The first thing you see is the paint. Splashed across canvases that hang on the walls. Slathered onto paper thumbtacked to a door. Smudged by fingerprints along cabinets and light switches. Dozens of squished silver tubes of the stuff, piled high like some modern sculpture. Its pixie-dust-like pigments waiting on a shelf to be mixed.

The colorful chaos is a contrast to Ben Middleman, who, in a crisp button-up and khakis, walks around his late father’s studio, sharing the stories behind each of its myriad artworks.

One particularly massive oil-on-linen, titled The Fishmonger, sits on an ad-hoc easel at eight feet high, featuring a bacchanalian cast of characters, some standing nude, smoking cigarettes, donning top-hats, and dancing in hot-pink capes, all against the backdrop of the very room in which we stand.

“You can see, that’s the balcony up there, the model stand—that’s me, and my older brother, I think that’s my mom,” he says. “It’s the house, the studio—and everything all kind of revolving around it.”

This house, this studio, located at 943 N. Calvert Street, on the corner of E. Eager in Mt. Vernon, with its red-painted brick, bright blue doorway, and those iconically Baltimore marble steps, was at the core of Raoul Middleman’s life.

Purchased in 1975 during the city’s dollar housing program, it was where the renowned artist and longtime Maryland Institute College of Art professor worked—and for a long time, lived, with his wife, Ruth, and their three sons—until his death at the age of 86 this past October.

Soon enough, it will also become a new art museum, with this shrine-like second-floor studio and first-floor rotating gallery created in honor of one of the city’s most preeminent artists.

“His life was so much about art,” says Ben, 46, who, with experience in galleries and art publishing, will serve as the museum’s main curator. “He never cared about commercial success, he just wanted to show people the work and get their response. This is a way of doing that.”

Born in Baltimore in 1935, Raoul Middleman was a man of many lifetimes: an Ashburton kid, a Poly grad, a Johns Hopkins philosophy major, an Army clerk, a one-time cowboy, a Kerouacian hitchhiker. In New Orleans, he tried his hand at writing a novel, but a bout of writer’s block led him to the visual arts.

He would attend prestigious institutions like the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Maine’s Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture before returning to Baltimore in 1961. Here, he found like-minded artists at the legendary Martick’s bar and landed a job at MICA, where he would work for the next six decades.

All the while, he painted, prolifically, with his oeuvre regaled for its energy, intensity, and fantastical exploration of the human condition, joining the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Academy Museum. It was sold at galleries like C. Grimaldis on Charles Street, and also stashed away by the thousands in a Belair-Edison warehouse.

Today, that larger-than-life spirit—this magazine once described Middleman as “like an erudite longshoreman, mentioning Plato and classic French poetry one minute and referring to ‘Bawlmer’ the next”—still lingers throughout The Raoul Middleman Studio Museum, where one can imagine a young Ben and his brothers running up and down the creaky staircase, pausing to stretch canvases for pocket change, or sit as models for their father.

“It’s like coming into his world,” he says. “For him, art was this real, tactile process. He lived in this space, covered in paint, exploring with it, creating these works. This wasn’t a job he clocked out of. It was so central to who he was.”

Like the other studio-museum concepts that inspired this space, such as the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico or the Musée Gustave Moreau in France, Middleman’s palettes are stacked largely as he left them, old mementos remain tacked around a long-stopped clock, and a wooden stool sits at the ready beside the mirror that made its way into many artworks.

Some of his favorites will be on display in the inaugural Life in the Studio exhibition, which opens on April 3—Raoul’s birthday—including several lesser-known portraits, cityscapes, and still lives.

The museum will be free to the public and open Saturdays from 1-4 p.m., as well as by appointment, with Ben and his mother, who keeps her Ink Spot Press printmaking workshop in the basement, taking turns as docents.

“I think he’d be touched,” says Ben. “He always very enthusiastic that every show was maybe the best he’d ever had. Now putting this on, it’s nice to picture him saying that.”

EAT

Jan. 27: Brunch N’ Chill

Prime Corner, 3400 Chestnut Ave. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. $25.

