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I need to emphasize here that not only was Arnold drawn to youth, but that youth was drawn to Arnold. Within minutes, he vanquished their bemused expressions with the intensity of his concentration: He did not so much look at art as dissect it. He walked from portrait to portrait, cocked his head t…

We were both in a fervent state of uncharted creativity—me for the first time, him for the second. We pulled all-nighters and still managed to make love afterward. We critiqued each other’s work—brutally, lavishly, meticulously—not as teacher and pupil, but as collaborators. If I saw something lack…

Nudity is different than nakedness. To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others. In Arnold’s life drawing classes, I did not learn to draw a naked body; I learned to draw a nude. He taught me to seek out the body’s imperfections and irregularities to make my drawings dyna…

That night, Arnold sat me down at his typewriter because he could see that holding a pencil had prompted me to confuse handwriting with drawing. He assured me that if I could learn to draw, I could learn to write. His unshakable confidence in my intellect quieted my terrors. An age-appropriate boyf…

During his own crisis of faith, when he had let his paints go dry for a decade, he had written a novel, a Henry Miller–like romp about a middle-aged artist who sleeps with his models. An editor at Knopf had encouraged him, but after three drafts and no contract, Arnold put it away. Soon after we be…