Arnie Charnick surrounded by his artwork.
Arnie Charnick at The Commons
by Steve Desroches
Brick walls don’t take a cut. That’s what convinced artist Arnie Charnick to never, ever show in a gallery. Why split the money when you can just find a non-traditional space to show your work and keep all the money for yourself? So, when he was offered space to show his paintings on an exposed brick wall inside Veselka, an iconic Ukrainian restaurant on Second Avenue in the East Village, he jumped at it. His work moved quickly, in large part because of his talent and in small part because he always was, and to this day is, very conscientious about keeping his prices low. So low that one day when Basil Gadyscz, an architect who worked around the corner came in, he asked to speak with the artist.
Charnick describes Gadyscz as large and imposing and a “completely wild cat.” The prices are way too low, he told Charnick, who thought $200 was more than fair. He wasn’t famous, after all, and he himself saw art as a commodity and not a highfalutin pursuit. He was a laborer and his labor was painting. But he was also broke, so making more money, not a ton, but just more was intriguing. When Gadyscz said he would buy a painting but only at a higher price of Charnick’s choosing, he accepted the generous, yet odd offer. However, when he said, “How about $1,500?” Gadyscz exploded, accusing Charnick of trying to rip him off, heavily peppered with a string of descriptive expletives. And then he bought the piece at the inflated asking price, an exercise that would repeat itself for 30 years as Gadyscz became a steady, as well as a somewhat loveably masochistic patron of Charnick’s.
Gadyscz died this past December and soon thereafter his son contacted Charnick asking if he’d like to buy back some of his work. Those pieces that were in Gadyscz’s collection are what comprises almost all of the art work in Basil’s Mixed Bag, an exhibition on display now at The Commons. While it is not described as a retrospective, it is perhaps the largest and most complete representation of Charnick’s work and career, one in which he’s created large-scale murals as well as smaller pieces, successfully, all while never showing in a gallery or working with any intermediary, keeping his work accessible to people of all economic situations.
“I never really wanted to deal with rich people,” says Charnick. “As soon as you work with someone who is paying you $100,000 they’re going to get in your business. I keep my stuff in a price range that keeps me doing work for people who say, ‘I defer to you.’ That’s what I wanted. It was worth it to me to stay in control, to stay free even though I’d never be rich or famous. I didn’t want to be a part of any hoity toity art world. I know now at my age that a lot of that feeling was just my insecurities. I was shy and insecure, but I always covered it up with what I call male pattern boldness.”
Born and raised in the Bronx, Charnick grew up very poor. The idea of being an artist was foreign to him as that universe seemed far, far away from a place that seemingly had no such opportunities. But he liked to draw. He would look at what he drew and think it wasn’t half bad. And then he’d throw it out. What was he going to do with it anyway? He describes his work ethic by saying he’s like a hound that enjoys the chase, eschewing the quail. The act of doing is what excites him. Once he’s finished, it’s more of an “Ok, now what?” feeling.
At just 17, Charnick was accepted to The Cooper Union, a prestigious art, architecture, and engineering college in the East Village that does not charge tuition. It was an incredible opportunity for a poor young man from the Bronx. But a trip in 1964 to visit friends in Provincetown would change the trajectory of his life more than Cooper Union could. He crashed in his friends’ house at the corner of Bang and Bradford streets and fell in love with the town. Soon after, he dropped out of college to move to Provincetown.
“Let me tell you something, only a f—king idiot would drop out of Cooper Union,” says Charnick. “For free! It’s free! I dropped out. Idiot! But I have no regrets. I’ve lived a crazy life, a wonderful life. Everybody plays a fool sometimes. I just played one more often.”
Over the years he’s worked in the kitchens of Provincetown’s most famous restaurants and founded the ice cream counter in Spiritus, which is also where Charnick has shown his work in town over the years. More recently, he also co-created the Bob Gasoi Memorial Art Alley next to Shop Therapy. But it’s the large-scale murals that have kept Charnick living the bohemian life he’s reveled in all these years. He turns 80 this year and wouldn’t do it any differently. Sitting in his rented room in a delightfully old-Provincetown style house on Alden Street, the kind that is unfortunately increasingly rarer for its affordability and strong character, Charnick still has an infectious joy and vibe, a kind of a glee that comes from the satisfaction of living freely without the shackles that can come from capitalism, the establishment, and the forces of blandness and conformity. He’s traveled the world on a shoe string, picking countries that were cheap to travel in, like Cambodia, Nicaragua, and Thailand, offering to paint murals in hotels so he could stay for free. Most are still there, except for the one he did in Belize, which was destroyed during a recent hurricane that hit the Central American country.
And here in the United States, his murals grace the walls of all kinds of interesting spots, with the majority in New York City where Veselka still commissions work, as did the McBurney YMCA and the Hotel Edison in Times Square. He charmed the Hotel Edison management answering a call for submissions for a mural of the Manhattan skyline with an aerial view rather than a traditional horizontal take. Titled Big Apple Birdseye, the mural still elicits oohs and ahs. As such, the hotel recently asked Charnick to do a triptych of the history of Times Square. He drafted the first panel to depict 1904 to 1940, the second 1940 to 1960, but when it came to the third there was no way, as a native New Yorker, he was going to show the current boring and corporate Disneyfied shopping mall Times Square has become. He was going to do the Times Square of the 1970s with all the porno theaters, prostitutes and hustlers, drug pushers, and gritty drag queens. The manager, familiar with Charnick’s commitment to independence, agreed with one caveat.
“His only demand was no blow jobs,” says Charnick. “Fair enough.”
Basil’s Mixed Bag: An Exhibition by Arnie Charnickis at The Commons, 46 Bradford St., now through April 26. An opening reception and an artist talk will take place on Friday, April 17, 6 to 8 p.m. For more information call 508.257.1748 or visit provincetowncommons.org.
