Before I Forget

by Fahey, Jacqueline

  You could say the question I might have applied to Fraser and me at that time is the one I asked on a K Road painting in 1999. A young woman on K Road asks me, ‘Why are you doing this?’ and I reply, ‘To find out why I am doing this.’ I think that was what was motivating us, the urge to find out. But just what you find, you can be sure, will not be what you expect. I was awarded the travel grant, as it turned out – ironically due to the very ’70s paintings I was trying to escape – so I was off to New York.

  Those confused feelings about my ’70s paintings continue to colour my responses to events. The paintings obscure who I am now – I wanted then and want still to move the emphasis onto more recent paintings. I relived the trapped feeling in 2007 when I was included in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Ambivalent about the show, I didn’t go to the opening (though I did nonetheless try to pay it a visit – but that’s a story for later). The paintings of mine included in WACK! were the more conventional of my ’70s paintings. Not ones with a bloody-minded sting to them but paintings which are hardly relevant to the theme at all: a portrait of a young hippie in her kitchen from 1971, and two sisters having a drink in the drawing room from 1972. Mother and Daughter Quarrelling from 1977 or Fraser Sees Me, I See Myself from 1975 would have been more relevant. I had in fact done much more specifically feminist paintings in the late ’50s, but these were not suitable for a ’70s show. I rather suspect that there were not enough works for the exhibition from 1971 and 1972 – that was a gap that I could fill, part of the old story about fitting into other people’s boxes. Was I represented by lesser paintings for this reason?

  I felt similarly ambivalent in 2009 when an invitation arrived to the opening of the Good Taste Show at the City Gallery in Wellington. Alexa Johnston, the curator, handled a difficult task well, somehow welding together disparate works under the heading ‘good taste’, including Final Domestic Exposé from 1981–82. Certainly there was no good taste in my case, which she was well aware of as she had previously written an intelligent in-depth analysis of that painting.

  With this painting I protest. The painting features a very realistic nude with sagging bosoms and slightly out of proportion stomach. It is a call to arms against the strictures of society and how women are constantly struggling to hide the realities of their own existence, constantly preparing for the arrival of the inspector of houses. This is the final domestic expose where I am dragging everything out to centre stage which I might be assumed to hide. I am saying that I am now going to leave this space and find another stage set for new and different paintings. I will not be confined to just one insight; I will not be defined by other people’s theories. As the circumstances of my life change, so will my paintings.

  Viewing the past from my present viewpoint I realised there was a great deal more faith in the future of the women’s movement when I was in New York than there is now. I had seen the Vietnam War bought to an end, so why not equality achieved? The idea was that we should respect the person in other humans and strive to not perpetuate the myths about what a man, a woman, a homosexual or a black is. Surely this was self-evident.

  However, I was plain dumb; I just didn’t get it. As soon as the super-rich in America realised what equality would mean for them, they moved very fast. It was happening while I was there. Rather than pay women and blacks equal wages they shifted the work overseas. To the Philippines, and later to China, anywhere the wages were lower. I must stop this. I am doing what creative writing lecturers do not approve of. Their mantra apparently is ‘show, don’t tell’. I think they are quite right.

  To New York we must go.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Chelsea Hotel

  I have been waking early for the last three mornings, disturbed by a sense of frustration. I am searching for something. And then I remember, it’s my report from New York. I can’t find it. Where in God’s name did I put it? I am sure I have seen it since I moved to Williamson Avenue from Titirangi. What about my clean-up under the house four years ago? Could I have thrown it out then? Not on purpose, of course, but in some blank exhausted moment. It’s always possible that I just tossed it into the jumbo bin with ‘Who gives a shit about all that stuff now, who’ll ever read it?’

  Those three months in New York in 1980 got my full attention. Ignorant as I was about the ways of the QEII, I thought a report was meant to be comprehensive, so mine was. Now I am obsessed with finding it. How can I possibly retrieve my state of mind in 1980? I search in the house, under the house, in my bookshelves, boxes, everywhere. I don’t believe it’s in the house.

