After a night partying in John and
Peter’s, impressionist painter Tony Autorino and I walked down Main Street in New Hope kicking the
parking meters.
It was a different time. All
authority was hated, as today, and just about any sort of protest was expected,
as long as you didn’t get caught. The parking meters were a symbol of creeping
authoritarianism, government overstepping its bounds for material gain. In the
1970s there was still free street parking in New Hope in places, but Town Hall
seemed intent on making anything free an antique, except of course the antiques
in the many antique shops of the area.
Street after street was defaced
with the parking meters, all so the local government could add a few bucks to its
coffers and encourage the commercialization of town, instead of sticking to its
free, artistic roots.
Thus the kicking. The local
creatives didn’t like all those new parking meters.
Tony fancied himself a martial
artist of sorts, so he would kick with the style and panache of a karate
master. He’d leap into the air off of one foot and kick out with the other to
teach the local government a lesson. I, on the other hand, would simply stay
earthbound with one foot while attempting to strike a blow for freedom with a
kick upwards with the other.
“Ha!” he’d shout.
I’d kick quietly.
We never broke anything. The
parking meters and local commerce proved stronger than we thought. Tourism
prevailed, and metered parking in New
Hope persists to this day, but has become digitalized
like everything else.
You can’t kick the cloud.
I’m sure Tony would try if he could.
He was an independent passionate spirit, angry about something, I didn’t know
what, and if he saw a digital cloud anywhere over town I know he would kick it.
The advent of the ubiquitous meters was a symbol of not the creeping but the
roaring materialism that’s taken over everywhere. Anyway you can make a buck …
That was not Tony’s mantra as an
artist, or mine.
I guess you might say we were a
couple of inspired but hapless romantics fighting back by kicking parking
meters. We were a couple of modern Don Quixotes tilting at our versions of
windmills.
We had about as much luck stopping
the uglification of town as the real Don Quixote had of defeating the giants he
saw in the windmills.
“What do you do for a living?” a
young woman asked Tony one night as I was tending bar at John and Peter’s and
he was keeping me company.
“I’m a painter.”
“What, you mean houses? You paint
houses?”
She seemed confused.
“No, art. I make paintings.”
She seemed even more confused by
that. The conversation didn’t progress much further with this child of the
post-hippie era.
Born in 1937 in Montclair,
New Jersey to Italian immigrants, Anthony
Michael Autorino has endured as an artist who got his first start in New Hope. He was
dark-haired with large brown eyes, slightly below average height, and handsome
in the classically Italian manner and mane. Mostly self-taught, he said at one
time that he attended the mail order Famous Artists’ School. To tell you the
truth, I don’t know what truth to believe about Tony’s beginnings. I’ve heard
and read various things – that his interest in painting began during his
military service, that it started while he was in the Navy psychological
warfare school, or that he was in the Air Force or Marines stationed in France. At one
time, he was alleged to have been a jarhead guard at the American embassy in Paris. At another, I read
he worked in the American embassy in the City of Light for the Air Force.
Who knows about that, or much cares?
Imagination is necessary for any artist.
Whatever the true story is, the
important thing is he became and painter. The one consistent fact seems to be
he had his eyes widened to the glittery temptations of art while working in the
French capital where painters have always thrived.
He became an American impressionist
out of that experience.
“I never learned to draw, so I have
to paint like that,” he said, of his hazy impressionism.
Lucky for us he never mastered the
finer representational strokes of pencil on paper. From its inception,
impressionism was meant to be step-back art, when the subject became clear from
a distance, and even more beautiful than if viewed up close.
Tony’s landscapes were much
inspired by the New Hope School of Artists – George Sotter, Fern Isabel
Coppedge, Edward Redfield, William Lathrop, John Folinsbee, Walter Baum and
others. He painted en plein air with
a light, poetic touch and finely chosen, often pale colors, with the rhythm of
nature evident in each piece. He claimed to paint everyday.
“Do you write everyday?” he asked
me once.
He seemed pleased when I said I
did.
Tony had a studio on South Main Street
near John and Peter’s when I knew him. That’s where the parking meters suffered
most. I remember a large room with lots of windows and light, and there might
have been a peaked and beamed roof, although I’m blurry on that, like one of
his lovely paintings. After a time, he moved his studio from New
Hope to Lambertville, where it stood for twenty years before he
relocated to Vermont.
The impressionistic Hudson Valley School of Art also influenced him and
complemented his base work in New Hope.
He painted mostly in the New Hope, Lambertville
and Vermont
areas.
He was the only artist I knew in
those days who did the nearly impossible – he supported himself with his brush.
“I wish I had the money to buy one
of your paintings,” I told him.
“Maybe we can work something out,”
he said. “Maybe you can cut my lawn or something.”
I should have taken the deal.
The value of his work went up
during his lifetime, as I knew it would, and it still sells today in the thousands
of dollars. I’m sorry now I never gassed up his lawnmower to earn what would
have been a great steal for me – valuable beauty.
Tony died in Morrisville, Vermont
in 2013. His work persists.
The last time I saw him hew was in New Hope for a visit. He
saw me and I talked to him, but he seemed distant and couldn’t remember who I
was.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know your
face but don’t know your name.”
I was a little taken aback,
thinking he must recall his old, rebellious, parking-meter-kicking buddy, he
had to, and I felt a little hurt.
He had forgotten me. I didn’t know
how that was possible, considering the bond we had opposing parking meters.
I told him my name.
“That’s right, that’s right. I
remember you now. Sorry.”
He wasn’t very convincing.
Feeling scorned, I held it against
him that he didn’t know who I was, thinking this unkindness was a result of his
artistic success and an inflated ego.
A little while later I heard he had
Alzheimer’s. Then it made sense. It was a painful thing to hear.
I understand the disease eventually
killed him.
What matters is not what ended his
life but what makes him live on – the painting he worked on daily with diligence
and passion.
Long ago we kicked the parking
meters as a protest to creeping and creepy commercialism.
He succeeded in beating it back
with his art instead of his foot.
