Mark continues his conversation with his brother, Tom Golden, who shares some of his recollections of meeting a number of artists while working first at Bocour, and then Golden Artist Colors.
Mark Golden: Hey, everyone, and welcome once again to my podcast I call Paint Stories. I’m Mark Golden, Co-founder of Golden Artist Colors with my father and mother, Sam and Adele Golden, and my wife Barbara. Today I’m once again joined by my brother Tom, who is coming to us from his home in neighboring town of Pittsfield, New York.
Tom, when we first spent some time reminiscing about your work at the Bocour shop you shared some great stories about being in the factory and working alongside Dad and Uncle Leonard. I know Dad and Leonard loved it. That so many artists visited their paint shop and factory in Manhattan. I was hoping that you could share some of your recollections of meeting with any artist while working there.
Tom Golden: Yeah. No, absolutely. As a matter of fact, when you just introduced us, I thought you were going to say that Dad and Leonard loved to have them working with them, but no.
Mark: Do you remember what artists you met there at the shop, or that visited the shop while you were there?
Tom: Absolutely. Some artists I met just in passing and maybe a conversation or two, or maybe a luncheon over corned beef or pastrami sandwiches, and some I met and spent a lot of time with. Really lovely time.
I met Zero Mostel. The first time was at the 52nd Street plant. I think that’s the first time I actually came to meet him. He came to the plant and in a resounding way introduced himself to all of us. An elevator came from the ground floor, freight elevator, and when the elevator opened on this particular day, someone came out and smashed with a cane several fifty-gallon empty drums and announced, is anybody here? Is anybody here? And that was Zero Mostel. His grand entrance. Big, robust guy with a big smile and very beckoning and warm, but his announcement was overwhelming. And everyone took notice and clearly the persons who’ve heard him before on his entrance knew what this was all about, but to me it was a totally novel grand entrance for a great performer.
He was a lovely, lovely man, and interesting, and at that point he was already a movie and certainly a Broadway star.
Mark: When you met Zero he had a cane. I think that was because he had a serious bus accident.
Tom: I do not. I thought he had a cane just to bang empty fifty-gallon drums and announce his entrance.
Mark: It was that bus accident that he got to meet Dr. Joseph Wilder. I know you met him as well.
Tom: I met Joe Wilder at the shop who was an orthopedic surgeon. I think it was at Mt. Sinai, a hospital for joint diseases. But I also know I did meet him at his office because I remember a good looking man with his white frock on, and I think I went there perhaps for a physical exam, having needed my joints examined. I’d met him also at his home, at his apartment with his wife, visiting his studio. Of course, at that time or one of those times I had occasion to see these major portraits that he had done of athletic stars. Beautifully done portraits of world-renowned athletes.
Mark: Actually was his introduction to Zero Mostel with Zero’s bus accident. Wilder was able to save his leg, and Zero Mostel had been painting to relax and he suggested this might be something that Wilder might want to follow. So Zero introduced Wilder to Leonard and they became best friends as well.
Tom: One of the things that’s extremely important about Joe Wilder in my life was that everyone likes to know the most famous doctor in some field in the whole universe. Joe Wilder was presented and perhaps was the major orthopedic surgeon that ever lived.
Mark: He is obviously a pretty talented guy. Real Renaissance man that became a talented painter later in life. You also had occasion to go visit Chaim Gross.
Tom: Yeah. Chaim, to you, with a Gentile accent. Chaim to me was that east New York Brooklyn accent. Chaim Gross, I met him through Label, Uncle Leonard, on one occasion. He said he was going up to Provincetown for a holiday weekend, and he asked me to come along. I was once again thrilled to go anywhere with him. I was most particularly proud amongst all of the possible nephews and one or two nieces he would choose to take me on a holiday with him.
