Picture This

by Tobsha Learner

  Making sure Chung wasn’t there to see him, he used his own key to let himself into the apartment. The first thing he noticed was the smell – beer, stale cigarette smoke, unwashed clothes. All the lights were off except for that coming from a laptop with the screen half-open. He peered across the room, waiting for his eyes to adjust before navigating through the abandoned clothes, half-used tubes of oil paint, jars of turpentine with brushes soaking in them strewn about the floor.

  ‘Gabriel?’ Felix’s voice echoed out, sounding strangely pathetic. A sense of loneliness settled on him like fine dust. The very air seemed imbued with it. For the first time ever he wondered about the ethics of what he’d done to the youth. But he was of age, wasn’t he? It wasn’t as if he wasn’t an adult. He could have refused, he found himself rationalising.

  He walked over to the laptop and pulled the screen fully open. To his horror, the face of Maxine Doubleday stared out at him, obviously a frozen still from some footage. On the far side the window was wide open, a slight breeze fluttering the old curtain hanging across it. Panicked, he ran to the window. From the ground five floors below Gabriel’s face stared up blindly, his black hair streaked with blood.

  Retching, Felix stumbled back. Bending over, he breathed in deeply, trying to collect his wits. When his heart had slowed down, he sat at the kitchen table, trying to think rationally. The first thing was to get rid of all evidence of the Hopper paintings, then remove any connection between himself and Gabriel – letters, phone numbers, cheques that could be traced. The last thing would be to leave a forged suicide note making it clear the artist had killed himself.

  He got up and walked over to the easels. To his surprise, on the second easel was a painting he hadn’t seen before, clearly one of Gabriel’s own – it was in a style that was an obvious development from his last, rather mediocre painting. It was a vast improvement, rather good, Felix decided, pacing in front of it; in fact, very good. Inspired, he went over to a group of paintings leaning on their sides against the wall and began to look through them. Every one of them was superb, and there were at least 20 stacked up and more under the bed, he estimated. He wondered why Gabriel had never shown them to him. Already his imagination was beginning to concoct a marvellous backstory to the tragic life of the young artist Gabriel Bandini, whose posthumous fame would be testimony to the callowness and short-sightedness of the contemporary art world.

  Just then an eerie hissing sound came from the computer. Felix froze, the hairs on the back of his neck rising as he realised where he’d heard it before: the humming of wires high up on the Brooklyn Bridge. Slowly he turned towards the screen. Maxine seemed to stare out at him, her eyes watching him across the room. Suddenly furious, Felix belted across the room. Lifting the laptop up, he smashed it against the edge of the kitchen table over and over until the cracked image finally disappeared.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  There was that sudden whoosh as he shut the door of his secret gallery, sealing out the outside world. Felix leaned against the heavy metal, the crisp shirt he’d put on for the opening cutting into his neck. Twenty-four hours after Gabriel’s death, the apartment and the awfulness of it had finally begun to recede, like a memory that belonged to someone else’s life.

  After packing up all evidence of the forgeries and taking them out of the flat, he’d left, again making sure Chung had not seen him. Later he’d fallen into a sleeping-pill-induced stupor. That was yesterday and today was now.

  He checked his watch; the gallery was due to open in an hour. Already he knew he should leave, should meet the camera crew and brief them as arranged, but instead he’d found himself at Baum #1 seeking sanctuary, seeking the only way he knew to find peace, the only way to push out the shuddering fear that had hijacked all he knew to be himself.

  He looked across at the nine artworks in that sacred circle. Immediately he felt stronger, as if those images of himself were streaming back into him, the living embodiment. All I have to do is survive the opening, then I’ll leave, fly somewhere for a month or so, until things calm down, normalise, he told himself, escape being the mantra he’d clung to over all those questioning, doubting hours.

