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How To Retire Without Money
By Bob Belmont
CHAPTER 6
AMERICA'S ART COLONIES
Page 3 of 9
A feature
desirable to many is the complete informality. Usually, you'll
find that denims are the standard dress and often for women as
well as men. Clothing in general is not something you have to
worry about. Your fellow man in an art colony is more
interested in what you think and do than he is in how you
look.
Nor are there
pretentions about your house. If you have a little two or
three room shack and do your own cooking on a two burner
stove, and serve nothing better than dago-red in the way of
refreshments to your guests, it's not going to keep even the
most successful artist or writer in town from coming to your
parties. The only thing that counts at a party in an art
colony is the quality of the conversation because although
conversation is an art rapidly disappearing in our country, it
certainly is not in the art colony. Here it still reigns
supreme.
The last
thing in the world that people will care about is the age of
your car (or whether or not you have one at all), the clothes
you wear, the food you eat or the house in which you live.
They are more apt to turn up their noses at you if you spend a
great deal of time looking at TV or listening to the radio.
You are more apt to be snubbed if they catch you looking at a
comic-book. You are more apt to be left off invitation lists
if your idea of conversation has to do with the relative sizes
of the mammary glands of Miss Lollabridgida and Miss Monroe,
rather than subjects on art, politics, and world affairs.
There is one
other element in living in art colonies that perhaps has a
snobbish sound to it, but is very real to many people. In your
usual way of life, assuming that you are an average American
with an average job and income, you are not apt to have the
opportunity of meeting the celebrities of the world. Even
though you may be interested in writing (or reading) it is
unlikely you will ever meet Hemingway, even though he might
come to the city in which you live. Even though you may be
interested in art, and even paint a bit yourself, it is
unlikely that you will ever meet Picasso. Even though you are
interested in the theatre it is unlikely that you will meet
the big name actors, or even a movie star or so. Not if you're
the average American.
However, in
the art colony the barriers go down.
I am not a
"celebrity hunter" myself although I have found that usually
those persons who become celebrities as a result of their work
are of more than usual interest. However, during the length of
only one summer while I was living in the art colony of
Tor-remolinos, Spain, I met among many others MacKinley Kantor,
who won the Pulitzer prize with his novel Andersonville that
year; Paul Lucas, the movie star, lived next door to me;
Dominguin, currently the world's top matador, came to a couple
of parties I also attended; Ben Stahl, one of America's
outstanding painters, became a friend of mine; Count Felix Von
Luckner, the "Sea Devil" of World War One, was about town;
William P. McGivern, one of the top mystery writers, and
Maureen Daly, his wife, who is famous for such books as
Seventeenth Summer, were also good friends.
British writer Alec Waugh was also around and Baron Wrangle,
who never wears that patch he has in the Hathaway shirt ads in
public. And, oh yes, one night when I was having a quiet drink
in El Remo Prince Rainer and Grace Kelly came in for dinner
and a mutual friend introduced us—although I haven't the
vaguest idea why. I suppose he thought that everybody would
like the opportunity of meeting Grace and her prince.
>>>
CHAPTER 6
AMERICA'S ART COLONIES Page 4
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