So we went out to Provincetown. I’d never seen the place. It was everything that I had been told. The artists. The looks. The ocean. The charmingness of it all. And we stayed at Chaim Gross’s home and as a consequence I was also able to meet his daughter, Mimi Gross who at the time I think was a teenager also, and she was staying with her Dad, and they lived in a house sort of on a sand-duney section of Provincetown. And it was just a very gracious, charming afternoon that I spent with Mr. Gross and his daughter, Uncle Label and myself. Chaim I think was friends with Ahron Ben-Shmuel, the sculptor, and Ahron’s wife Jo Jenks, also a renowned American sculptor, both of them having major pieces in major museums and Rockefeller Estates. So yeah, I think it was through Chaim that I met Ben-Shmuel and subsequently have had any number of occasions to socialize with Ahron and Jo at their home on Gramercy Park in the city.
Mark: Was she still doing sculpture at the time, or later ––
Tom: No, no.
Mark: In the ‘60s she was doing weaving.
Tom: Yeah. No, she at that point I think was doing weaving. She no longer was actually doing sculpting, and actually Ahron was no longer, as far as I recall, doing sculpture pieces, too. He was primarily into painting, and therein lays a bondedness between Ahron and Dad. They were very tight, and Dad was there to satisfy each and every one of Ahron’s desires which he frequently expressed in about the most vulgar way possible, but always with a smile. But every first word would be some kind of a snide curse word followed by a second one, and then the request to be made and terminated by some thank you in slanderous terms, but with a smile and kiss and affection. A very unique man. Bright. Brilliant. Talented. Volatile. Emotional.
And married to a woman who fortunately had handrails that she could grab onto in their apartment, because he would be blasting off every thirty seconds. The contrast was so stark. This very prim, proper, attractive woman married to this volcano ready to erupt at any moment.
Mark: Any other artists that you actually met at the shop?
Tom: I met Mara McAfee. A young woman artist who came to the shop on a day, and I happened to come to the shop that same day. I was looking around for possible theatrical work. This was in the early – what was it? The early ‘60s I guess. And it was lunchtime so it was time to go over to my Dad’s shop on 52nd Street and have him to buy me some lunch. I went there and there I went into the factory and in one of the back halls my Dad was standing next to a very lovely looking redhead woman, 5’7”, 5’8”. A statuesque beautiful looking woman who was holding some paintings. Clearly she must have been talking with Dad to perhaps barter paint for paintings. Went over, introduced myself, she introduced herself to me and that was Mara McAfee, an artist who’s living in the city. She had gone to the University of Minnesota, Bachelor of Fine Arts. After that she spent some period of time – I don’t know, months or years – as a showgirl in Las Vegas, so I can understand that she was stunning.
And we met, we talked for a bit, and out of the blue she said to me – this is before the corned beef sandwiches – she said what are you doing today? And I said, well, I was going to have a corned beef sandwich, but forget it. What do you mean? And she said well, I’m looking for a young man I need for a series of paintings. Are you up to it? I said absolutely I’m up to it. Whatever you say. And that’s how we met. And we had a relationship from then on for oh, several months where I modeled for several paintings of hers. Got to know her personally, and a bright, humorous, funny, charming, charming woman. She had a studio in her apartment in the ‘80s up on the East side. It was a lovely, lovely relationship.
Mark: Right. She was quite an accomplished artist. She had one of her early pop artist exhibits Pop! Goes the Easel included artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine.
Tom: Yeah. She also became a renowned illustrative artist and had a major feature on National Lampoon, the magazine where she did the cover feature for that, and was making some money as a commercial artist, and at the same time was doing formal paintings, and she actually did major formal, classical paintings. A great sense of humor. Did a whole series of paintings of Nancy Drew crime photographer. And then did a series of paintings including the picture cards and the deck of cards, and one of them she featured Tom Golden, along with the king of spades and real king, and Tommy Golden.
She passed away as a very young woman. Truly a great loss to us all.
Mark: You had a chance to meet Jean Masson. Was that down in Florida or was that ––
Tom: Yeah, I think I met Jean perhaps at least once or twice up north, but primarily I came to spend much more time with Jean Masson at his home in south Miami because Suzanne and I moved down there to do my doctoral work at the University of Miami, and as a consequence I got to know Jean and his wife, Helen, and his son. We saw one another frequently, both socially and more formally in the studios. Also, one of these interesting, bright, learned and humorous spontaneous men who you got so much more out of, I’m going to be honest, just discussing painting and the world, and the scene. Jean Masson is truly a great man, and I was fortunate to have met him and spent private time with him.