From sleeping masks and bath bombs to chocolates and coffee, products infused with CBD oil (aka cannabidiol, the second-most abundant compound found in marijuana plants) are all the rage. This Sunday, trade your usual mimosa-filled brunch for a plant-based breakfast at Hampden’s Prime Corner, and then spend the afternoon sampling CBD-filled treats from local purveyors, including lattes from Vent Coffee Roasters, donuts from Full Circle Artisan Palace, and ketchup from Secret Sauce Co.

DRINK

Jan. 25: Nepenthe Brewing Co. Opening

Nepenthe Brewing Co., 3600 Clipper Mill Rd. 4 p.m. Free.

After months of delays, this new Hampden hangout officially opens to the public on Friday. The facility (which includes a 160-seat taproom, a 10-barrel brewhouse, and an attached home-brewing shop) is an expansion of Nepenthe Homebrew, the beer-making supply shop that husband-and-wife owners Brian Arnold and Jill Antos operated in Woodberry for five years before moving to their new home on Falls Road. Joined now by Brendan Kirlin (formerly of The Wine Market and Le Garage), the co-owners are ready to open their doors. This weekend, fill a flight with samples of Nepenthe’s starting lineup of IPAs and saisons.

SEE

Jan. 25-27: Raoul Middleman: Watercolors & Monoprints

C. Grimaldis Gallery, 523 N. Charles St. Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

At 84 years old, this born-and-raised Baltimore artist continues to create innovative artworks that exhibit renewed inspiration for his lifelong passions and subjects: burlesque, horses, and Charm City. Visit the C. Grimaldis Gallery to take in this longtime MICA professor’s latest series of inked mono-prints and impressionist watercolors, which will be on display at the Mt. Vernon gallery until February 16.

HEAR

Jan. 26: Super City, Chaunter, and Soul Cannon

Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St. 9 p.m. $12.

If we had to make a wish list concert lineup of some of our favorite up-and-coming local acts, it would look a lot like this Saturday’s roster at the Ottobar. With “freakwave” band Super City home from their nationwide tour and ready to rock the Remington club with tracks from their latest album, Sanctuary, along with sets from songwriting duo Chaunter and experimental hip-hop collective Soul Cannon, this is the definition of a can’t-miss show.

DO

Jan. 26: Baltimore Orioles FanFest

Baltimore Convention Center, 1. W Pratt St. 11 a.m. $6-12.

As the saying goes, there is no offseason in baseball. Put last year’s abysmal season in the past and kick off the Orioles’ 2019 season with a day-long celebration at the Baltimore Convention Center. Celebrate all the new changes the front office (and the players themselves) will bring to 2019 while enjoying Orioles-themed games, press conferences for kids, one-of-a-kind memorabilia for purchase, and autograph and Q&A sessions with select players from the team.

Visual Art

Raoul Middleman: Watercolors & Monoprints
An artist’s passions are explored with frenetic mono-prints and impressionist watercolors in this new show from Baltimore native Raoul Middleman at C. Grimaldis Gallery. From his studio 19 floors above the city streets, Middleman has documented the changes in daylight as well as changes in the skyline itself. Back on the ground, his inky depictions of horses and burlesque capture motion and beauty in two distinctly different venues. Opening reception 6-8 p.m. Jan. 17; on view during gallery hours Jan. 17-Feb. 16. C. Grimaldis Gallery, 523 N. Charles St.

Art and Healing with WombWork Productions
Explore The Walters Museum’s historic property at 1 West Mount Vernon Place, and enhance your experience of this storied residence with a performance from local social change theater group WombWork Productions. One of WombWorks’ goals is to use art as a method for healing, and this new work will seek to connect the present to stories from 1 West Mount Vernon Place’s past. 7-8 p.m. Jan. 24, The Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles St.

Music

BSO Pulse: Dan Deacon
Two forces of Baltimore’s music scene will combine their talents for one night only during the next iteration of the BSO Pulse series. Come early for Deacon-curated entertainment from Jamal Moore, Amy Reid, Stewart Mostofsky, Alex Silva, and Amanda Schmidt in the Meyerhoff lobby and stay to hear the world premieres of new compositions blending acoustic and electronic sounds. 6-10 p.m. Jan. 17, Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St.

