When I first saw The Many Sides of Beauty, I immediately fell into an obsession. It was a very simple painting, but after just one viewing, I could not keep it away from my thoughts. It was of a young girl wearing a blue bonnet on her head, with curled golden locks of hair seeping out from underneath the front onto her forehead. She had eyes of blue, matching her bonnet and summer dress. White straps draped over the shoulders support an apron, with lace around the neckline and down the sides. She was holding a small white porcelain vase containing a single flower, a daisy bending over slightly to the right side. She appeared full of such purity, lacking the taint the world would reveal to her in later years. You can find that expression on any happy child, but for an artist to perfectly capture this is a rare gem. It was as if a real moment had been frozen in time. She was standing in front of a small wooden house in the countryside, with a small flower garden behind her. There was a black and brown spotted puppy using a paw to playfully roll a red ball on her right.
The house was painted an off-white, almost gray color. Three stairs led to a small porch covering the entire left side of the house. The porch had an overhanging roof, and was supported by two beams, one on each side. Both the porch and the house were covered with wooden shingles. The porch was decorated with a rocking chair and a horse trough, which was filled with flowers. There were two windows on the front of the house, one on the right side, and the other under the overhang to the left of the rocking chair. There was a chimney on the right side made of gray stone, and a tendril of smoke emerged from it and drifted into the cloudless blue sky. The background was a low hilled valley full of detail, with occasional scattered trees and forests in the far background. It was a landscape familiar to residents of New England. The painting seemed to exude a feeling of serenity, like the smell of warm apples from a freshly baked pie. I purchased it the very day I first saw it in Frederick’s shop.
Frederick Johannson was an art dealer who owned a small store in Warwick, Rhode Island. In 1962, he moved his business to New Orleans, in the hopes he could be more successful in a city with a more thriving art scene. He was, and quickly doubled the profits he made in Warwick. He was able to reopen the shop in Rhode Island, which was operated by his son Thomas. Frederick was a kind and honest man, and when you spoke with him, it was hard not to notice that his facial expressions contained an almost cartoon-like quality. They made what he was thinking completely obvious, and at the same time managed to make him seem easily loveable. You could practically read him like a book just by the look on his face. Once you moved past the humorous faces, however, it was evident he was intelligent, and immensely knowledgeable about his paintings. I think if he were alive today, any question about art from the last few centuries would be answered almost immediately. I was saddened when I heard of his passing, and I still purchase my art supplies and paintings from his New England shop. Over the years, I spent many long hours talking with Frederick in coffee houses and in our respective homes before he moved to New Orleans. I grew to consider him a good friend. We didn’t keep in touch as often as I would have liked, but I did make a few trips south over the years, and was able to stop in and visit him a few times. The first time I walked through the door of his Louisiana shop, his reaction was priceless. When you hear someone say that a smile is like a beam of sunshine, they have either met Frederick Johannson, or they are exaggerating.
I had known Frederick for almost five years when he put The Many Sides of Beauty on display. His prices always seemed fair and suited to whatever painting was for sale, but Beauty was incredibly inexpensive for a painting of such mastery. When I spoke to Frederick about the painting, his expression immediately turned straight-faced, and in his eyes I could see disappointment, and though I didn’t realize it until later, there also was a hint of worry. When asked about the origin, he replied that it was a very old painting that had been bought, sold, and traded away many times. He told me that the previous owner, who wished to remain anonymous, gave it to him at no cost. As for the low price, I was told it was because no one really wanted it. I was completely flabbergasted, and told him that I thought the painting was beautiful, and asked him about the artist who created it. He didn’t know who the artist was, and he said that nobody else in the business seemed to know, either. He knew only the title, and the recent history of it changing hands to the point it was passed to him. He seemed uneasy with the painting, and I got the feeling he was trying to persuade me not to purchase it, but I just had to own it. I can’t describe why, but the painting felt like it was pulling at me, like a vacuum cleaner sucks dirt out of a carpet. I paid him for it, a mere thirty dollars, and brought it outside to my car and put it in the back seat. When I was opening the driver’s door to get in, he opened the front door of his shop and called out my name. I turned to him and said, “Yes?” but he just sighed.