Now Jean was at the University of Miami leading the art program there. He invited Leonard Bocour years earlier to do his regular lecture, and one of the students that was there was Russell Woody, and Russell Woody became one of the most well-known lecturers for Liquitex years later. He got inspired by Leonard’s lecture in materials and became a really material geek and well known in the industry.
Mark: Were you still down in Florida when Dad decided to start back with a business in New Berlin?
Tom: No, I was already up here when Dad and Mom decided to start Golden Artist Colors.
Mark: Did you already have a place in Pittsfield?
Tom: We had bought that in 1974, a couple of years after the folks got their place in Columbus. They’d already had their home here in Pittsfield.
Mark: So what did you think when you heard that Mom and Dad were going to start up a paint company in the barn?
Tom: The fact that they said that, okay? Dad was retired. He went around, smoking a cigar or walking downtown in New Berlin. I wasn’t concerned about him not working. But I wasn’t surprised I guess at them starting a business because ––
Mark: Even at sixty-six years old?
Tom: Even at – oh, they were sixty-six? I would have been surprised if I’d realized how old they were. Thank you very much. It was because they had a history of doing things with one another. That early on egg store. They’re working at Frankie’s market in Lodi, New Jersey selling clothing. Dad’s working in Jamaica Queens selling brassieres and panties in salons. They always have this entrepreneurial bent. So that they decided to go into business and both of them seem simpatico about it. Sounds like something good. And I probably said oh, and then what’s for dinner? Something like that.
Mark: I’m going to skip ahead, but I know in 1990 I’d heard rumblings of European countries were going to be coming together in the European Union. We thought it might be a great time to really understand this market. Do you remember me asking if you’d be interested in making some trips to Europe to understand the marketplace?
Tom: Oh, I remember it. Actually it was one of the more memorable moments in my entire life. When you asked me to get out of town. No, of course I remember it. It was one interesting, and I was very pleased that you thought that I could possibly be helpful. And with that suggestion you also told me that there was a governmental program, or U.S. government program, like a trade association.
Mark: The U.S. Chamber. Right.
Tom: U.S. Chamber program given at the Twin Towers, and would I be interested in going and taking this course. I think it was a one-day or couple of days’ course to learn about trade and working in Europe and offering, you know, becoming a commercial product overseas. I said sure. So I did. I went to the program in the city. Several dozens of other persons in this lecture hall. And a gentleman gave us these major – you know, they had these huge, loose-leaf folders with thousands of pages of information, and the binders are really big.
Anyway, so after being bound up for the session, I listened and it was intensive. There was nothing particularly of interest other than I knew I should take the program. And then near the end was this sort of awakening. A comment that he made that made the whole day. I don’t know how he started, but it went like this.
One of the important things for you to do in opening up a market in Europe is to go. And he said, is to go. And I said to myself, sounds right to me. And that was it. Of course you’ve got to go. And with that, come back to you and we made the arrangements. You had suggested to me how we should market the product, which was extremely gracious, but what did we know? What we were interested in I think mutually so was to introduce the world to the acrylic paints being made by Golden Artist Colors in New Berlin, New York. And we did it.
Mark: I know you and Suzanne were talking about getting a place in France and this is a way that we could do that. If there really is a union in 1993 and we’re going to start some kind of other entity in Europe, maybe this could be the start of it.
Tom: Yeah. Along that line now that you mentioned Suzanne. I did go back when you mentioned to me about possibly doing something – and possibly working for the company – and I said well let me tell Suzanne. The whole idea was to open up an office in Paris. I already at the time had a practice as a Psychologist. And I went home to Suzanne and she was interested in it, but we figured out what the story was. The next weekend I went back to you. I was already in sort of semi-training learning more about the product, and I said I’d love to do it, but we’ll bankrupt the company the day you hire me. The costs are going to be excessive, but I’d love to do it anyway, and we decided on a schedule. We decided on a fee. We decided on costs, the prices, and that I would go over as often as I could, not doing wrong by my patient population. And I did. One year as many as I think fifty, sixty days I was overseas in Europe. At times Suzanne came with me. Other times I went on my own and it was frankly quite successful, and a joy. A joy not just being in Europe. A joy representing what I know to be the best paint. Not just acrylic paint. Just the best paint available. And a company that was unique amongst artists’ material trade industry.