Kentavius Jones Album Release w/ Brooks Long & Mad Dog No Good
An Eastern Shore native releasing his long-awaited album and the return of Brooks Long & The Mad Dog No Good? Count us all the way in. Join singer-songwriter Kentavius Jones as he celebrates his new album, The Bohemian Beatbox, at Creative Alliance. He’ll be joined by CA curator of special projects Brooks Long and his rock and soul band for a full night of homegrown hits. 8-11 p.m. Jan. 25, Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave.

Super City, Chaunter, and Soul Cannon
Embrace the “freakwave” sound of Baltimore’s Super City as they return home after dancing their way through the south. You’ve probably heard tracks off the band’s latest project, Sanctuary, by now, but nothing compares to experiencing these guys’ rock anthems and expert choreography live. Local acts Chaunter and Soul Cannon will also join the party at the Ottobar. Doors at 8 p.m., show at 9 p.m. Jan. 26, Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St.

Theater

Thank You, Dad
His twisted legacy has been immortalized by filmmakers, songwriters, authors, and poets. Now revisit Jim Jones’ deadly Peoples Temple with the world premiere of this collection of three plays by Aladrian C. Wetzel. Performed by Rapid Lemon Productions Artistic Director Lance Bankerd, this trio of works based on the life of Jones will kick off RLP’s 2019 season, which explores the power of belief. Jan. 11-20, Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St.

Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Dive into a world of pure imagination with Charlie, Willy Wonka, and the rest of Roald Dahl’s colorful characters in this musical based on the beloved work of children’s fiction. With colorful costumes, classic songs, and plenty of twists and turns, this tale is sure to be a delight for all ages. Just be sure not to slip Slugworth any trade secrets on your way out of the theater. Jan. 22-27, The Hippodrome Theatre, 12. N. Eutaw St.

Film

Who Will Write Our History
When lies and hate took over their world, a group of journalists, scholars, and community leaders fought back with the only weapons they had left—their words. This new documentary from Roberta Grossman exposes the secret band of writers known at Oyneg Shabes, who documented life under Nazi rule in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Drawing from the group’s writings, new interviews, dramatizations, and archival footage, Grossman has crafted a film that carries on the legacy of this brave group determined to ensure their stories would survive. The Who Will Write Our History screening at Landmark Theatres, Harbor East is one of several around the world that will take place as part of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 1 p.m. Jan. 27, Landmark Theatres, Harbor East, 645 President St.

Literature

Roxane Gay With One N
Loyola University’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation always brings incredible personalities with powerful stories to Baltimore, and this year is no exception. For the 26th annual event, author Roxane Gay will discuss feminism, body image, and social justice at Reitz Arena and end the evening with a book signing. Though the event is free, you’ll want to register early to secure your seats. 7-9 p.m. Jan. 22, Loyola University Maryland, 4501 N. Charles St.

Raoul Middleman steps into the University of Maryland University College’s art gallery, starts chatting up curator Brian Young, and, looking around, stops talking mid-sentence. Seeing UMUC’s retrospective of his work, Raoul Middleman’s Romantic Expressionism: Honoring 55 Years of Artistic Excellence, for the very first time renders him speechless, though just momentarily. Middleman’s eyebrows rise over the frames of his glasses, and his eyes twinkle as he takes in the scope of the show, which features 80 of his best pieces and remains up until the end of August.

His surprise quickly gives way to recognition. “Look, it’s Al!” he exclaims, taking leave of Young and sounding as if he just spotted a dear friend, which he has. But the room is otherwise empty; friend Al Engelman is framed, larger than life on the wall. “That’s the first portrait I ever did of him,” adds Middleman, a warm smile spreading across his face.

He then spots more friends, Uncle Sid—”my favorite uncle, the first one to buy my paintings;” Bow Davis, a former colleague at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where Middleman has taught since 1961; renowned painter Grace Hartigan, another MICA friend; his wife, Ruth; his three sons: Ben, Nate, and Raphael; Carole Jean Bertsch, “a great spirit”; and Gloria, a night guard at MICA.

The 80-year-old artist appears genuinely moved by these encounters and the images and stories they conjure. “It’s a lot of family in my paintings,” says Middleman. “All these people are close friends, people I know.”

Middleman moves through the gallery like he’s navigating a receiving line, past the portraits, landscapes, still lifes, watercolors, and a selection of graphic work that includes lithographs and a woodcut. At one point, he turns a corner and practically shouts, “It’s Balthus!” after spotting a favorite dog in a piece titled Gypsy Caravan.