  Then I have a brainwave. I had sent the report to the QEII of course and surely, hopefully, they would have kept it in their archives. I ring Creative New Zealand in Auckland and get a rather superior young woman who informs me that 1980 is a very long time ago, that it is highly unlikely that something would have been kept from that time, but that I can try ringing Wellington. I feel pissed off and, fired up, ring Wellington. Marion, who I am put through to, does not answer her phone so I leave a message explaining my situation. I get a telephone call that evening. Marion, as it turns out, is very pleasant and efficient. To cut to the chase, it is now all organised. The report will be sent and I am delighted.

  The book Dylan Thomas in America by Brinnan dictated for me the hotel where I would stay in New York: The Chelsea. I had to stay there because Dylan Thomas had stayed there. I arrived at the beginning of spring and was in a catatonic state when I staggered out to the bus depot, a zombie-type person. I snapped out of that pretty smartly when I got into a taxi. The whole business of getting to America had been one catastrophe after the other; this was another. My driver was a big black man and with blaring horns he shot out into the traffic. He was an angry suicidal maniac and I screeched pathetically ‘Slow down, slow down!’ He didn’t answer and he certainly didn’t slow down and after what seemed like a few minutes we pulled up outside the Chelsea. Paying him, I said, ‘You are a very bad driver.’ He answered me suave, self-confident, saying, ‘Lady, all the bad drivers in New York are in the graveyards.’

  I booked in, found my room and climbed straight into bed. The rest was oblivion. The next morning I woke with a burning urge to confide but there was no one there to talk to, so I confided in myself. I started a diary, and this became the core of my report.

  REPORT TO QUEEN ELIZABETH II ARTS COUNCIL

  October 1980

  Jacqueline FAHEY

  I’m scared to talk to my family on the telephone because I know I will cry. My handwriting’s like it was when I was a child, but I have a bolt hole. I had to do this, my empathy for others was dying and it was beginning to show in my painting. I was becoming selfish and now I can see how others felt when they had been bereft as I am now bereft and mine isn’t for long. But what if one of my children were dead or if I were in real exile.

  Either the person next door is a tart or a drug dealer. Every half hour to an hour a man comes to her or his door. These waves of panic are uncontrollable and I know that people who live here know it right away, for, with the over-crowding, the animal side of man is very real - they can smell fear, success, sex, joy or anger - the response to rain or sunshine is, to our way of thinking, quite extreme. The bus strike has brought out even more such uninhibited behaviour. They yell at each other, argue violently. There is thunder and lightening now, right over the Chelsea, and I feel so desolate and afraid. Oh, oh, I used to think Katherine Mansfield in her letters to Murry were whining - she was in the grip of despair and she was dying! I know now I should have known someone here but I was so arrogant, determined I must survive on my own. I can only wait to gain some control of myself. I can’t eat, booze doesn’t work, I shake when I try to ring anyone, pay for something, or ask for anything. It is just so bad. Tomorrow I must walk to Washington Square Village. I must find out where it is and how to get there. I have to force myself to eat or to drink.

  The night
in New York is full of the scream of police cars, great waves of them, it has to be quite bad. I have lost four parts of my body image. I know pieces of myself are missing all the time. Only the Harlands have rung me back. Two hours later two women from women’s groups have rung me back. I know I can make a success of it - I must. Two telephone rings from women who obviously want to help and can do so much for me. I must follow them up. I must make the whole thing work. I feel at the moment this can make me or break me, but first I must eat a proper meal -even if it makes me throw up.

  And how well I did eat with the Harlands and the Francises on Riverside Drive. Riverside Drive is a very select part of New York with fine old mansions. Harland was the diplomatic arm of the New Zealand government in New York, and Francis represented New Zealand at the United Nations.

  I rather fancied the idea that I was doing this on my own, but realised that in this Embassy-type company I had best remember why I was here. I owed their attentions to a recommendation from Frank Corner.* Frank was a very special New Zealander. He somehow had survived a career in politics both in New Zealand and the UN with his integrity intact. The respect he garnered was unquestioned, his style like no other, he was in fact himself.

