Picture This

by Tobsha Learner

  ‘I plan to put African-American artists on the map,’ Eugene continued emphatically, revelling in his captive audience. ‘I mean, look around you; you tell me how many of these paintings are by our people? In the permanent collection, maybe two, and both of them by Basquiat. Don’t get me wrong, the brother was a genius, but where are all the others? Marginalised and labelled—’

  ‘That has to change,’ Theo chimed in, then added proudly, ‘Aunt Latisha here, she was made into art, weren’t you, Aunt?’

  Latisha swung back around from the painting she was studying. ‘Indeed, immortalised in bronze and naked as the day I was born. But the artist, Eugene, I’m afraid to say, was white and she was British. Still, she was a damn fine artist.’

  ‘Inspired by a fine-looking African-American sister,’ Eugene added flirtatiously, revealing a whole other side of him that made Latisha smile and Theo a little anxious. ‘Happy to facilitate any kind of higher calling, Latisha. Being in these hallowed corridors all alone at night is a particular treat’

  At which Theo, nervous at the flirtatious direction the conversation was taking, stepped in. ‘Eugene, why don’t you take me to see this Basquiat if he so good?’

  ‘My pleasure. You coming, Latisha?’

  ‘In a minute, I just want to relish these magnificent paintings a moment longer. You boys go on without me… ’

  *

  After the two men left, Latisha turned back to the Hopper. Reaching into her handbag, she took out a small penknife and a sterile plastic container she’d bought from Rite Aid. Carefully she scraped some of the yellow paint from a corner and placed it into the container, then slipped the sealed container back into her handbag and stepped back. There was no evidence that the paint had been taken.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Felix stood in the cubicle, his naked torso cross-draped by two holsters filled with gun ammunition, blue fabric wound into a loincloth covering most of his torso. He had arrived that morning, in his disguise as Mask Man: a blond wig, a mask (a sinister Spider Man full-face one), stained cheap jeans and an old T-shirt. He’d kept his head down, barely spoken and was unrecognisable, even to himself.

  Now he was dressed in the costume for the restaging of the painting, he stared into a mirror through the narrow eye slits of a different mask: a red one, a perfect replica of Abraham Lincoln’s face. Upon arriving at the studio, Alfie, oblivious to Felix’s true identity under the Spider Man mask but overly sensitive to ‘Mask Man’s’ mental-health issues, had briefed him in patronisingly simple terms on the painting that was to be re-enacted. It was Nicholas Poussin’s The Triumph of Pan, but he’d had no idea how Susie intended to weave American content into the re-enactment of the work.

  The Lincoln mask, which looked both startling and haunting, was a good indicator.

  Muriel entering interrupted his reverie; she pressed a crown of fresh flowers onto his head and then stepped back. Alfie had obviously explained to her that Mask Man was possibly intellectually challenged and should be handled carefully. Consequently she’d talked to him as if he were a six-year-old, much to Felix’s secret amusement, but it had at least allowed him to just follow her instructions mutely.

  ‘Now you’re finished and you look simply splendid. Are you okay? Can you see through that mask?’

  Felix nodded like a happy child.

  ‘Good. Don’t worry about the fact that the statue in the original painting had no arms. Ms Thomas will Photoshop yours out in the editing process. So I’m going to lead you to the set. You’re to do exactly what Ms Thomas instructs, you understand?’

  She took him by the hand and led him out to the studio. He blinked in the bright light. Through the mask he could see that the set resembled the forest glade Poussin’s original orgy was set in, but instead of the Italianate forest and mountains as backdrop, Susie had painted the outline of the Rocky Mountains, with spruce and fir trees in the foreground. Felix paused for a moment, in stunned rapture; he could almost smell the pine needles.

  The ten other costumed extras loitered beside the set, waiting to take up their positions in the drunken orgy. Five women playing the nymphs were all draped in togas, duplicating the original clothing of the nymphs in the painting. Susie, playing the central nymph, wore the Stars and Stripes, a touch that Felix thought particularly strong.

