Once Again- When The Capitalist World Was Young-With Dutch And Flemish Paintings In Mind

By Brad Fox, Jr.

They say that Allan Jackson, a guy who grew up in North Adamsville south of Boston and a guy who as the neighborhood guys he used to hang out with used to say was “from hunger”  which seems self-explanatory, was kind of weird about stuff like politics and art. Stuff that seemed weird to me anyway when it got explained to me by my father, same name as me and hence junior, one night when he decided that I needed one, a drink or two, and, two, to be straightened out about Allan. Straightened out meaning that he would do his royal highness imperative thing with me which he has done with me since I was a kid when he thought I had something, sometimes anything wrong.       

Dad’s authority for the straightening out was that he was one of the guys who knew Allan in those “from hunger” days back in the 1960s when the whole neighborhood, including the Fox family, was wedded to that same condition. He felt since he had already straightened me out ad infinitum on the Fox family “from hunger” story when I was about eight he could skip that and run Allan’s story. I have to tell you though that Bradley Fox, Senior pulled himself up from under by the bootstraps and went on to run a couple of small high tech specialty plants which were contracted to Raytheon to make materials for their various very lucrative defense contracts and while he sold off those businesses when he retired Raytheon is still working off the public teat with those lucrative, very lucrative defense contracts. I also have to tell you that except for a couple of months out in San Francisco in 1967 when the Summer of Love for his generation was in full bloom at a time when his whole crowd was guilt-tripped into going out West by a mad man guy they hung around with whom Dad always called Scribe he went straight-arrow from high school to college (two years), marriage, kids, a decent and “not from hunger” life passed on to his kids and then that fairly recent retirement.

That combination strong work ethic and straight arrow family man would characterize most of his hang-out youthful crowd with the big exception of Scribe. And Allan who followed him for a while anyway before Scribe got too weird, got catch up with a cocaine addiction and fell down, was helped falling down by two straight bullets in Mexico back in the 1970 in circumstances Dad would not talk about, won’t talk about even now since he says it hurts him too much to think about Scribe’s fate, a fate that except for a few happy turns might have befallen him. So the “Allan following Scribe” part consisted of essentially two things-a visceral hatred of current day capitalism partially derived through an old-fashioned now somewhat obsolete except for academics Marxism, you know, greedy capitalist (my father to a certain extent although he was not, is not,  greedy) versus downtrodden workers AND a love of painting from the early days of capitalism-when it was beginning to come full bloom in places like London, Amsterdam and Antwerp-painters like Rembrandt, Hals, Ruebens.    

Dad said it was hard to say when Scribe and therefore Allan got into radical politics since no way in high school when they all formed lasting bonds did those guys have such ideas. They would have been run out of town, would emphatically not have been hanging around Harry’s Variety Store with Dad and the other guys spouting “commie” rag stuff in those Cold War beat the Russians to a pulp days. What they all cared about, what they all talked about was cars, not having cars the fate of most of them during high school, girls, and either not having them of how to get into their pants, Dad’s expression not mine, booze, and how to get somebody old enough to “buy” for them, and endlessly rock and roll music, and how to use that hot rock and roll to get a girl into a car, get her softened up with booze and in the mood to do what he called “do the do” which I think is pretty self-explanatory as well. So maybe girls was all they really cared about in the end and the other stuff was just talk to talk. One way or another Scribe and his ardent follower, his “girl” some of the guys would say just to do a little “fag” baiting long before even guys like Dad got hip that being gay was okay, that they were not the devils incarnate, were as hyped to the chasing girls scene as all the others. 

Dad figured that what probably happened to turn them around was their getting drafted and sent to Vietnam (neither events at the same time but close together) and when they returned they were very different in ways Dad couldn’t explain but different mainly because neither man wanted to talk about the stuff they saw, did, or saw others do in what they would always call “Nam. So they started hanging around with college guys and gals, maybe others too, all young and bright-eyed over in Cambridge the other side of Boston. Started going to things called study groups and such. The long and short of it was before long they were longed-haired, bearded hippie-looking guys just like a million other guys around Boston at the time Dad said. Getting arrested for this and that, stuff called civil disobedience not robberies or mayhem or anything like it. Kept talking about class struggle, kicking the bosses’ asses, decaying capitalism, imperialism all the stuff you read about in a Government class and then let drop like a lead balloon after an exam. That lasted like I said until Scribe fell down and Allan went back to school on the G.I. Bill.    

The craving for Dutch and Flemish painting Dad said was easier to explain, at least he thought so. It seemed like this Allan was a holy goof, a wacko to me in our old neighborhood terms out in the leafy suburbs. Dad said, and this is the way Allan explained it to him so take it for what its worth since you know I think it is the uttering of a holy goof. According to this Marxist schematic even though now capitalism (now now or fifty years ago now it doesn’t matter since it is still around) has turned in on itself, has lost its energy, has become a brake on serious human progress that was not always the case. In the early days when it was giving feudalism the boot it was what they called “progressive,” meaning it was better than feudalism and so did things then that could be supported in historical terms by latter day radicals. Okay, Allan, whatever you say.

Here’s where I think it really gets weird, art, all the cultural expressions, get reflected in the emerging new system of organizing society so when Rembrandt say painted those prosperous dour-looking merchants, town burghers, and shop owners (and their wives, also dour, see above. usually in separate portraits showing that had enough real money to pay for two expensive paintings or else couldn’t stand being in the same room together for the long sittings) he was reflecting the bright light times of this new system that would wind up dominating the world. According to Dad Allan and another guy went, I think he said, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Allan where he flipped out over these odd-ball portrait or domestic scene paintings in the 16^th and 17^th century Dutch-Flemish section. Said, and Dad quoted this, that was when capitalism was young and fresh and you could feel it in almost every painting. Also said while the stuff wouldn’t pass art muster today it was like catnip back then. Like I said a holy goof. And if you don’t believe me go, if you are near a major museum which would have such art, and check it out for yourself because young or old, Rembrandt or not, this stuff is old hat as far as I am concerned.