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Les Barany Tribute
Leslie, I miss you every day! Throughout our fifteen-year friendship, I often wished that I had met you earlier. In the late 50s I went to Pershing Junior High School, right across the street from your house. We couldn’t have been in the same class, since you were attending Yeshiva (confirming that “separate but equal” education facilities were just fine). But we might have passed each other in the street, who knows? Trying to remember when we did meet, I went through the hundreds of messages in my Barany email folder, and reviewed my first message to you in January 2008. It began with “Yeah, it’s been a while. Your business card finally surfaced,” which reminded me that our first encounter was at 3 of Cups, the favorite late-night hangout for the cool kids, where we first engaged in mutually fascinating conversation. Pleasantly surprised to find that we had many friends in common, our friendship blossomed. When you showed me the Concentration Camp number you had tattooed on your arm in memory of a friend of the family, I knew I had met a formidable man indeed. For the 40th Anniversary of the Woodstock festival held in that year, you naturally knew the promoter so were able to secure free admission and parking to the sold-out event, and we enjoyed the first of our road trips together. There followed years of my being invited to countless art events, and being introduced to myriad friends of yours. When I posted photos taken on my visit to the Giger Museum in 2009, you diligently provided informational captions with titles and dimensions for each one, ever attentive to detail. You broadened my perspective of the art world, and I tried my best to be your “computer guru.” Our finest time together was attending the Giger Museum’s 20th Anniversary celebration in Gruyère, and visiting Zurich and Giger’s incredible backyard. You were always eager to introduce mutual friends you thought should know each other, a human catalyst connecting the dots in your vast collection of people. Back home, in recent years, we got together more regularly, not just for events. We’d often “call a meeting of the Joint Chiefs”, and get together with our friend George to discuss life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness over dinner. You had that rare combination of being a wonderful story-teller (with SO many stories!), as well as a good listener. Beyond the social and artistic times together, perhaps the most treasured aspect of our friendship was as a political ally, something increasingly rare in these divisive times. Having escaped Hungary as a child with your family in the brutal year of 1956, you’re among those who have lived under the yoke of Communist rule, with an acute awareness of and aversion to the growing effects of Cultural Marxism on every aspect of life in today’s America. We regularly exchanged articles and essays about the state of the world and nation over the years via email. Throughout the Obama years, we consoled and encouraged each other, holding out hope that things might change. We posted the same types of articles on Facebook, and found ourselves defending our actions very similarly. You expressed our position with your usual eloquence in response to some online critic in 2015: “I am not sure you are a hundred percent right that posting articles reflecting one’s views has no value. Reading posts by Robert Lund Of course, once Orange Man came to power, the hopelessness might have decreased somewhat, but then patriots had to deal with more strident opposition. We had thought only politicians and popular figures would get “cancelled” for their views. But I sympathized with you when you had to go back over your Facebook posts and delete any that your main client considered “extremist,” lest you be replaced. Having emigrated to the USA to find freedom, you never shied away from exercising yours, but the reality of these times put ever-increasing limits on that. I shudder to think of the general dismay you’d be experiencing these days in 2022! Finally, as I’ve found in the case of other loved ones who have passed on, I got to know you even better, and my admiration of you was augmented, when I had the opportunity of going through the things you left behind in the Brooklyn basement — your early drawings and paintings, the impressive commercial art you created, and so many works by various artists you represented. I’m very fortunate to have known you, and will always treasure our friendship. Staten Island, NY
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