  The four satyrs were naked and suitably swarthy. One of them, representing a full satyr, appeared to be goat from the waist down: a visual that had Felix marvelling at Muriel’s skill. There were also two children dressed up as the cherubs in the original image – only in Susie’s version one cherub was Arabic, the other South American, presumably a reference to US geopolitical interests.

  A model of a white goat was already on the set waiting to be mounted; the set itself was angled so that the ‘earthy ground’ sloped downwards towards stage front; in the far corner lay an old ESSO oilcan – the substitute for the upturned ceramic flask of wine that featured in the original. Across from that on the opposite side lay three abandoned red Lincoln masks like the one Felix was wearing. But, whereas in the original painting the masks were of classical tragic-comedic figures, here they were of three iconic American presidents: Kennedy, George Bush Sr and Nixon.

  Now Felix could clearly see that the whole image was shaping up as a political commentary on US foreign policy of the past decades and its dependence on the oil industry. It was a concept that instantly excited him; it was both topical and commercial, guaranteed to provoke a certain amount of outrage and therefore publicity – the perfect ingredients for a sale. Felix’s brain immediately swung into possible strategies and a list of potential collectors he could approach.

  ‘Mask Man?’ Susie’s voice startled him. The artist was standing right in front of him, her hand outstretched. Tentatively he shook it, praying she wouldn’t recognise him.

  ‘It’s an honour to have you in the image. It gives the work that extra bit of local subtext,’ she told him earnestly, seemingly still oblivious as to who was behind the mask.

  Scared of discovery, he silently withdrew his hand. Luckily, Susie was distracted by one of the cherubs, who, bored, had started to pelt the other cherubs with grapes plucked from the bunches on the tray that was his prop.

  ‘Muriel! Can you control Cherub One?’ she yelled. She and the other woman both ran towards the child. After catching him and calming him down, Susie walked back to the original image that was sitting on an easel in the centre of the studio.

  Alfie, clapping his hands to get the attention of the milling extras, indicated that Susie was about to address the room. Felix, now relishing the clandestine voyeurism of his position, hung back.

  ‘Okay, so you are all familiar with your positions within the image, and as you are all dancers except for Mask Man here, I’m going to assume you can all hold the poses for at least five minutes, during which we should be able to get plenty of shots. Then, if necessary, we will pause, so just keep holding the pose until we’re happy we have the image in the can. If you all would like to take one last look at the original painting and then take your positions up on the set? I will have some music played to put us all in the mood, but, please, do not move once the pose has been struck.’

  The extras gathered around the easel, joking and talking, while Felix watched Susie from behind his mask. She was entirely absorbed, pacing backwards and forwards in front of the set, adjusting elements and props . It felt fantastically taboo to spy on her like this and it was fascinating to see the artist at work, the confidence and mastery with which she fine-tuned all the visual details arousing.

  Mahler’s Fifth started to swell out of hidden speakers as the extras began moving towards the set.

  ‘Okay, can we now have everyone in position?’ Alfie directed, as Susie led the way to the stage. ‘Muriel, can you help the children?’

  Each character took their place, mimicking the original painting. The nymph in the blue-and-white costume straddled the goat, then leaned back in the satyr’s arms
while reaching over to take a handful of fruit from the satyr behind, who – in Susie’s version – held a bugle in his mouth. In the background a nymph carried a dead lamb over her shoulder, only in this version she wore white instead of yellow.

  Felix climbed carefully up behind the others to adopt his role as the statue of Bacchus, standing centrally and in profile in the background. Susie, the last character to take her position, draped one hand over his shoulder while glancing in the other direction at one of the cherubs – in this version a small African-American child – and plucking some grapes out of the basket he held up. Behind her, a nymph, breasts bared, held a tambourine, the red fabric of her robe stretched out like wings (pinned by Muriel), mirroring the original painting.

