1. Flight 1 And The Curse Of Arshile Gorky – 1948 And 1962
On March 1, 1962 15 abstract paintings by the artist Arshile Gorky that were en route to Los Angeles for an exhibition were destroyed on American Airlines Flight 1, a domestic, scheduled passenger flight from New York International (Idlewild) Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport), to Los Angeles International Airport. If this was not enough the artist himself had befallen his own terrible series of disasters long before his works were destroyed. From 1946, Gorky suffered a series of crises: his studio barn burned down, he underwent a colostomy for cancer, and Mougouch, his wife, had an affair with Roberto Matta. In 1948, his neck was broken and his painting arm temporarily paralysed in a car accident, and his wife left him, taking their children with her. She later married the British writer and war hero, Xan Fielding. Subsequently Gorky hanged himself in Sherman, Connecticut, in 1948, at the age of 44. He is buried in North Cemetery in Sherman, Connecticut.