The painting is quintessential Middleman, with its full-palette bravado, industrial backdrop, bawdy vibe, and cast of characters including a one-armed waif, swirling belly dancer, and accordion-playing dwarf, all old friends of his. Middleman is in there, too, standing behind a donkey. It pulses with possibility, like anything could happen, and feels epic. Middleman, who is known for working big, quips that it is “fairly large.” It measures 16 feet long by 10 feet high.

Impressed, he hollers to Young: “What a job you’ve done here! My ego can’t get enough of this. It’s a Raoul museum, and seeing all this work together makes it kind of wild and rowdy. It’s a Raoul-dy museum!”

He laughs at that, before stepping back and taking in the entire room. “It’s my life,” he says, “that’s for sure. But you know what? After all these years, I still wonder where all these ideas come from. They never seem to stop.”

Middleman lives, and paints, in a Mt. Vernon row house that he has owned since 1975. He bought it for a buck, when city revitalization efforts included luring young families to this part of town with a promise of cheap home-ownership. At the time, he was married with young children. It’s a spacious three-story house, with afternoon sunlight pouring through the back windows, and a creaky wooden staircase leading to Middleman’s second floor painting studio.

 

“Raoul goes deep and isn’t afraid to tell a few whoppers along the way.”

 

Sitting in a wooden armchair, Middleman is dressed in a blue-green flannel shirt, brown corduroys, and athletic shoes. In conversation, he comes across like an erudite longshoreman, mentioning Plato and classic French poetry one minute and referring to “Bawlmer” the next.

With works in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Academy Museum, he is arguably this city’s preeminent painter. The New York Times‘ Holland Cotter has praised his “choppy Expressionist brushwork and romantic atmosphere”; The Sun‘s John Dorsey succinctly described his work as being “strong and true”; and Gerald Ross, MICA’s director of exhibitions, claims that “Raoul goes deep and isn’t afraid to tell a few whoppers along the way.”

The room around Middleman is a riot of paint, painting supplies, and paint-splattered furniture. Dozens of works, all self-portraits and still lifes of flowers, are tacked, grid-like, across two walls. Some of them are still wet; all of them were done in the past week or so. He points to a still life of a bouquet, flowers popping against a black background. “That was a 20-minute thing,” says Middleman, who is notoriously prolific. “Everything worked on that one. It was, ‘Bam, there it is,’ one of the best little things I’ve ever done.”

Besides this current stash, Middleman supplies two galleries—C. Grimaldis Gallery on Charles Street and Troika Gallery in Easton—with a selection of work, and he stores an additional 15,000 pieces at a Belair-Edison warehouse. For a recent MICA show of self-portraits, Selfies, he submitted more than 1,000 pieces for consideration; 400 were used.

“My whole life has favored a certain excessivity,” he says, “although my parents didn’t expect me to focus my energies on art. They didn’t want me to be an artist, and I don’t blame them.”

An only child, Middleman grew up in Ashburton, then a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, and attended School 64 and Garrison Jr. High School. His father was a Johns Hopkins University grad, trained as a mathematician and aviation engineer, who eventually landed at the family tobacco business. His mother was eccentric and imaginative, 12 years older than her husband and born in 1893, “the same year as Soutine, the painter,” notes Middleman.

His parents frequented Woodholme Country Club, but that social scene wasn’t to Middleman’s liking. He became infatuated with an altogether different world, after his Uncle Sid took him riding with Jimmy Hector, a legendary horse trainer, for his 11th or 12th birthday. Middleman, who’d been fantasizing about riding horses while playing cowboys and Indians around the neighborhood and watching cowboy movies at the Gwynn Theater, was smitten with the real thing.

It wasn’t long before he was hitchhiking to stables on Old Court Road and working for Hector. “For a suburban Jewish kid, it was an escape,” says Middleman. “I had this whole other life at the stables, grooming horses and shoveling shit.”

During high school—he went to Poly, like his father—Middleman spent the early-morning hours riding at Pimlico with Hector, whom he considered an “ersatz dad.”