  As Felix stood there he was aware of the sheer political audacity of the image, but he was also aware of the sensation that he was part of history in the making: not just of the revised contemporary image but also of something that had far more lineage, a history that stretched back centuries, an image made in 1635 that was in fact itself referencing older images from classical times themselves. But the other sensation that swept through him was the sheer exhilaration of being the central focus of the whole image, of finally actually being in one of Susie Thomas’s artworks. Work that he knew would grace art books and the pages of history for centuries to come. And now he, Felix Baum, would always be there, suspended, timeless beside her. It was the nearest thing to immortality that he knew.

  *

  One a.m. and Susie, still wound up by the adrenalin of the photo shoot, found herself standing outside Felix’s apartment block. She’d waited too long, and the stress and intensity of making the work had twisted her body into an aching knot. She needed release, she needed touch; she needed sex. I’m doomed, she thought, and pressed his buzzer.

  *

  They stood facing each other, completely naked, inches apart at the foot of his bed. It had been something he’d insisted upon; they hadn’t touched each other yet.

  ‘I can feel the heat of your skin, perhaps even your erection.’ She grinned cheekily; the tip of his hard cock was centimetres from her stomach. She wanted him so much it was as if every inch of her skin craved him. He didn’t move.

  ‘How much do you want me?’

  ‘A lot.’

  ‘How much? Tell me,’ he whispered, close to her ear, his breath hot on her face.

  ‘It’s not quantifiable.’

  ‘Everything is quantifiable.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Nothing is: not time, not lust, not love,’ she moaned.

  He moved slightly closer to her but still they did not touch.

  ‘Close your eyes and open your legs – wider,’ he commanded.

  Slowly, she parted them. A second later she felt the tip of his tongue on her erect clit, flicking backwards and forwards in exquisite pleasure. Simultaneously reaching up, he pushed his finger into her mouth as if he wanted to enter her somehow. Legs trembling, she tried to stay still and standing, her moans forming rings around his finger, the sensation creating circles of colour behind her eyes, her mind empty of everything except pleasure.

  When he was sure she was close to coming, he withdrew, and she was left so close she could feel the ripples of an orgasm lap at the core of her but not quite. With her eyes closed every touch was heightened to painful intensity. When she felt the thick tip of his cock push against her wet lips and clit, she opened her eyes and found his face inches away, his eyes staring straight at her. Reaching for her, his mouth found hers and he kissed her deeply as he hoisted her high onto his hips and plunged into her.

  *

  Later, after they’d made love a few times, she rolled away from him, her face deliberately turned away.

  ‘Say something,’ he murmured as he curled up against her like a child.

  She turned back toward him; his pupils were green moons against the yellow of an eclipse. There seemed to be such sincerity in his gaze that she found it impossible to stay looking at him. Could she trust him?

  ‘What are we doing?’ Her voice was small, a whisper of vulnerability. In reaction she felt a very slight tremor run through his body, subterranean, and for a second she wished she could be different. Then she remembered Maxine. Was she here, between them now?

  ‘I don’t care.’ He uncurled and pulled her towards his chest, wrapping his long arms around her. ‘All I know is that this feels true. How can two people like us be so brave in our public lives and yet so fucking terrified in our private lives?’

  Instead of answering she waited until his snore lapped evenly around the edge of the walls, then slipped out of the bedroom. On the way she picked up the bag she had the blank pages hidden in.

  *

  Felix, waking and seeing that Susie wasn’t in bed beside him, assumed she was just in the bathroom. He leaned over his side of the bed and checked underneath the coat that he’d tossed aside before she arrived. The rim of the red Lincoln mask was visible. He pulled it out and hid it in a drawer in the bedside cabinet, then buried his head in a pillow and fell back into a deliciously empty post-coital sleep.

