The Latecomer

In The Latecomers, when Salo encounters a modern painting in a museum in Germany, his reaction is instant and visceral: “the floor playfully darted away, then flipped overhead, and down he went, hitting first with a bony hip and then an elbow and finally a cheek, which landed in near repose along with the rest of his head” (19). Although Salo has grown up with art, he has never experienced this connection before, and eventually acquires the painting. Although the painter’s name is not immediately mentioned, Jean Hanff Korelitz makes it clear that this is the work of Cy Twombly, a well-known Abstract Expressionist painter.

The painting that Salo sees characterizes some of Twombly’s most famous work, as well as exemplifying many of the characteristics of Abstract Expressionism: “The painting was large and square. It had a kind of fawn-colored background nearly obscured by frantic, scribbled loops of orange and red, relentless, swirling in an exhausting scrawl” (20). Abstract Expressionism is characterized by large scale and the appearance of spontaneity, and the movement revolves around the ideals of freedom and expression. Salo’s attraction to this school of art shows that, like the movement itself, he is modern, and breaking away from his more traditional roots. Salo is also attracted to the art because it expresses the passion and emotion that he buries so deeply.

Although Twombly came after famous Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko, he both embodied the movement, and changed it. When Salo acquired his Twombly in the early 1970s, artists like Pollock were already sought after and their work was expensive. Salo, however, continues to acquire paintings by little-known artists who will later be recognized and valued by the art world.

Later in the novel, in 1993, Johanna attempts to connect with Salo by arranging to meet him at the Outsider Art Fair in New York City. The Outsider Art Fair is an actual show that happens annually in New York, and the first one took place in 1993. An outsider artist is one who is self-taught and typically works in isolation, without reference to or influence from the art world. The term was coined in 1972, and also refers to the ideas behind the art, which often represent the fringes of mainstream society.

At the Outsider Art Fair, Stella mentions both Henry Darger and Achilles Rizzoli, two real-life outsider artists. Salo and Stella reconnect at the Outsider Art Fair—she is a documentary filmmaker working on a project about unknown outsider artist, Achilles Rizzoli. Her booth, however, is deserted because everyone in attendance is absorbed by the work of Henry Darger.

Darger lived in Chicago and worked as a custodian until his death in 1973. His art was discovered late in his life, when his landlords found his work in his home. He worked mainly in watercolors, drawings, and collage, and his most famous work is In the Realms of the Unreal, over 15,000 pages of narrative and illustration of an elaborate mythology in which children fight their oppressors. At the Outsider Art Fair, Stella is complaining that everyone is “on the second floor, where the Dargers are. Apparently, no one can resist a female child with a penis and a sword” (69). Stella, on the other hand, is fascinated by another outsider artist, Achilles Rizzoli, who was relatively unknown in 1993.

Rizzoli was an architectural draftsman in San Francisco, and this training sets him apart from many outsider artists. His work is characterized by, as Stella puts it, “individual buildings [as] real people, transmogrified into architecture” (70). When Salo looks at them more closely, he sees that “[t]he largest ones, the people-buildings, were fascinating; each had a grand title and few sentences of praise, sometimes conveyed by or interspersed with puns, about the person who’d been remade into stucco or stone” (71). Although he was a professionally trained draftsman, Rizzoli’s unique perspective developed without reference from the art world, placing him in the outsider art movement. By pulling actual movements and artists into the text, Hanff Korelitz offers readers additional information about Salo and Stella’s passions and, therefore, their characters.