“Nothing…” he said, and waved farewell.
I hung The Many Sides of Beauty in my living room, next to some of my other favorite pieces. It immediately seemed at home, like it had already been there for years. For months, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and I forgot Frederick’s behavior at the time I purchased it. Many nights I would look over the paintings hanging in my home, and many nights I studied Beauty. I invited a few of my favorite guests to come and see my newly acquired piece of art. Much to my surprise, however, all of them seemed to agree that this painting was largely boring and uninspiring. I was taken aback by their impressions. These were people that I deeply trusted concerning their opinions on art, and we rarely disagreed on the subject. We enjoyed a pleasant gathering nonetheless, but most of my mind was occupied with trying to understand their point of view.
One of these nights, I observed something about the painting I had never noticed before. The window of the house in the background had a small, finely painted crack running through it, from top to bottom. At first I thought it might have been a stray hair that had landed on it, but when I touched my finger to it, it stayed. It was clearly a painted crack in the window. I wondered why the artist would paint a small imperfection in what I believed to be an otherwise flawless work, but decided he surely had a reason. Perhaps it was a replica of a real place, and the artist was just including all of the details. That seemed a likely choice, but every time I observed the art in that room, my eyes were always drawn back to that small crack in the window. Over the next few weeks, I studied the painting over and over again. That crack bothered me, and I couldn’t stop myself from looking at the painting. You can be sure I memorized the angle of every brushstroke from the amount of studying I gave it. When I noticed another line in the crack of that window, I felt like a window inside of my mind had just cracked, too.
It was a slow start, beginning with the crack in the window, but gradually, all of The Many Sides of Beauty began to change. I know that sounds crazy, but I swear to you that it is true. At first, I didn’t tell anyone about the changes the painting was going through, because quite honestly, I wasn’t sure if it was happening or not. So I just watched, and questioned myself about the rationality of what I was seeing. The first changes the painting went through were on the house. The paint around the area of the cracked window started to look older, and pieces eventually started to chip and fall off. By the time the paint started chipping, I would say about three months had elapsed since I first observed the crack in the window. I didn’t really believe that it was possible, but it was right there in front of me. Around that time I began drinking heavily. This was a conscious choice, which made it much easier years later when I quit. I don’t know if you know what it feels like to question your own eyes and your own memories, but I started to feel a little bit crazy. Drinking seemed to help keep that feeling at bay, but it also affected my social life. I found myself staying home more often, sitting in my covered rocking chair with a glass of scotch, just staring at the painting. I never saw it change before my eyes, but I watched it like a hawk, and usually woke to find myself in that same chair the following morning.
The course of time played its role in The Many Sides Of Beauty, and I was helpless in the face of its endless progression. Most alarming of all was the toll that time took upon life within the painting. I watched, over the course of almost a solid calendar year, the surge into adulthood taken by the dog by the girl’s side. The ball always remained in the same place, and the dog in the same posture, but it grew. One thing I found interesting about this age progression is that while the dog grew older, the girl did not seem to be growing at all. That is not to say there was no change in the girl, however, as I will come to tell you soon enough. The dog, after its full period of growth, started to thin and take on a gaunt nature. Ribs became visible through the skin, and the hair started to mat and tangle, and become patchy in places. A small tuft of grass started to grow around the area where the ball rested. On one of the nights during this period, I took to drink in my living room as usual. At some point during the night I fell asleep in my chair, and woke the next morning to what I still consider the most alarming change the painting would go through. This does not mean it was the most terrifying or mentally debilitating change I would see, but it was the one that truly stated how severe the changes in the painting would be. When I viewed the painting that morning, the dog who had no joy in life other than a small red ball, was dead.
I know some of you may be thinking it strange that I give the dog in this painting an attribute like life, but I see no other way to describe what I was witnessing. The dog may not be alive in some literal sense, but in some fashion it did have a lifespan, and did suffer the natural changes we would see in the world that age bestows on all living things. Did it not have a lifetime of its own? I cannot say, and I do not think I will ever truly understand, but I think in some manifestation that it must have.