He recalls a time when his father wouldn’t loan him the family car for a much-anticipated date, despite the fact that the couple would be attending a country-club dance. Hector stepped up and loaned him a truck for the evening. “It was the manure truck,” says Middleman, “and we hadn’t unloaded it.” He still remembers the look on the valet’s face when he handed him the keys.

Smiling, he adds: “She never went out with me again.”

At Poly, he excelled at math and science and finished after the 11th grade. He enrolled at Hopkins as a physics major but, inspired by professors like esteemed philosopher George Boas, exited with a philosophy degree. At the time, he fancied himself a poet, or novelist.

Four days after college graduation, Middleman hitchhiked west in search of ranch work. He spent a few years as a ranch hand in Montana and as a wrangler in the High Sierras. Discussing this period, Middleman, a consummate storyteller, digresses through various adventures: ” . . . we had dates with these hairdressers in Miles City . . . my head went through the windshield . . . a telephone—which was attached to a tree—rang, so I answered and it was my mother . . . ”

He wrote a novel about his experiences and eventually moved to New Orleans, where an artist girlfriend lived. After he developed writer’s block, she vowed to turn Middleman, who had enjoyed drawing as a child, into a painter. He bought oil paints and painted all over New Orleans, favoring places like the Jax Brewery Wharf near Decatur Street and its “rough seamen and tough broads.”

He worked shelving books at the public library, lingering over the art books, and painted portraits of tourists for 50 cents apiece in the French Quarter. Nine times out of 10, they would tear them up and not pay him. “I was told I was an uglifier,” says Middleman. “But I also learned I had a natural instinct for art.”

“I’ll go someplace I didn’t know I’d ever go, and that’s what keeps it interesting and spontaneous.”

Middleman honed those instincts during a hitch in the Army. He was company clerk for a Virginia-based railroad battalion before his artistic talents were noticed, and he was sent to the College of William and Mary for instruction. That was followed, after his discharge, by stints at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Maine’s Skowhegan School of Painting & Scultpure, and the Brooklyn Museum Art School, where he studied with landscape painter Reuben Tam.

He returned to Baltimore in 1961 and migrated to Martick’s restaurant and bar, where he found a community of similar-minded, artistic spirits. Needing work, he was about to start bartending at Martick’s, but first placed a call to MICA president Bud Leake in hopes of landing a teaching job. Leake, a fellow painter, hired him to teach freshman painting for $32 a week.

Middleman was, from the outset, “a quirky teacher.” He taught at MICA’s B&O station building, before it was cut up and divided into studio and gallery space. In those days, it was so wide open that Middleman rode a bicycle from student to student to check on their progress. At times, he might have students paint with the brush between their toes. Or he’d have them paint with the coffee they were drinking, “anything to loosen them up,” he says. He started drawing with the students, a practice he continues to this day.

He met Ruth, an artist herself, while on sabbatical in Paris, and they embarked on an extensive trip through Europe, leaving as friends and returning as lovers. He convinced Ruth, who’d been living in France for about six years, to come to Baltimore by telling her it was a lot like Naples. “I know,” says Middleman, turned momentarily sheepish by the memory. “But everything worked out.”

As late afternoon throws shadows across the studio, Middleman reflects on his longevity. His artistic output and overall philosophy bring to mind something his fellow Hopkins alum, the novelist John Barth, told Baltimore in 2008: “I intend to reach my peak at about age 80. Then, I’ll go into a very slow decline.”

At this point, Middleman shows little sign of slowing. He sometimes compares himself to a jazz musician improvising on a standard theme, as he might paint the same face over and over. “Each one is a new take, a new feeling,” he says. “Sometimes, I’ll go someplace I didn’t know I’d ever go, and that’s what keeps it interesting and spontaneous.”

But the key, Middleman swears, is being able to ride the feeling, which he relates in terms that would make Jimmy Hector proud. “You always need to have good hands on a horse,” he explains. “If you pull too hard, you deaden the mouth, and they can get away from you. If you give them too much rein, they take over, and you aren’t in charge.

“It’s the same thing with painting. You need to have a good hand on the brush, where you assert yourself, but you’re also resilient to the will of the paint. You have to go with it, but not encumber the creative act.”

That way, it remains fresh, says Middleman, “because doing something conventional is like riding a nag.”