Correction

The excerpt below taken from my Favorite Art Things of 2004 post includes the presence of a person who I can't confirm was there, and one member of the group insists he was not.

"Sitting at a table with Ruth Bolduan, Joe Fyfe, Julie Heffernan, and David Reed as they argued about art. That was really great. I think Richard Roth was there too but he didn't seem to take any position, at least until David Reed had left and Joe tore into Reed's "paintings-in-movies" thing and R.R. made weak attempts to both agree with Joe and defend Reed. Joe won."

That is the way I remember what happened. Joe says David wasn't there. I don't want to speak to Richard anymore. Ruth can't remember any of it. A student I spoke to doesn't remember David being present, but not enough to say for sure. Haven't yet spoken to Julie or David.

So it looks like I owe everyone an apology if it turns out David wasn't actually present - and it looks increasingly likely that he wasn't. It has been confirmed that within a period of less than a week I was at a small dinner with David Reed in which Joe Fyfe was mentioned, and at a post-Heffernan lecture lunch with Joe Fyfe at which David Reed was discussed. It is very possible that I combined these two experiences into one, or dreamed the combo and am recalling that. I'm embarassed and apologize to all concerned, especially to Joe for apparently putting words in his mouth.

The good thing though is that I can now claim the disavowed Joe Fyfe paintings-in-movies thoughts as my own. Weird contexts can be great (see my previous posts on "the sculpture under the overpass" or the "Stingel in the hallway with the same texture as the nearby windowshade"), but those Reed paintings inserted into Hitchcock movies were only interesting at the time as novelty, they don't hold up as anything more than that - for me at least. Fortunately, Reed doesn't need the cute gimmick, the paintings are more than good enough.