Summary first, details follow, followed over time by lots of details:
When Gail Bruce first asked me to be her graphic arts consultant and rep she promised me, indeed, she gave me, a lifetime exclusive. She shushed my protests that I had no capital, assuring me that her husband had plenty of capital. "Don't worry about money," she promised. But then, as early sales began to trickle in, she asked me to give her the lion's share of the income: so her husband would feel we were getting somewhere. Years later, after I'd paid her several times what I owed her, postponing payment to other, better artists, she was still asking me to pay, always more, so her husband could feel like he could afford to give up his lucrative commercial making and try for Hollywood film making: every commercial director wants to be Hitchcock instead. But my cheating on her behalf, lying at her request, had caught up with me. Other artists too wanted to be paid: and I had never paid myself anything.
When I showed Murrary Bruce the cancelled checks proving that I'd paid the Bruces $30,000 more than I owed, he ordered Gail not to give me any more art. He denied all our agreements: and he had the lawyers, the accountants, the BigMac cash flow. (He did reimburse the overpayment, too late for the capital to restore my company.) Gail answered no more calls, no more letters. Last time I saw her, in the Village, on the street, her art career ruined as well as mine, this former cover girl looked very old. Gail Bruce looked like a witch. But ever since I withdrew my endorsement, her art lay dead in the galleries. I cast a pall over it, a hex. She looked like a witch; I can actually be a witch.
This story begins a series of stories about Paul Knatz, Gail Bruce, and Gail Bruce art and graphics. I'm the one who made her famous. She's the one who more than any other started me on my own business. She's also the one who sabotaged me and my business more than any other: and that's saying something! I'd given her a glowing setting, I reset her as the wicked witch: galleries couldn't give her work away.
When I say "Gail Bruce" I'm likely to be referring more to a style than to the woman. Meanings will mix no matter the reference.
First, here's a scan of a photograph of the painting we first published as a graphic:
Now here's the artist. We used this image for publicity in the later 1970s.
Now, understand, when I met Gail Bruce she was a talented amateur artist. I introduced her to Charles Cardinale, Fine Creations, NYC: master serigrapher. What I sold as Gail Bruce to the graphics galleries was a material wedding of Gail's style and Charlie's craft. Here's Charlie posed by the Gail Bruce Pier Fisherman after adding the final color.
Understand most of all: Gail's paintings, her vision, her humor, the psychological depth of her seemingly simple images was entirely hers when we met, and when Charlie first cut the screens to print White Hat. But the images that then graced galleries across the country and around the world, from 1974 and onward through the 1970s was the work of a team: Gail Bruce, Paul Knatz, and Charlie Cardinale. Her mind made the image, Charlie made the image professional, graceful, and clean, and pk sold the hell out of them: convincing ordinary frame shops to promote them, not only to carry them but to display them prominently.
By the end of the 1970s our business marriage was proving to be betrayal managed by incompetence. Whereas I first promoted them, I then hexed them. Whereas I had kindled cheer in the gallery, I now cast gloom. Gail Bruce, the style, dropped like a rock from America's attention. Former fans who had made money on them would make a face and say, "You still have those!?"
Details will follow. As well as more examples.
After I had failed to explain to the draft board that I was a pacifist, after I had failed to explain to my graduate school the macroinformation in Shakespeare's Sonnets, after I had failed to get my inspired fiction published, after I had offered a cheap low-tech social networking data base, a prototype internet, and after the society had stood idle as my wife kidnapped our son — essentially so I could have no influence over his schooling, resourceless, all but homeless, I got a job: in the art business.
more coming, as promised
More Gail Bruce:
Dakota
Ballet Dancers
Beach Kids
Notes on the images:
At PKImaging.com and at Knatz.com I controlled the size of the digital images precisely. I currently having difficulty doing that here via Google.com. Those images that are too large to fit the blog column width I'm still wrestling with the code for. At worst I'll resize them in PhotoShop.
White Hat: I had to retouch the scan considerably. Gail's painting used large areas of solid color, very primary, very two-dimensional. Understand: this is a scan of the painting; not of the graphic which first established her as a graphic talent: an investment or sorts.
The artist: The scan is of an offset print, not the photograph: hence the graininess.
All of the scans are retouched. PKImaging.com, my online gallery, destroyed at my censoring by the US, never displayed art that wasn't retouched by me. My retouches though were always then approved by the artist. Most artists that I dealt with had little idea about digital imaging.
Dakota (the toddler seated at the piano) is of Gail's daughter.
Ballet Dancers and Beach Kids were published as tax shelters. I got Gail to sell the copyrights, the buyers gave me distribution rights and both of us some cash. Charlie just got paid for the printing. He was a functional partner but not a financial partner: he got paid upfront: if Gail or I took a bath, Charlie had been paid.
Final Color:
The final color in serigraphy is always black. You can look at the printer with a dozen colors down, look again with eighteen colors down; but until the black goes down few, even professionals, will see "anything." I could; but I soon learned to keep my vision to myself: or I wouldn't sell anything!
Other Notes: "I got Gail to sell the copyrights": If our efforts had gone anything like Gail promised, her promises made by her in her husband's name, but then revised without discussion by her husband — talented, a money machine, but ignorant: and far from bright, I never would have permitted her to sell a copyright. But Murray Bruce routinely sabotaged (unaware) his own (non-filmic) enterprises.
You'll see as I tell the story.
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