  He stepped into the centre of the circle and breathed in the atmosphere around him; the silence, the sense of achievement, of omnipotence the secret gallery always gave him. Rotating slowly, he studied each one, finally arriving, reluctantly, at the ninth artwork – Maxine Doubleday’s sketch of him. His eyes scanning across the familiar image were caught by a new black mass of pencil marks around the figure’s left shoulder – that hadn’t been there before. As he focused, he realised he was staring at Maxine’s face, emerging from a thicket of granite shadow, peering from over the left shoulder of the sketch. Terrified, he stared back at the face; she was seeping through into his reality, his world, the living world, staring back at him accusingly. The sound of his mobile ringing broke into his terror. It was Chloe; he was needed at the gallery immediately. When he looked back up at the sketch, Maxine’s face had disappeared.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Susie stood in the centre of the gallery. Stretching her arms out, she shut her eyes and took a deep breath in, then exhaled. She’d been up all night finishing the last photograph and had spent the morning hanging it, but finally, an hour before the doors were due to be opened, the exhibition was ready.

  Now they were hung: six massive photographs. She’d spent hours walking along the blank walls of the new gallery, absorbing the ambience of the space, all her senses drawn taut, trying to visualise the order in which she should hang them and how this would change the narrative between each image. Finally, she had settled on placing the Chinese and Japanese re-enactments side by side, then the Awakening of Adonis by Waterhouse, then the Klimt image, then the orgiastic Triumph of Pan. And finally her sixth work, the most controversial, which she’d created in total secrecy, was hanging by itself in a separate gallery that led off the main space so that it would be the final artwork to be experienced by the public and the last Felix himself would see.

  In front of the large windows, six male models dressed in Tom Ford suits stood poised in a line waiting for a command from her. She’d had the windows of the gallery covered in brown paper from floor to ceiling. It was to be ritualistically peeled off by the hired models just before the doors opened: part of creating a sense of voyeurism in the audience waiting outside. She’d also insisted that Felix and his staff be allowed to enter the gallery only a moment before the show was declared open and her artworks revealed, thus building suspense and mystery, as well as extreme anticipation.

  Outside, the murmur of voices had begun to grow louder. Susie, her heart now racing, grabbed one of the glasses of champagne from a table. Seconds later Alfie burst in.

  ‘The crowd out there is unbelievable! The queue stretches around the block. Felix is going crazy; he has the whole of the HBO camera crew buzzing around him. I’m telling you, everyone is there! It’s caught fire and we haven’t even opened the doors!’ He waltzed Susie around by the hands, champagne spilling everywhere. Abruptly she stopped him and pulled him close.

  ‘Alfie,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘whatever happens tonight, I need you and Muriel to stand by me.’

  Shocked by her sudden intensity, Alfie nodded, wide-eyed.

  *

  Felix glanced down the queue, trying to keep a jittery anxiety trapped under his controlled veneer. Everyone who’d ever featured in his career seemed to be there – the critics, the curators, the celebrities, the collectors, the wannabe collectors, art whores, art students, other famous artists – everyone had turned up to see what the English enfant terrible had to offer. He couldn’t remember the last time such a prestigious crowd had been kept waiting that long, yet the ambience was friendly – jovial even.

  Behind him the film crew – a cameraman, sound guy and director – were working their way down the line, hoping for sound bites. They were in the middle of interviewing his nemesis, Marty Hoffman, and his
words floated across the top of the crowd.

  ‘… it’s always interesting to watch how a fellow gallery director, especially one as powerful as Felix Baum, launches a new artist. We have such opposing strategies. I, for example, like to take a more understated approach – for me, it’s all about the art. Notoriety, celebrity and all the other palaver –’ here he gestured toward the blacked-out windows, the impatient crowd ‘– it can evaporate in a day. In the end it’s always the art that’s left speaking.’

  Martha, holding the fort at the front, gestured: two minutes to go before the official opening. Felix pushed his way over to her. ‘Find out what’s going on. She has to open exactly on time – any later and we’ll have a riot on our hands.’

  ‘Felix, you know she’s not letting me or anyone else in before time.’

