False Memories: Adventures of the Living Dali: The Surreal Biography of
Anton Brzezinski

By Gabrielle Mallarme

Praise for False Memories:

"It was rich. Like eating a large slice of cheese cake with blueberry topping. I finished reading it today-did what it was suppose to do-kept my interest, created a deeper mystery surrounding the artist, brought up controversy, cleared a few questions, and much, much more. This will be a book, not just for collectors, but for anyone wanting to know a little about the psyche of a painter. Brilliant!"

-Lynn Vermillion

False memories is a psychologist's term for memories cleverly and conveniently created by the subconscious mind. Since the theory of reincarnation is not widely accepted, we tend to explain away memories of previous lives as false memories. Contemporary American painter Anton Brzezinski would be the first to agree that his own memories of previous lives are productions of his prodigious imagination-but Brzezinski's memories of his own experiences need no exaggeration to make them fascinating.

In False Memories: Adventures of the Living Dali, with the exception of the pseudo-author Gabrielle Mallarm, people who appear as characters in this book are not fictitious. This is a work of fiction, but even the wildest incidents described here really occurred!

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 17, 2005
• ISBN: 9780595788842

Gabrielle Mallarme

Gabrielle Mallarmé, is a fictitious creation of contemporary American painter Anton Brzezinski. Born in California in 1946, Brzezinski?s articles and short stories have appeared in numerous magazines, including his horror stories which appear in Scream Queens Magazine.

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Copyright © 2005 by Anton Brzezinski

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case ofbrief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Cover—center portrait of Anton Brzezinski ©2004 Deborah Caley Knowles

ISBN: 0-595-34106-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 0-595-67062-8 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-0-5957-8884-2 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

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Dedicated to my collectors, contributors, collaborators, corrobo-

rators, co-conspirators, comforters, crusaders, and daughters.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD

♦

ANTON BRZEZINSKI: MASTER ARTIST

by Stephen M. Kosti

Who is Anton Brzezinski?       

Anton Brzezinski is the premiere Surrealist painter today. He is recognized throughout the world as one of the most important talents discovered in the last century. He had a slow beginning in the late 1970s when he spent several years studying in Europe’s great museums; copying directly from old masters and selling to private clients. Among his collectors is David Braitman of Gallery 291, an advisor to Holland’s museums of modern art. Braitman’s two million dollar steel-and-glass gallery on Droogbak straat in Amsterdam offers Picassos and other original early 20th century masters along with the best in contemporary Dutch modern art.

Anton Brzezinski’s name became known throughout European community as a sought out artist with imaginative surreal creations. He traveled and worked in France, Italy, England, Holland and Greece. Along the way he expanded his knowledge in traditions which refined his techniques.

Brzezinski learned various classical styles and techniques from older artists which he uses in his paintings. Visually they are virtuoso performances, with masterly painting techniques combining thinly glazed shadows with thick impastos, using warm reflections unseen since the Renaissance.

In Europe his magnif Icent creations were sold to the fortunate few. After returning to the United States he finally settled in New Orleans, Louisiana.

♦       ♦       ♦

Stephen M. Kosti is an Ohio collector ofhighly-valued contemporary artists in several modern styles. He has been said to have one of the finest collections in the United States, including the premiere Russian Surrealists Omar Chkhaidze and Andrei Rusimov, as well as a large collection of Anton Brzezin-ski paintings. Through Mr. Kosti, Anton’s paintings have been received enthusiastically by the curator of the Cincinnati Museum of Art, Alex Rosenberg and dealer/collector communities active in Russia and the Vatican, among others. To help Anton reach a wider audience he has many irons in the fire, including plans for a 6 million dollar art museum which will feature over a dozen Anton Brzezinski masterpieces.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

The false memories of the title do not refer to Anton’s anecdotes as recorded here. False memories is the psychologist’s term for memories conveniently and sometimes cleverly created by the subconscious mind. Since reincarnation is officially in disfavor, any memories of previous lives are explained away as false memories. Anton would be the first to agree that his own memories of previous lives are probably productions of his prodigious imagination. But Anton’s memories of his own experiences need no exaggeration to make them fascinating. Except for the pseudonymous Gabrielle herself, people who appear in this book are not fictitious. This is a work of fiction, but even the wildest incidents described here occurred.

Only Anton could have been picked up by the Emperor of Austria’s grandson while hitch-hiking. A rule of thumb is, if the story told by Anton sounds suspiciously humorous or strange, like being called a nut by Lady Antonia Fraser on the Dick Cavett show, then that event happened. The book you hold in your hands is a conundrum. The riddle is, who really wrote it? It appears to be a serious book about the eccentric Polish artist Anton Brzezinski, written by the French art columnist Gabrielle Mallarme.