  Reading my original diary I see I have not recorded who else was at that dinner party. I do remember, however, that most of the wives were doing or had done art history. This seemed to be par for the course for wives in the diplomatic service or external affairs, and they certainly knew more than I did who was who, the current in-painters in New York and where any gallery worth visiting could be located. As the evening drew on, I began to feel that they assumed that knowing about something was as good as doing it. That was rather over-sensitive of me as I discovered later that those women were very together decent people.

  It surprised me that all the New Zealanders there were in some awe of New York and its power and money. I felt we should be proud of our welfare system and critical of their devotion to capitalism. I was surprised that at this table New York should be called a democracy, what was happening out on the street outside the Chelsea I did not understand as having much to do with democracy; no, that was not democracy that was capitalism. It was suggested that I should keep my utopian views about politics to myself. I expected in their situation a healthy respect for the CIA but the idea that I myself should be careful seemed at the time to me unnecessary. I was there to find out, not to watch my back.

  I had noticed a distinguished looking young Chinese, standing like the keeper of the gates at the entrance doors. When the time came to leave I understood that he was the chauffeur. He had been in America for three years, his English was impeccable. He warned me that I must cling to my first impressions, that in no time I wouldn’t see or notice. He said that the Chelsea was a zoo and I had better write and draw about it now while I cared. He added that soon I would not give a damn unless of course I happened to be Jesus Christ. Soon I wouldn’t see the young people taking their dives into the depths, the bums or the crazies calling out on street corners to nobody. I would become immune to protect myself. I would turn it around, I wouldn’t identify any more. I would talk about them and us. Them being those swollen bums and the raving street people. I mentioned a beautiful young woman I had seen as I had left for dinner. Arty, freaking out, eyes forced out of her head and rolling upwards, she really was somewhere else. I asked what happened to them? He said, ‘Some, like Blondie, come through and can tell it all, some OD, some go home and some accept degradation.’ He told me everything I needed to know about the Chelsea. He also said he liked what I had to say at dinner, and when we drew up out outside the Chelsea, directly in front of the front doors, my chauffeur set up an impressive scenario.

  He wished me luck and we assured each other about how much we had appreciated this encounter. Now, he said, ‘I will give you the treatment that is reserved for very important personages. This is for the benefit of the Chelsea Hotel and its management. Don’t smile or look at me.’ He moved round the car at a measured pace and opened the door of the Embassy Cadillac, I stepped out under the awning. He hurried ahead to open the heavy wide doors and I stepped into the lobby doing my very best to imitate an important person. My chauffeur bowed me into the lift and the performance was over. Oh what a guy!

  Two days later - well I can eat now. Oh, God! The poor Harlands and the poor Francises - what an awful job. How I should loathe to have to do it and how well indeed they do do it. Remember what the chauffeur said. Tomorrow I must start to draw and think while my nerves are still jumpy, not numbed and deadened so that I can walk past the handsome 30-year-old black on the concrete steps next door to the welfare office, and not notice his legs so badly infected - that the booze he clutches in the paper bag will add to his fever and soon you won’t notice the difference between him amid the other bums who look as alike as Belsen victims - swollen face, crusty eyes - very sick dogs indeed - and here they’re seen as comic characters! I wonder what their life span is - six months, a year -once they get on to the street?

  The Hartley exhibition was really good. I went with Mrs Francis and she was looking so beautifully pre-Raphaelite that day. I think that our approach to painting is so absolutely different. She approaches painting with enormous concentration and scholarly care - what a strange contrast we really are. I plunge about waiting for a painting to take on its vision -I’m looking for things that relate to exactly what I am struggling for - masses of light on dark and open, unselfconscious paint - and I must draw all the time, that’s what I was thinking. At the end of his life Marsden Hartley went back to his early period bringing to it all the things I want in ‘Storm Coming’ and ‘Off the Fishing Banks’. Lovely explosive powerful shapes - well worth it. Now, in these weeks I must decide the direction my painting must take for the rest of my life. When I go to an exhibition, just relax - see where my eyes go and where I get pleasure - don’t try to understand or any stuff like that - I’ve done enough of that, just look, leave it to my own gut feeling now. Trust yourself.