Mark: And do you remember meeting some of the folks on the first trip in France? Like Édouard Adam?
Tom: I knew how to travel in Europe, but I wasn’t supposed to spend seven days in restaurants. So anyway, I had a satchel with paint, and I had all the materials. But before I went, I asked Paul Jenkins, a very world renowned artist and a very, very dear friend. A dear friend of my Mom, my Dad, the Golden family. I asked Paul where might I go in Paris to sell the product. I didn’t want to just go to a major department store or a local candy store. And he told me several shops in Paris to go to, and I was also on that first trip going to go to London, and he named a couple, three or four shops in London. Each of the shops would know Paul Jenkins because he frequented them to buy products. He knew the owners. And that’s when I started. My first trip was in Paris. I went to four shops. Édouard Adam, A D A M was like maybe number two shop. Sennelier, Dominic Sennelier’s shop on the rivers end. And Gattegno presented a product to three shops in Paris, sold all three, went to London a couple of days later. There were three shops there. I sold to two out of the three I think. We had the product implanted. It was very successful. I called up Mark. I told him what we had done and it was a joy to represent the company.
Just a brief anecdote. Édouard Adam. Elderly gentleman. Older than myself at the time. He had an apartment above the store. An elegant, beautiful, beautiful shop with very little commercial-looking about the French artist material shop. Particularly the ones for professionals.
Anyway, I was upstairs in his apartment doing the sales pitch, and I finish showing him the products and the color charts that my Mom had made. Everything was unique. And I’m ready to go, and he’s placed an order, and I said oh, Mr. Adam – we spoke in French. I said oh, I forgot! The gels. We have a whole line of gels. And he said what? And I described them briefly. I ran down to the car, opened up the trunk, and I took out – we had a hand-painted, beautiful, beautiful chart that had representations of each of the dozen gels. I came back to the apartment, and we were sitting opposite of one another, and there was a cocktail between us, and I laid this chart on the table, and I said these are the gels that I forgot. And what he said to me – he said put them as part of the order. The look of this color chart was so attractive, so infectious. The look of the colors. The way it was presented you could not help but if not use it to paint with, you could eat it, because they were all non-toxic.
Mark: I remember visiting the Sennelier shop and one of the artists was buying whole quarts of paint at the shop, and it was Terence Donovan.
Tom: Oh, the English photographer. Right?
Mark: Right.
Tom: I think I met him with you on that occasion until we met again maybe in London. I’m not sure.
Mark: We met again when you got into the wrong side of his sports car.
Tom: Oh, yeah. The wrong side of his sports car, because the British forget where to put the steering wheel. What can I tell you? I got in on the side of the car where the steering wheel is not supposed to be, and I crawled across – like a grown adult crawling across the seat, over the stick shift, and I got stuck with the stick shift and everything.
Mark: Terence was obviously an important photographer, but he also was an abstract painter, but probably most well-known for his Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love video that he created, and Simply Irresistible. He was at the store and I remember him sharing a story with us because he couldn’t get all the products, he had to buy them in France.
Tom: Part of that anecdote was you make a great shovel in Texas. Your market – your market is so huge in the United States, so you sell millions of shovels, you don’t think that the quality and the functionality of that shovel will be wanted elsewhere in the world, but it is, and you are.
Mark: I don’t remember what trip you took, but it was to John Jones Art Center. Do you remember selling ––
Tom: Oh, Jason was there. John Jones. This was in London.
Mark: I'm pretty sure that they were the folks that originally introduced the product to David Hockney.
Tom: Oh, that may have been the case. Sure. Absolutely.
Mark: How did you meet Charles Zenderoudi?
Tom: I don’t know if we met in New York or we met in Paris. I think we met in New York, but I’m not exactly sure the occasion. We’ve met so many times, Charles and myself, at shows of his. He’s a painter, but particularly, a world renowned Iranian painter.
