SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

For about 15 years a painting by Alice Dalton Brown hung on the wall in front of me in the small bedroom where I did all my writing. The painting is called Tomorrow Morning. It is a large print, 24” wide and 84” long,  and with a nice frame that was of course slightly larger still.

I like the painting, it instils a feeling of calm, space and optimism. Despite it’s size, when I moved to my new property I brought it along with me. I found a nice spot for it, not central as before as I wanted something new in its place, but in an alcove in the new room where I write, and I would still see it most days.

However, when I came to hang the painting in the alcove I was moving in a tight space and as I positioned it on the wall my hand slipped and the painting fell and the glass smashed, ruining the frame.

Fortunately the print itself wasn’t damaged and I have been able to hang it on the space as I wanted, just now without the frame, poster style.

I carefully wrapped the glass in bubble wrap and was about to take it to the local tip a few days ago along with the frame and the full size hard cardboard frame that provided the support for the print. But as I turned the cardboard support around I was shocked to discover on the other side was a full-size print of James Dean.

The print is Gottfried Helnwein’s painting of Dennis Stock’s famous photo of Dean in Times Square in 1954, originally called ‘On Times Square’ but later renamed ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’. Dennis Stock was working for the Magnum agency at the time.

Though obviously surprised that it had been chosen as a backing for another photo, I was amazed to think that for about a decade and a half it had been hanging directly in front of me for all that time without me being aware of it.

So now what to do with it? I’m not a James Dean fan, so I’m not going to hang it up. I’ve felt the whole rebel icon thing about him was so overused it became cliché, though I do recognise his major cultural place in that period.

Looking online prints smaller than this of ‘Boulevard..’ are fetching decent money, so I’ll probably sell it as some point. After all, he does owe me rent.

Or it may grow on me, and I’ll keep it because me and Jimmy Dean do go back a long way, even if I didn’t know it.