  ‘Isn’t it brilliant? She’s conjured up a feeding frenzy even before the doors have opened!’ A feigned enthusiasm; in truth he was trying not to be consumed by fear, the pervading sense that his world was about to implode, while around him the crowd seemed to be growing louder and more restless.

  ‘I know. Isn’t it wild?’ Martha exclaimed excitedly. ‘Get ready, Felix, we’re on countdown!’

  *

  ‘Okay, 30 seconds before the brown paper comes down,’ Alfie announced.

  Susie downed the drink in her hand, then grabbed another one.

  ‘Positions, please,’ she instructed the male models, who stepped up to the windows, taking the corners of the sheets of brown paper covering the glass, then awaited their cue. Susie glanced at her watch. ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven, six… five, four, three, two – and go!’

  The six men started slowly, teasingly, to tear the paper away. It was a bizarre experience, almost like looking out from inside a Christmas present as the outside world was revealed staring in: the faces of the crowd, and a flustered Felix Baum pressed up against the glass window of his own gallery.

  *

  ‘… as you can see, the artist has recreated the original Chinese erotic print, but introduced subversive references to American culture using icons recognisable to us all.’

  Felix, now composed and in full professional mode, stood in front of Susie’s reinvention of the Chinese erotic print, talking directly into the camera, having already covered two of the artworks – the Klimt and the John Waterhouse, artworks that had been easy to analyse and hypothesise on. But this one, in light of the sexual encounter they’d had after the shoot, was more of a challenge. Faltering, he deliberately averted his gaze from the central motif of Susie being penetrated.

  ‘For example, the Chrysler classic car the central figure – portrayed by the artist herself – is propped up on, the Hilton hotel slippers the male figure is wearing, along with his robe, are humorous references to contemporary America. While the artist also cleverly references classical Chinese opera, with the masks covering the faces of the women – the colours of the dots on the forehead of the masks each symbolise an emotion in Chinese opera. But I think the strength of this work lies in how it makes the viewer feel,’ Here he tried grinning wryly. ‘Uncomfortable, maybe aroused, not knowing whether to find the composition humorous or plain pornographic. This is a deliberate strategy on Susie Thomas’s part; she wants us to examine the erotic gaze – to wrestle with the notion that we, the onlookers, are deliberately being placed in the position of voyeurs.’

  Behind the camera, Martha gave him a thumbs-up. Relishing his own performance, Felix led the camera crew on to the next painting. ‘Ah, so this is an enactment of the very famous Japanese erotic print, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife – a kind of ode to cunnilingus, really,’ he added cheekily, making the director, worried about the ratings, scowl. ‘Again we have Thomas herself at the centre of the image, but instead of a 17th-century Japanese fisherman’s wife, the character appears to be a naked Wonder Woman from the Marvel comics, while the two octopuses making love to her are both obviously blown-up rubber toys. The writing on the backdrop – Japanese in the original etching – here is comprised of Sixties Marvel cartoon strips laid vertically. Again Thomas has made a succinct comment on both feminism and the portrayal of female sexuality within the fantasy genre…’ He hesitated; through the crowd he could see Felicity Kocak and art critic Donald Voos engaged in intense conversation. Both of them looked worried. Before he had a chance to wonder why, Martha ushered Susie towards him and the camera.

  ‘Ah, but here is the artist herself, Susie Thomas!’ Acting for the camera, he put his arm around Susie’s shoulder. ‘Welcome, Susie, and congratulations on a profound and confrontational show.’

  ‘Thank you, Felix.’

  He began to walk Susie towards the next artwork, deeply conscious of the camera crew filming.