Mark: He was one of the pioneers and the earliest kind of artists to incorporate Arabic calligraphy elements into his artwork.
Tom: Whenever he came to New York we had dinner, dinner with one another. Sometimes he came with his wife. One time or two he came with his son. And we’ve seen one another several times in Paris. In fact, just recently ––
Mark: He stayed up at your home?
Tom: Right. Actually I’ve been much more hospitable to him than he’s been to me. He stayed at my place up at the farm here when he’s visited the factory. That’s an important aspect of Golden Artist Colors. Mark. Particularly Barbara. The folks when they were still alive – and myself – is that we’ve had very nice, comfortable, informative, interesting personal episodes with many of the painters that we have spoken about during these podcasts. In that sense we’ve been quite fortunate not only to appreciate the quality and the work that these people do, but get to know them on a more personal basis has been one of the joys of being a Golden.
Mark: I think one of the things that’s been so exciting now with the artist residency is letting that relationship grow with the entire family has been really exciting. To have these artists allow us into their lives. I know they all look forward, Tom, to when you bring them crepes in the morning.
Tom: Yeah. That’s a rather critical aspect of the program, because we were concerned about what they would eat in the morning-time.
Mark: And I think food is great way to create relationships. That’s been a lot of great meals with some wonderful artists. You also met with Bill Pettit and his wife Geri, right?
Tom: Yeah. When we first visited the folks up here in Columbus maybe a half a mile away down the road, Bill Pettit had a farm, he and his wife. They were very dear friends with Mom and Dad. They were sort of the first young couple to befriend the folks when they moved up to this area.
Mark: I think it was Bill and Geri having a place up here that folks went a little bit further west to Chenango County to look at real estate.
Tom: They’d known Bill outside of the city.
Mark: Yep.
Tom: I see. Right.
Mark: Yep. As an artist. He and Ronnie Landfield would visit the shops. I know he knew Bill Pettit. I’m pretty sure it was Bill that suggested that Dad take a look at property up in this area.
Were there other artists that I missed, Tom, that you’ve met?
Tom: Paul Woofenden is a British gentleman who had immigrated to France many years ago as a young Englishman. Eventually married Josianne, a French woman who had two children, a daughter and a son. Always painted and had a studio.
Anyway, in Paris in an apartment near Montmartre. So I got to know Paul. We got to be, and still are to this very, very dear friends. A brilliant, Englishman. A raconteur. Extremely knowledgeable of the history of art. A brilliant linguist. His wife recently passed away, and we have phone contact on a fairly regular basis.
Mark: You also introduced us to Marthijn de Groot whom you met in Amsterdam.
Tom: Exactly. Oh, Marthijn de Groot. An abstract sort of experimentalist. A very, very interesting young man. Effervescent. Entertaining as can be. Grander than life and everything about him, and Marthijn de Groot. One of my trips to Amsterdam he said to me, Tom, I’m doing a sort of exhibition, but an exhibition during a concert of a group that were doing all of the Abba music in a major concert hall. A couple thousand people. And on the stage was a singing group, big orchestra, and in a big plastic leucite cage was Marthijn de Groot. Dungarees, bare-chested, with five-gallon buckets of Golden Artist Colors, and used canvases. And then in this sort of musicality dance ballet movement, he’d swoosh and splash paint onto the canvas and smear it again, and then take that canvas and set it aside and put up another empty canvas. All not necessarily in rhythm to the music, but as an entertaining aspect. It was just a thrilling, thrilling evening as only Marthijn can do it.
Mark: Tom, thanks for sharing the kind of connections that have meant so much to all of us that you’ve been able to bring to the company.
Tom: I think the connectedness, not just with individuals, but with the world of art, and what it means not just to us, but what it means as frankly a salvation, as a clarity, as a hope for all of us this world that we call art.
Mark: That’s pretty big, Tom.
Tom: Well, it’s a pretty big world.
Mark: If you’d like more information about Golden Artist Colors, just sign up for our newsletter by going to JustPaint.org and you can subscribe for free and you can learn more about our brands: GOLDEN Acrylics, Williamsburg Oils and our new QoR Watercolors. Hope to see you there!
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