In reality, although the anecdotes are real, the author herself is a character created by the artist. In this case not the book, but the author has been created.

Anton Brzezinski himself is a painter, writer and merry prankster. Creating people is one of the things he does. For years, Brzezinski has had web sites to promote his paintings. They were cleverly constructed, decorated with animated GIF moving eyes and links to amusing pages. Aware that praising himself would seem self-serving, Anton created a cyber avatar: Jean Claude Marcel.

Jean Claude was a sophisticated young Frenchman, supposedly a personal assistant to the Polish-American Surrealist painter. A vintage photograph of an aesthetic young man with a starched collar appeared by his name.

Although J. Claude, like Gabrielle, was only a creation, he seemed real enough to many people who frequented Anton’s web site. He received email and regular mail, and became a minor celebrity in his own right. He even had emotions. Like the Simpsons television character Wayland Smithers, Jean Claude Marcel was gay. When Anton fell in love with a woman he met on the internet, J. Claude attempted suicide. Fortunately the non-existent web doodle recovered, and continued his comments on Anton’s web pages. At the bottom of the opening page was a disclaimer explaining that J. Claude was a cyber creation. He wasn’t real.

At least I think he wasn’t.

Unlike J. Claude and Gabrielle, all of the other people who cross paths with Anton in the book you’re about to read are real. From Apollo astronaut Walter Cunningham to Science Fiction author Ray Bradbury. The major events described here are also accurate, from Anton’s early traumatic attendance at Catholic school to exhibits in Washington. His embarrassment with Lady Anto-nia Fraser, his far ranging travel adventures and his international collectors, everything described here is factual. Only Gabrielle is made up.

At least I think she is.

Image430.JPG

Count Leo Tofstoy 1910

1

LUCID DREAMS

My weeks with Anton passed like a lucid dream. That term describes the experience of having an extraordinary dream; one in which the dreamer knows that the dream is a dream. Such dreams are very vivid. My visit with Anton, during which I interviewed him in New Orleans, was sometimes sharpened by the tropical New Orleans sunlight, and at other times blurred by the city’s many overcast days.

The bright light bulbs Anton uses in his studio made his hanging paintings and bizarre wall props seem like artifacts in an hallucination. Most importantly, my memories of the time I spent with him are strange and wonderful in the way only dreams usually are.

I was with him in May of 2004. Each day had its own theme. Some days were like scenes from a Fellini movie. Others resembled comedies. Occasionally, I wondered if I was dreaming or not. Especially after Anton explained lucid dreaming to me, I started to have lucid dreams of my own.

At my hotel one morning, I dreamed I woke up and was going to meet Anton at his house. I got as far as the hallway, only to awaken again and to discover I was still in bed, and that I had experienced a false awakening.

Contact with Anton and his ideas can be unsettling.

I hadn’t counted on the City ofN ew Orleans or Anton himself casting spells on me. As in a dream, I was the passive observer: I kept my identity—I was and am Gabrielle Mallarme, a writer from Paris. I’m a columnist from a French art magazine. Yet other things I take for granted, like my usually controllable emotions, were affected.

There were so many dreams to contend with. Dreams I had when I slept deeply and once drunkenly in my soundproofed hotel room, and dreams and visions, which Anton described to me during our many days together. Dreams are very important to him, you’ll discover. He follows their guidance in a way that seems almost biblical. Here is a dream he shared with me:

One night when I was thirteen, I was dreaming when the plot and quality of the dream suddenly changed dramatically. Everything became more vivid. Somehow I was coming awake although I was aware I was dreaming. The dream I found myself in now had nothing to do with the other dreams I’d been having that night. I felt something signif Icant was about to happen. In this new, intense dream I found myself entering a small room. Above the door was a wooden board with the number 1910 painted on it. The room contained a window and a bed. On the bed was a very old man with clean white hair and a long, full beard.

When the old man knew I was listening he said, ‘Remember this, I am one hundred and thirty-one years old.’ I took note of his age, curious that he could be so old. He seemed infinitely wise. I wondered if he were some kind of prophet or guide. I was becoming an adult uncertain what I was going to do with my life. ‘What should I do?’ I asked the old man. ‘Go to the window.’ He said, then lifted himself up and pointed. I went over to the window and looked out on some trees and distant sky.

‘Look at the colors,’ the old man said emphatically. The colors were enhanced. The yard was vivid and beautiful. The green of the leaves was intense and the colors in the sky were breathtaking. Behind the trees a dawn of exquisite golden light was breaking. It’s beauty was penetrating. Then the dream was over.

