The Prize

by Jill Bialosky

  In the car, snow came at the windshield. He drove slowly, barely able to see, the snowflakes coming at his eyes in a whiteout. The roads were slick and wet, with few drivers. His wheels spun on an ice patch and the car careened toward the curb. He turned the wheel into the slide and slowly came to a stop. He put the car in park and for a moment laid his head on the steering wheel, shut inside the silent temple of his car. He had a beautiful family. His mother was safe and well cared for. Why did he feel like all of it was going to unravel? He lifted his head. The ice on the windshield formed a long vein and then slowly began to blister and crack. He put his hands on the wheel, put the car in drive, and slowly accelerated again. He coasted past the pond near the roundabout to his house. The pond was frozen over except for a patch where a swan stretched its neck and shivered. He stopped the car and looked at the swan, trembling, unable to shake the fear of death he saw in his mother’s eyes.

  19 NEW YORK

  EXCEPT FOR LAST-MINUTE shoppers the city was beginning to empty out. It was the week before Christmas. The morning air was colder than it had been in months. Above the buildings, the sky was gray and all the sounds of the stirring city seemed to rise toward it. Edward took a cab from the gallery to Tribeca, to the loft building where Agnes and Nate lived and worked. Once out of the cab, he looked at the intimidating building, at its huge windows and steel frame, and was reminded, as he always was when he came to see her, of their staggering wealth. He walked briskly to the sidewalk gate and took a breath before climbing the steps to the front door, which was decorated with a pine and berry wreath.

  He had spoken to Ryan Reynolds earlier that morning and Reynolds had put him on edge. He said Edward should be clear about expressing exactly how he felt about the work. “We have to be tough on her. This show is too important.”

  They’d never worked together before. Reynolds’s artists typically showed at the powerhouse galleries. Over the years he had forged a coterie of close-knit relationships among dealers and artists to leverage his power. The first time they met, Reynolds had greeted him from a booth at the Regency wearing an Italian suit and a crisp white shirt, his dark hair slicked back with gel, and though Edward was dressed in one of his favorite suits, he’d immediately felt inferior. Reynolds spoke in a soft whisper so that Edward had to lean in to hear and often wasn’t sure exactly what was being said. Reynolds said barely anything at all, so that it was Edward’s job to keep the conversation going. It was a passive-aggressive move by Reynolds to make sure he was the one in control. Edward had been careful not to give too much of himself away. He, too, knew something about leveraging power, but even so he was glad when the lunch was over.

  HE ADJUSTED HIS tie before buzzing Agnes’s bell. She welcomed him, planting a quick peck on each cheek, and they exchanged pleasantries. She was dressed in a long white blouse she wore with black leggings. Her hair was in loose braids pinned on top of her head Heidi-style that, on her, looked avant-garde. Nate came in to say hello carrying a coffee mug. It looked like he’d just woken up—jeans, untucked shirt, and bare feet.

  “Are you ready for your mind to be blown?” He winked and shook Edward’s hand. “Everything good at the gallery?”

  Edward nodded. “All good.”

  Agnes excused herself to give the nanny instructions upstairs.

  “I’m glad you’re finally doing this. These last few weeks have been killer.” Nate shook his head. “My wife. With her there’s no boundary between church and state. She’d throw me out the window for it, but she’d throw herself out first. Go easy on her, will you? I’m out the door in a few minutes. I’ve got a meeting uptown.”

  “Good to see you, Nate.”

  He entered the studio cautiously. The space was white-walled and soundproofed except for the whir of ventilation. A modern daybed was pushed against one wall and against another was a long white picnic table with a matching white Macbook adorning it. On the windowsill there was a row of carefully arranged red poinsettias in flowerpots to mark the holiday.

  He sat on the painted white bench. The meticulously choreographed room reminded him of Agnes and Nate’s wedding. Everything was perfect, from the white roses on the tables to the lanterns in the garden. Nearly every important person in the art world had attended. At the wedding reception guests were passing out business cards. Agnes was barely visible. She emerged from the main house holding Nate’s hand to do a quick obligatory tour around the tables. She was tense and very thin, her skin stretched taut over her frail arms. She held Nate’s hand a little too tightly and breezed through the tables as if she were annoyed she had to share him with her guests.

  Agnes appeared out of breath. “You’re finally here,” she said. “Do you have plans for the holidays?”

  He explained that they were staying at home but she didn’t seem to have heard him. He didn’t bother to ask about her plans. She had once told him that she didn’t believe in vacations, that she didn’t like to be away from her work, and he imagined she felt the same about holidays.

  “Shall we?” she said, inviting him further into the studio.

  “How are the twins? And Nate?”

  “The girls are good. Nate, I don’t know. He’s putting a lot of pressure on me. He’s over his head financially. He always overextends. I think it’s the thing that presses against him. I suppose one can’t make great art without it.”

  “Well, you would know.”

  “You’ll have to tell me if I have.”

  “Have what?”

  “Made great work.”

  THE PAINTINGS EVOKED an ominous mood. They were less realistic than her previous work, more abstract and brushier.

  She quietly followed behind him as he toured the space. Her studio was immaculately clean, as if she had purposefully hidden away the debris of the painstaking hours of creativity: encrusted paint; abandoned canvases; ghostly dustcovers; stretcher bars and turp-covered rags. He remembered her modest studio in Bushwick where he’d first met her years ago, before she married Nate, and noted the contrast.

