Tony, by many, is seen as an always happy camper. He was not: he was troubled, fearful and often severely depressed. Not being a saint, I was often over the brink of exhaustion and exasperated. Tony saw a shrink, who once told me: you could walk on foot to Scherpenheuvel and walk three times around the basilica, and still you couldn't do things right for him... He felt it as a load to be called a genius and to have to suffer the 'consequences' while others happily and carelessly went about their life. Sometimes he would long for a God, for divine intervention, but could not really believe. This 1997 painting, actually two self-portraits and a text presented as a tryptic, was shown at his Retrospective in Hoboken. Red Egg is a clear expression of such a mood.
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Tony had his lighter moments (days, weeks), many of them.
I can remember discussing with him the inevitable analyses of his paintings that would be done by others. We laughed together at the pompous pedants/critics who professed to know, and proffer to students (or any who would listen), the precise meaning of a brush stroke, or a word, or a musical note, and why the artist, writer, creator used that particular one instead of any of the infinite other possibilities.
While we talked, he painted, and I saw him grab his crotch as he touched the spot of white reflection on the eye of a beautiful girl he was painting.
'There', he said, 'I wonder how many critics will guess that I had my hand on my dick while I did that eye, and if they do, whether they'll think I had an itch or was getting a hard-on. And some simple soul will say 'That painting looks good and feels right, and it's beautiful' and they'll be the one who knows why I did it'.
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