It may seem strange to start a biography with a dream. If you like, you can consider this introduction, and skip ahead to the next chapter. But this is no ordinary biography. The next chapter won’t begin conventionally either. You must be eased into Anton’s world. I want to introduce you to him gradually, tell you how I met him, and soon you’ll be sitting in his studio with me. I promise. Anton can be exciting, and he can be disturbing. I want to prepare you. Perhaps I even want to defend him, because when we get into it, you may wonder at some point if he is sane or not.

Who can say what Anton’s dreams really mean? A skeptic might say he invents them as stories to use in self-promotion, or simply that he has an overactive imagination. Yet he related that particular one, and even stranger dreams, with convincing sincerity. If anything, Anton seems to be cautious not to embellish, to record for posterity. As he speaks of his life, What really happened is fantastic enough. I’m sure he cautioned other writers as he did me. Don’t invent anything. I don’t want false stories to spread.

I get the impression as Anton relates his dreams and adventures that he is externalizing his fancies and repeats them to make himself legendary, but also that he dredges them up for his own benefit as much as the listener’s. Anton is always reexamining his experiences, trying to get at truth of matters both mundane and bizarre. He isn’t afraid to apply science or knowledge that could banish a superstition. He is equally ready to keep an open mind, to explore controversial ideas or allow the possibility of mystical realities. But he’s very skeptical, and hardest of all on himself. One person called Anton, The most analytical person I’ve ever met.

I quickly came to the conclusion that he isn’t wacky. The dramatic dreams he shared with me, which seem so pivotal to him, happened almost forty years ago. As flamboyant as he is, Anton never crosses the line of propriety. He entertains; he is eccentric, yet how much of that is calculated? His misbehaves for the camera, or the press, but it’s by design. In a television studio, it’s perfectly sane to wear a white tuxedo with purple eyes.

If you know him as I do, you would realize Anton is firmly centered in reality. It’s just that his reality seems more fun than yours or mine. I trust he told me the truth. The truth as told by something of a stand up comic, to keep the story interesting—but still, the truth. In the weeks that I spent with him discussing his life, I never heard anything that didn’t check out. Anton simply had many unusual experiences to share. When he’s joking, he lets you know it with a smile or the comic lifting of an eyebrow.

The strange dream about the old man had all the earmarks of a lucid dream. During it Anton knew he was asleep. It was more vivid than the average dream, making it easy for him to remember after waking. This particular dream was especially signif Icant to him.

I know what the dream meant, Anton told me. I was already very interested in art and painting. To me, being told to ‘look at the colors’ meant to become a painter. The number over the door, 1910, was a date. Now that was mysterious. And the bearded man saying right off, ‘I’m one hundred and thirty-one years old.’ It was decades before I’d know what that meant

"Jules Verne, who had a long white beard, died in 1910. At first I thought that’s who he was supposed to be. But that wasn’t it. Jules Verne in my dream made no sense to me. Years later I came across a book by accident—only because I was in Mexico and it was the only paperback in English I could get at the time. It was on the life ofTolstoy. You’ll have to take myword for it that it was the first time I learned anything about the Russian author, other than that he’d written WarandPeace. I’d never read WarandPeace and certainly didn’t know anything about the details of his life. Leo Tolstoy is the last person I would have picked to pretend to be! But when I was forty-two, I suddenly read this biography and learned all about him. Can reading something in your forties give you a dream when you’re thirteen? Of course not! That’s when the Jules Verne theory flew out the window and everything fell into place. Tolstoy had a white beard, and like Verne, died in 1910. Most importantly, he was born in 1828. I felt a chill as I did the math and realized that had Tolstoy lived, it would have made him exactly 131 years old when I had the dream. I am one hundred and thirty-one years old, the elderly man in the dream had said."

Psychologists seeking to explain unexplainable knowledge and memories always point out things like he must have read it in a book when he was young and forgot about it. But when I was a child we had no television. I know exactly what books were in the house. Our encyclopedia surely had an entry on Tolstoy but I can state categorically I never read it. I knew exactly which articles I went to, those featuring paintings and painters.

If on a subconscious level my mind did build such an elaborate and symbolic dream on a small fragment of information, that itself seems to be an astonishing phenomenon, certainly something to wonder at. At what level was my subconscious organizing such an elaborate dream and planning all the connections? And why? Anton asked.

The biography revealed association after association. He continued. Character traits and events in Tolstoy’s life that explained things in mine as well. I could discover a reason for every mysterious ache or tendency in myself when I learned his traumas. I learned Tolstoy suffered a stroke on a train journey. He was taken to a small room at a station and put into a bed, where he died. Just like my dream of the old man with a white beard in a bed. But that’s not all. Tolstoy, the greatest Russian romantic writer, passionately loved painting, and tried numerous times to paint but was frustrated with his results. Without wasting your time I can only tell you things about his life that made perfect sense and explained why I felt certain ways.