  They stopped in front of the large revised version of Poussin’s orgy, curiously familiar with its classical cacophony of limbs and flowing robes, yet at the same time brutally contemporary. Staring over at it, deeply aware of the gaze of the 60 or so people behind him, he had the satisfaction of being the only person in the room who recognised himself, there in the centre of the image, his arms transformed into the severed arms of the statue, the red mask with Abraham Lincoln’s features concealing his own. If only they knew…

  ‘So I’m sure most of the viewers would instantly recognise the original artwork – the very famous Triumph of Pan by Poussin. But in Thomas’s appropriation, the masks worn by the revellers are referencing four famous US presidents – the Bacchus statue at the back is wearing the face of Abraham Lincoln, while the three abandoned masks on the ground are Kennedy, Reagan and Nixon. While the abandoned vessel in the lower right-hand corner is a wine flask in the original, here it is an Esso oilcan. Am I correct in assuming this is a commentary on the US involvement in the oil industry, a wry orgiastic depiction of the squandering of natural resources?’ He addressed this to Susie.

  ‘Something like that,’ she replied enigmatically, then, to Felix’s frustration, stopped, and an awkward silence fell.

  ‘Tell me, how does it feel to be in your own artwork?’ he persisted brightly, trying to ignore how flustered and perhaps drunk Susie might appear to the camera. ‘I know this will be something many watching this documentary will be curious about. Do you ever feel compromised, either sexually or morally? I mean, in truth, by placing yourself within the image as you do, you are arguably eroticising your own image. So when does the public stop and the private begin?’

  To Felix’s dismay, Susie grabbed another glass of champagne and gulped it down in front of the camera, then turned to him a little drunkenly. ‘You could probably answer that a lot better than me, Felix. Frankly, I’ve never consciously distinguished between the two. As soon as you do that I think you lose your honesty as an artist – that core instinctive connection with the work itself. Unlike many art professionals,’ she fastened on him with a steely gaze, ‘I don’t compartmentalise – what you see is what you get, and if people don’t like it, they can fuck off,’ she concluded, smiling sweetly.

  Appalled, Felix was lost for words, but then another problem appeared on the horizon. He’d caught sight of Latisha Johnson entering the gallery. He froze, unable to fathom why she’d turned up at the exhibition, or even how she had got there. Pinned in front of the rolling camera, he nodded helplessly.

  Susie followed his gaze and spotted Latisha, towering over the other guests. To distract him, she took his arm. ‘But I’d really like to show you the last, and in some ways the most profound, artwork in the show. A more direct reference to American art, the history and industry behind it.’

  Felix, still in front of the camera, had no choice; with increasing trepidation, he allowed himself to be led across the gallery to the smaller adjoining space. To his surprise there was a gaggle of people he knew waiting at the entrance: Felicity Kocak, Donald Voos and, to his dismay, Joanna Fleisch from the Hopper Foundation – all three of them staring grimly at him as he entered the smaller gallery.

  It was unmistakably a photogr
aphic rendering of his Hopper: Girl in a Yellow Square of Light; only Susie had substituted Maxine Doubleday as the young blonde on the edge of the bed. Even more disturbingly, the man in the framed photograph on the bedside table was now Gabriel Bandini. And the girl in the toothpaste ad on the billboard, visible beyond the bedroom window, was Susie Thomas herself, overseeing the whole scenario, staring in – a sublime and disturbing statement.

  Felix halted in the centre of the room, not knowing whether to run or to continue performing for the camera.

  ‘So, Felix, I believe you must be extremely familiar with this so-called early Hopper – Girl in a Yellow Square of Light. After all, I believe it was you who discovered it, along with several other early Hoppers.’

  ‘I did… ’ His faltering voice betrayed him. Pulling himself together, he tried to adopt his usual suave facade again. ‘It’s highly flattering that you decided to make this the basis of your final work.’

  ‘I had no choice. The works are a reflection of my time in New York, and this painting, the story behind it – both in terms of subject matter and its authenticity – became an integral part of my experience here. I love Hopper, and all the Ashcan School, in fact – they are so inherently New York, a real reflection of the urban landscape and the kind of alienation people can feel in the Big Apple.’

  Alarmed, Felix tried to step back, but the entrance was now blocked by spectators fascinated by his clearly unravelling composure. Spinning around, his gaze briefly focused on Marty Hoffman, who grinned back triumphantly. For a moment Felix wondered whether reality had slipped and he was now trapped in some dark nightmare of his own imagination.