the Episcopal Church changed the language in the Book of Common Prayer You were so many things. I want to write about you. Your language, as perpetual as light, as devouring as “BAZ, do you know what a French dog says? Neuf, neuf.” But I can ‘t. Not now. Its all too confusing. What I’ve done instead is write this about baseball and painting. Things that were dear to you.