"I’m aware of people with nothing going on in their own lives who suddenly discover that they used to be someone important in ‘another life’, and of course I find that pathetic. I’m not going to run around saying I used to be Tolstoy. It’s improvable and unlikely. However, you have to admit, it was a pretty strange dream."

2

THE EVENT

The fish heads, Anton explained, must be rotten. The more stinky the better.

The following is a non-event. To my knowledge it did not happen yet. It may happen soon, or not at all. Anton has to find a gallery that will let him do it. Because it involves garbage, he is having trouble finding one to cooperate. Of course there is no real danger to the gallery. Anton has carefully planned out every particular with a systematic application of his theatrical and visionary abilities. He’s described to me what he intends to do in such detail it is somehow become part of my memories.

Is this what a false memory is?

Anton acted it out for me in his front room. He cut a dramatic figure in his white dinner jacket decorated with purple eyes. He was dressed in his publicity coat, as he often was when I came to see him. What with the bar and the round coffee table, he was inhibited from moving around as much as I felt he’d like, but while I sank into the vinyl couch and watched him perform, Anton managed to make me imagine a large art gallery.

Once and for all, I’m going to prove... Anton said to invisible spectators, ...that popular opinion is superior to sophisticated taste.

The event is going to be at a cutting edge gallery on Royal Street in New Orleans. I’ll just tell it now as Anton envisions it.

A small crowd waits impatiently. Among them are a television cameraman and a reporter from the Times Picayune. The crowd gathers around either side of a young man shouldering the heavy video camera. Attracted like moths to the powerful lights Anton has set up, tourists wander in from the street. They know something is happening. They see the camera and hope some celebrity is present. And he is.

In the center of the field of illumination is a green vinyl tarp. It contrasts with the polished red floor. The gallery owner is a sleek woman in a velvet pants suit. She looks nervous but helpful. She doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen.

The elegant lady anxiously watches a man lugging in an enormous black plastic garbage bag. The bag, fastened at the neck with a yellow twist tie, is bloated like the carcass of some stinking beast.

Anton poses beside a tall easel. It is the big one from his studio. On the enormous easel is a tiny picture covered with a drape of red velvet. Anton faces the street door. The crowd waits impatiently. The tarp is on the floor in front of them. Several men in the front of the crowd are poorly dressed. They look like extras from Les Miserables or workmen from Lang’s Metropolis, and seem nervous and out of place in an elegant gallery. The men wear denim work pants spotted with grime, utilitarian shirts and bad shoes. Anton has invited them for some specif Ic purpose.

When everything is ready Anton addresses the throng: Recently I was shocked to read that a gallery in San Francisco had an event where the artist did nothing but empty the contents of a bag of garbage on the floor. He paused for effect, affecting an indignant expression. The work was very well reviewed.

A titter passes over the crowd. The men in the work clothes laugh heartily.

Anton lifts an eyebrow. "I’m serious. I think it was the San Francisco Chronicle, probably the largest newspaper in the northwest, which wrote ‘this ode to garbage provides not only a remembrance of desuetude but a permutated apotheosis of disorganization.’"

There are no laughs this time.

I intend to prove, Anton summarizes, that common taste is superior to sophistication. That skill is superior to bad taste. He pulls away the velvet cloth. Revealed to all is what at first glance looks like a Renaissance painting. But of course it’s byAnton, an obsessively careful painting of an angel done so smoothly it looks polished. It is a tour de force example of technique and precision.

I offer you, Anton says, What I believe is art. When all eyes are studying the little painting Anton dramatically commands, Pour out the garbage!

The man holding the garbage bag looks nervously to the gallery owner for permission. That elegant lady, however, now looks rapt. There is a fleck of drool at the corner of her mouth. There is an urging murmur of anticipation from the crowd. The strobe from a tourist’s camera flashes off. Emboldened by all this and the prodding he gets from Anton, the man holding the heavy bag undoes the twist-tie and dumps the contents of the garbage bag onto the tarp. The mess falls onto the vinyl with a great stinking plop.

The cameraman with the television camera zooms in on the mound of garbage. Everyone can see a stinking mess of soiled paper, band-aids, and hairballs and open tin cans. Gravy and cranberry sauce drips and oozes among crumpled and stained wax cartons and slimy plastic wrap. Anton has probably embellished the contents before the bag was closed, because there are wriggling earth worms, some teeth and the torso of a naked vinyl doll, its mouth grinning in a sardonic countenance. Fish heads stare blindly from the mess as it settles.

Anton wears a triumphant expression, but still he is not finished. The crowd pushes forward to see, then repulsed by the smell, quickly draws back. The odor is something like an infected toe but a thousand times more powerful. A woman