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Whenever students asked Robert D'Arista what we should call him, he gave two choices: 'Professor D'Arista' or 'Maestro'. Behind his back, we called him 'The Big Gorgonzola'. I carry him within me always, especially when I paint. I hear him saying "don't undo five hundred years of painting by painting every little detail." He was a squinting, smoking, friendly man whose accent made him sound a little like Bela Lugosi. I used that voice when imitating something he told my painting class once, "Let's face it. When we paint, we hallucinate, no?"
I have no first memories of D'Arista. He was just another in a long list of names I had to remember, my drawing teacher for my first semester at American University. Everything was new: the buildings, cafeteria, classrooms, students and teachers. I had spent most of the previous decade in art classrooms at two different undergraduate schools, so while so much about A.U. was new, drawing in a classroom was old hat.
At first, D'Arista didn't seem much different from other teachers. We did gesture drawings to warm up and contour drawings to slow down. He left the classroom during long poses. Every so often, he'd swoop back in for a quick turn around the room and swoop out again. One day, he stopped at a student's easel, unpinned the drawing from the drawing board, ripped a small drawing from a corner of the page, tossed the larger part onto the floor and pinned the torn-out piece back onto the board before leaving the room without uttering a word. The student waited a moment before saying quietly - "I'll take that as a criticism".
To illustrate his teaching, D'Arista made frequent references to music, mythology, and history. He imitated trumpets when talking about a color that was garish. "Like so - braaaaaaaahhhhh". Discussing when to stop working on a painting, he explained grammar's perfect tense, used to describe an action that is complete, perhaps warning those obsessed with perfection that the path might lay elsewhere. He told us about a new warning system for jetliners. The computer voice was too calm; the pilots didn't respond quickly enough. They changed the computer's voice. D'Arista imitated the new voice, eyes wide, arms flailing and cigarette ashes flying through the air - "Stall Stall! The plane is stalling!"
On the first day of Composition class, he gave a lecture at the blackboard. "A very long time ago, before your sainted grandmother was born, a man lived in a cave, hm? And this man took a stick and drew a straight line in the dirt floor of his cave. [Draws line on blackboard] The man looked at it and thought it was very good. Then the man drew another line [draws again] at a right angle to the first. Then another and another and viola, he had drawn a perfect square. And the man thought this was the best thing that he had ever seen in his life."
In the course of that semester, he taught us about the inner square and the compositional grid used to hold paintings together and give them harmony. I wrote a song during that class called "I Won't Draw A Grid" to the tune of "I Won't Grow Up " from Peter Pan. I nervously sang it to him as he walked between classes. He didn't say anything but gave me a sidelong glance that told me he was concerned for my sanity.
He day he proclaimed during a lecture: "No lines into corners!" I called out 'why?' from the back of the room. He waved me up to the front of the class. While I stood next to him, he took a drag on his cigarette and examined me with a dour expression on his face. He said in measured tones; "If I were Perugino and you were the young Raffaelo, I would," - he drew his arm back as if to strike me - "give you a hit on your noggin. Now what was it you wanted to know?" I repeated my question. He said "because the eye leaves paintings by the corners," and gestured me back to my spot in the rear of the class.
When he was truly displeased, he raised neither arm nor voice. During my thesis year, a couple who lived on my block commissioned me to paint a small, oval portrait of them from a black and white photograph. The woman wanted her dress to be pink. When D'Arista made one of his passes through our graduate studios, my small painting with the confectionary color caught his eye. He pointed at it and asked me what it was. I told him what it was. He told me that he didn't ever want to see it again.
An immaculate craftsman in the production of his art, he was careless with power tools. While preparing for a show, he cut the tip off his right index finger- his painting hand - with a power saw. His wife put the tip on ice and rushed him to the hospital. While the surgeon performed five hours of microsurgery to reattach bone, ligament, tendon and nerve, D'Arista lectured on medieval history. After the operation, he said he was disappointed that the doctor hadn't held up his end of the conversation.
He was three-quarters teacher and one-quarter priest. Being perpetually short of money, I was interested when a friend of a friend proposed a green card marriage so she could get U.S. citizenship. I could live rent-free in her condo for 6 months and she would pay me five thousand dollars and buy me a car. At first, this sounded like a dream come true, but the arrangement began to trouble me. I went to him for advice. He asked if I had taken any money from her yet. I said no. He informed me that my soul had, most likely, not yet been harmed. When I had a problem with another member of the faculty, I went to D'Arista's office to talk to him. Not wishing to disparage one of his colleagues, I hedged: I told him I didn't agree with the other professor's teaching philosophy. He said, "Really? That's curious. I wasn't aware that he had one."
I spent my last summer at A.U. as his teaching assistant for a painting class. I imagined he and I discussing the students at length. I arrived early the first morning and found him in his office. He told me he would take Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I would take Tuesday and Thursday. I was dumbfounded and asked him what I should teach them. He told me to demonstrate the right way to lay out a palette. That was the extent of that summer's formal instruction on the art of teaching art.
When he lectured at the blackboard, he used a large wooden compass so old that the screw didn't hold the arms at an even distance, making his arcs wobbly. When the summer ended, the class threw the usual party. I collected money and bought him a new wooden compass. Visibly moved when I presented it to him, he made a charming speech saying that we painters were the only true people on earth and everyone else was only here to serve our needs.
Lowell Gilbertson