The studios had changed, but not the loneliness of struggling and arguing with himself unobserved. His dealer and the twenty-something East Village artists, the exuberant boys and girls who had visited his studio and danced with him at the Palladium, had perished of AIDS or overdoses or moved on to Soho galleries. Neo-Expressionism fell out of favor. The colors of Arnold’s palette—crimson, Venetian red, Mars black, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cobalt blue—were replaced by inkjet colors. Then painting itself, the human mark, the fallibility of touch, fell out of favor.

“Am I out of my mind to continue painting?” Arnold would ask as he continued to paint. “I’m like a medieval monk working on an illuminated manuscript after the printing press was invented.”