  *

  An eerie mixture of city neon and moonlight made a blue and green patina on the marble floor of the apartment, a map by which Susie navigated her way to Felix’s library room. She found the light switch and flipped it. The library purred into being, the hundreds of books now familiar in their gilded spines, titles staring out at her, challenging her to take them down. She liked this room. It was, she decided, the only space in the apartment that didn’t feel as if it had been choreographed by some dead-eyed interior designer; it felt like it was an extension of Felix, the inner core of the psyche he kept hidden from the world.

  Susie went straight to the shelf of old first editions. She pulled one out at random and carefully opened the cover. It was missing the blank title page, which had been carefully torn out. The next was the same. And the next. She pulled out a large stack of them and carried them back down the library steps to the floor. There she opened them and, after spreading out the blank pages, tried to match them with the missing title pages. She found four matches – four pages whose jagged edges were a perfect fit for the torn margin inside the volume, like a puzzle piece in a jigsaw. There was no doubt: Felix had removed the pages from these old books, and someone wanted her to figure it out. But why? Presumably the person leaving the trail of clues would know: this was a widely used deceit in art forgery. An old painting needs supporting documents to validate its authenticity – letters, bills of sale, diary entries. By using aged paper from the era the letter or document was supposed to have been written in, the forger could ensure that if the provenance was ever questioned and the paper carbon-dated, the provenance would pass as genuine. Simple but ingenious.

  Susie closed the books. She set the four with matching title pages to one side and returned the others to the shelf. Contemplating slipping the matching four into her bag to keep as evidence for later, she stared up at the gap their absence created on the shelf. It could be covered by a slight rearrangement of the books, she decided; she moved them around a little. Given the large number of books in the library, she hoped Felix would not notice.

  As she got back onto the library steps a row of catalogues for Baum #1 came into view. Perched on the top step, she found the catalogue for the group show Maxine had been part of. Flicking through the photographs of the paintings and sculptures, she arrived at the right entry. It consisted of several drawings, a painting and a sculpture – staring down at it, Susie recognised the monolithic figure straight away. It was the same African-American woman Alfie had cast for the Klimt, the one who’d called herself Laura Johnson – but who, according to the title of this sculpture, was in fact called Latisha. The same woman who’d questioned her integrity as an artist.

  *

  The bus ride into Union City had made Latisha nervous. The bus had been filled with Latino families and a few Latina grandmothers, and by the time it pulled into Mechanic Street she w
as the only African-American left on board. Nevertheless she got off and, with studied indifference, made her way over to the address Henry had given her. It took her 20 minutes to find the basement ‘laboratory’ the ‘Prof’, as he called himself, operated from, and then half an hour of explaining what the yellow paint signified and which famous painter was meant to have used it. There was another hour waiting in the small cramped reception room, while the Prof examined the two samples of yellow paint she had brought using X-ray radiography and another technique the Cuban scientist described as infra-red reflectography, in which she went through three pipes and two old issues of Time magazine.

  It was all mumbo-jumbo to Latisha; she only needed to know one thing, she thought. She waited impatiently, and finally the Prof emerged from behind the lab door, holding out two small squares of glass coated with the two samples of yellow paint she had brought with her.

  ‘Henry Firestone told me you were famous in Cuba.’

  Hector Ortega sighed. He was a man in his seventies, almost as tall as she was, his heavy jaw and ugly oversized features betraying intelligent eyes that twinkled with kindness. ‘I headed up a laboratory in Havana. My original field was archaeology – dating ancient artefacts found in Cuba and the surrounding islands. Then I had a falling-out with Castro. I fled a year later.’

  ‘What was the falling-out over?’

  ‘The best of hunters lies more than he hunts, an old Spanish proverb – trust me, you don’t want to know.’ He peered through the microscope. ‘The structure of these two samples indicates they are taken from the same pot of paint. It’s old paint. The basis is white lead with yellow pigment added on top. They don’t use that any more – too toxic.’