Some short time after the dog died, the post holding up the right side of the porch gave way, bringing the overhanging roof on that side down at an angle. It was still connected to the house, but no longer offered support. This was the start of the deterioration process for the house, and it was during this time period that the changes to the girl in the center of the painting would really begin. This is also when I would start to question my mental stability.
At first, the changes were minor. Her white apron started to dirty, getting spots of filth that were reminiscent of those acquired by children playing outdoors. Her dress started to fray around the lower hem, and it would soon start containing small rips around the bottom. Her skin also became dirty, as if she had not bathed in a long while. The daisy in the vase she held dropped over completely, and every two or three days or so would lose one of its petals, which would rest by her feet. After two weeks the flower was gone completely, and only the withering stem over the side remained. This, too, would be gone in time.
The girl’s complexion started to take on a sickly pallor, and her eyes grew yellow and bloodshot. She was acquiring rings under her eyes found on people in the last stages of a terminal illness. The house behind her was almost in complete shambles at this point. After another week, her eyes started to sink back into her head, and I started to fear that the dog’s fate would soon befall this poor girl, who seemed so full of life and youth when I first brought the painting home. I was starting to become increasingly depressed, and my own health was becoming affected. I ate less, and had incredible fits of insomnia. I rarely left the house, only doing so to purchase food and drink, most of which spoiled from neglect. Watching the girl slowly succumb to the inevitable fate that awaits all things living had a very powerful affect on me. I was filled with a great sadness, which coexisted with a larger feeling of being removed from reality. The things I was witnessing could not possibly be happening, not in the slightest. Paintings don’t simply repaint themselves overnight, and they certainly didn’t do it in a consistent manner! But no matter how rationally I tried to approach this matter, the fact remained that the painting was different.
After two more months, the girl looked completely barren. She was malnourished, so thin that her bones were visible through her dress. Her cheekbones and eye-sockets stood out like skin was just stretched over her face. Her eyes had clouded over, and the golden locks from underneath her bonnet were just thin withered strands of what hair actually remained. The most disturbing feature became her expression. The smile she wore when she was a fully vibrant character still existed, despite her subsequent sickness and suffering. A smile put over those features is quite honestly terrifying, and given the entire circumstance surrounding this painting, it was to this very day the most disconcerting thing I have ever seen. A piercing attribute is most often given to the eyes, but I tell you that smile pierced my very soul, and drove me to the edge of madness.
The girl died a week after this, and I discovered her lying on the ground of the painting. She lay on her back, her face to the sky and her arms by her sides. The smile was gone, and I am sickened to say that I was glad to see it gone. I do not mean that I was glad to see her perish, but I could not stand to see that smile any longer. I sat in my chair and looked at her corpse, lying amid the shambles of the house and the bones of her former animal companion. I did weep silently for her passing, and I felt a sense of emptiness. So long I had watched this girl, and now she was no longer. I left the painting in my living room, and over the next month I sat and wept, watching it. Her body did surely deteriorate, her dress slowly fusing with her runny skin. Her hair fell out completely, and her lips pulled back to reveal teeth.
One night, as I stared into the painting, I came to realize that I could no longer stand to have it in my house. Looking at it was driving me into sure insanity, and if I continued owning this, I knew I would never return to normality. I thought of burning it in my fireplace, but when I tried, I found I literally could not, as if some unnamable force was preventing me from carrying out a malicious act towards it. I certainly no longer wanted anything to do with it, and I started to question if it was actually me who was to blame for not being able to destroy it. Could I actually destroy what I had been so obsessed over? Could any man truly remove from existence anything that was so large a part of his life?
I covered the painting in brown wrapping paper, and left my home with it under my arm. I drove to Boston, where I left the painting leaning against the door of the Boston Art Museum, with a note explaining where I had purchased the painting. I did not include all that I had witnessed, nor did I include my own name or address. I was slowly able to return to a more normal version of life, and made my way back into being a social being. I do not know what happened to the painting after that day, but I did return to the museum months later, to see if the curators had displayed it anywhere. Much to both my pleasure and my horror, they had not. In later years, I would learn that a large amount of donated artwork the museum received over the years was sold at auctions to independent art dealers. I can only pray that The Many Sides Of Beauty was not included.
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