I just finished reading the piece Ken Greenleaf wrote about my dear friend of blessed memory, Bob Solotaire (see “People, Unhid”). It’s beautifully written. You truly captured his spirit. How sad it makes us — his old pals — to know how much he would have been moved by it. Bob and I were freshmen and roommates at Bard College in 1948, and stayed close friends ever since. I have the second painting he ever did and of course paintings from most of the years between then and now. How right you are! Bob loved NYC like no buddy I ever knew. We purchased one of his last paintings, “Astroland.” It’s big, and all of him is in it. But then again all of him is in our entire collection of Solotaires.
My wife Barbara and our fellow ex-Bardian Sherman Yellen and I have been deeply touched by your true insight into who Bob was. Your end paragraph: “This understated presence of humanity . . .” That is good writing. Damn good! Your understanding of why career success eluded him is right on. Robert was too sweet, too human, and too innocent for them! Fuck ’em — the work exists, and it is the best of who we all are!
I’m pushing 80 and it’s like being in a war zone. I’ve had to accept death as part of our life, but as dear friends go I have found that they are not completely gone. Bob is alive in whatever I am. I think of him often, and it always brings a warm smile to my face. We did have a hell of a ride, fascinating, fun, and loving. I thank you with all whoever I am.
Ted Flicker
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Related:
People, unhid, Jack of all trades, A special Maine feel, More 
- People, unhid
The late Bob Solotaire collected views the same way he collected friends, and he had a great many of both.
- Jack of all trades
Ken Greenleaf is a pretty familiar name around here. His byline has accompanied art reviews for this paper and others dating back to the late '70s. Among other things, I have heard him touted as an "authority on modernism."
- A special Maine feel
This may be remembered as the year that the Center for Maine Contemporary Art smashed headlong into a fiscal brick wall, and at this writing it is not clear if, after its current show closes this week, it will open again in the spring.
- Summer people
Ever wonder why there is so much professional-level art made and shown in Maine, a state with a total population less than that of many minor cities? One answer is that following the fame of people like Winslow Homer, creative types flocked to Maine, often to artists' colonies.
- Half-century
The big 50th-anniversary exhibition at the Colby College Museum of Art has only about a month left of its eight-month run, so it seems like a good time to revisit this sprawling and worthwhile show.
- Familiar paths
Terry Hilt's show of watercolors at Aucocisco provides an opportunity to consider the role of modernism in today's art.
- Little surprise
At the tag end of a dispiriting day of gallery visiting I happened into the Bowdoin College Museum to see their collection of Warhol Polaroids matched with a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting. That's a sure recipe for ongoing gloom, but it was on my way, so I stopped.
- The jury's out
Juried shows are a terrible idea.
- Looking directly
OK, summer’s here and it’s time to please the visitors.
- Cut it out
"Collage: Piecing it Together" at the Portland Museum of Art is a somewhat rambling look at a process that came into use in the beginning of the 20th century as a cubist process bringing images, colors, and shapes together that were previously used elsewhere.
- The sad ghost of postmodernism
It sticks around, but doesn't always work.
- Less
Topics:
Letters
, Painting, Visual Arts, Bard College, More
, Painting, Visual Arts, Bard College, Ken Greenleaf, Ken Greenleaf, Gleason Fine Art, Bob Solotaire, Bob Solotaire, Less