  So decent of the Francises to take me … to St Patrick’s Cathedral. Lovely but a blown-up version of a Catholic cathedral in New Zealand. The Francises were good to be with because they were very comfortable together. They made jokes about her Polish antecedents, which of course would mean that St Patrick’s was not foreign territory to her. They themselves however attended the Sunday services at the Episcopalian Church. They explained that America was not like New Zealand, that you must attend some church to have any social status at all. This way you would acquire the connections to achieve promotions and access, for your children to the right schools. Sounds like a controlling type Jesus to me, a social tight jacket. But all in all a great day out and like Samuel Pepys said, ‘And so to bed.’

  Visions. These are ideas that I might use later in paintings - I just don’t know. A school of yellow taxis swarming down the street, horns blaring, ducking and diving, predatory, brilliant driving, a dangerous sport as much as a job.

  Visions. The lobby of the Chelsea, curiously L.S.D. People sitting as if they were caught in a time warp and were waiting for someone to tell them whether they were to go to heaven or hell - and the desk all barricaded in with loose-limbed blacks, slumped about bored out of their skulls. It took me a while to catch on, why all these large men slumped about, standing in corners - but of course, they carry guns.

  Visions. Must get ‘Dylan Thomas in America’ by Brinnin. There’s something in that book. Dylan in the Chelsea lobby, drunk, calling out. What a great effort to call out. I feel it would be like a bad dream. You could try and try to call out but all that would emerge would be a muffled groan. No one would hear you as you were sucked into the walls or down into the carpet. Poor Dylan, how brave of him. I didn’t know what the Chelsea lobby was like when I read that.

  It’s pouring with rain so I won’t go out today - but tomorrow I’ll get up early and buy an umbrella and a pair of walking shoes - black, elegant, low heels - I saw some on a gorgeous woman in town.
I still have moments of panic but much, much better, just a faint cold fear shivering through my veins, then feverish and bemused.

  My grant was specifically to find out what circumstances helped women artists to survive in a male-dominated profession in New York. I had understood from art magazines and feminist magazines what galleries promoted women’s work. It didn’t occur to me when I actually rang these galleries that they might not want to help me or might not believe that I was who I said I was. My paintings, once I could show them reproductions of them, did the trick. They were my passport into women’s galleries.

  Sylvia Sleigh who I was put through to by the A.I.R. Gallery has put me through to Ann Stout who actually lives in the Chelsea. She sounds alright and will take me into town next Tuesday to meet some of the women’s groups. It will work out - I must just keep trying. Glad I rang Cree Harland - she is a pet, really helpful and enormously energetic.

  A man said in a store down here where I went to get my pepper steak, tomato and bread roll - ‘It’s the end of the world, the whole city is falling in on itself,’ and people just looked away and said, ‘Yeah, right on, man.’ Thunder and lightning crashing all over the Chelsea and next door it’s going on again - all those men - what is the time (half-past six), Iran - everybody here thinks about it all the time. Christ, will I ever get out of here. If war breaks out I’ll be stuck here. People going through the traffic waving bourbon and beer bottles all in an electric storm. They say this about the drivers here in the strike - they say, ‘Oh well, I guess this is how they cope.’ They say it on television - that’s the way they cope - waving bottles of booze as salute -a friendly salute at the police and passers-by, as they creep along the highway. Is this what they mean by freedom? A freedom to do as you like. I think I’d better wait and see how I can work that one out. You know I am beginning to understand though, something about capitalism, everyone here does love New York -it’s the getting the leg in the door and being forced to keep going to pay bills, every day’s Gala day. Your reputation, desperation.