  One painting was called Aftermath. The large canvas taking up almost half a wall was washed in hues of gray and white and found materials were layered into it. Underneath layers of paint was a faint shadow of the towers.

  “I’m after a sort of internal tug-of-war of elements. I want the work to lead the viewer through a place of non-thinking. Looking only at the thing before you.”

  In another, she’d taken earth, ash, cement, pieces of glass, newspaper, fabric, and painted over them, so that it looked as if debris from the fallen buildings had been painted into the canvas. She carried the image through a sequence of permutations using a variety of techniques to “reveal the many starts and stops and dead ends,” she explained.

  “Your technique is different,” he said. “The paint is applied thicker. Less precise.” He nodded his head.

  The Rescuers consisted of panoramas painted in hues of red, orange, and brown creating an image of fire and destruction. Pieces of burnt paper, ash, brick, and debris were thickly painted over on the canvas and in the swirls of color there were ripped and charred pieces of cloth. Again, the ghostly image of the towers was in the background. This one made him a little nervous. He wondered whether Agnes had pushed the conceit too far.

  “I’m interested in the way problems and solutions develop from one canvas to another and the interplay of materials. If the towers still exist in the viewer’s mind, even as ghostly shadows, then what’s really been destroyed?”

  “I like the statement. Art doesn’t forget. It invites the viewer to question the role of the artist in the preservation of history.”

  For a moment her face broke free of seriousness. “That’s it,” she said. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but I like it.”

  “I do too. But is it perhaps too grim for the viewer? Let’s think about it.”

  “Really? I find this one exciting. To take that risk.” She challenged him with her eyes. “Joan Miró created his series of ‘
Burnt Canvases’ as a response to the Spanish Civil War. It’s an artist’s responsibility to respond to desperate circumstances.”

  “You certainly have,” he agreed.

  He took another turn around the studio. Agnes followed, her breath at his neck. “I want the entire gallery space painted white. We have to get the paint from Italy. Have you seen the white walls in galleries in Rome? It’s different.”

  An hour passed. Occasionally he attempted to put into words his thoughts, but he was cautious, knowing she held on to each one. Another large canvas was painted in hues of white and gray. In the swirls, underneath many layers, were the shapes of hundreds of faces. Again she had used materials such as plaster, wire, and insulation in an attempt to give the canvas texture and depth.

  “In these ghostly images you bring grace into the canvas. The viewer’s eye can’t escape the look on those faces. It’s haunting.” He said it more to placate her. As he looked more closely, he did not feel that zing that shot through him when he was in the presence of transcendent work. He felt himself begin to perspire.

  Agnes arched her brows. “I didn’t see that, but I can see it now. Part of my process has been about learning to trust what the painting will reveal to me.”

  “Brilliantly done.” Edward looked around again and considered the impression. The paintings were beautifully made but nevertheless unease filled him. They strained toward recognition.

  His instincts told him that there was some revelation that as yet eluded Agnes, and that she should be braver, take more risks to get there. He wondered too whether the images were reaching toward cliché. She was struggling too hard to make a statement that her work was art with a capital A. He would have to figure out a way to downplay its self-importance. Yes, something about the work seemed derivative and simply left him cold. It was as if she was afraid that if she went back to what she did best—paintings that were classical yet completely contemporary—she wouldn’t be taken seriously. He had to figure out a way to express both his admiration and his hesitations. If he let it go, it would only come back to bite him in the ass. It had happened before, when he first started out and was too timid to express his doubts.

  “THERE’S TEA AND scones for us upstairs,” Agnes said carefully. “I want to hear your ideas. Do we have a time frame yet?” They rode the elevator to the living quarters. The tonal sound of the music of John Cage streamed into the room. “We’re thinking late March or April, right? I believe that’s what Ryan said.”

  Agnes poured them green tea from a Japanese set. She described her process. How she’d collected fabrics and paper and other debris and materials from building sites and painted them onto the canvas to give depth and texture and to call to mind the ash and wreckage of 9/11.

  “What’s your impression?”

  “I need to think about it more. I’m still taking it in.” He smiled, looking at the walls of the room painted in shades of gray.

  “Nate said that a dealer’s job is to put art in production. That’s a crass way of putting it. But Nate’s gift is that he knows how to make his art sell.”

  “They’ll sell, but the viewer may need a bit of help.”

  “Really? Nate said he liked that I didn’t completely connect the dots. He said the work was about the nihilism of culture. He thought the paintings were self-explanatory.”

  “Well, they are,” Edward fumbled. “Of course they are. But the viewer isn’t always as attuned to nuance as Nate.”

  “But I’m not painting for the average viewer. That’s not my intent.” She took the pins from the top of her head, let loose the braids, and shook out her hysteria of hair.

  “Look,” Edward said, leaning forward, “the critics bring out their knives, especially after a successful last show. We need to consider everything. I’m your first pair of eyes.” It was as if she had chosen to sacrifice irony and provocation for seriousness in order to distance her work further from Nate’s. “We need to come clean in our copy that the work, the use of recycled materials, is a nod to Rauschenberg and Johns. To not deny the influence.”

  “Rauschenberg? Really? I didn’t think of him. Johns? You mean his use of found materials. But if the compositions are brilliant, why would anyone object?” She pulled at the skin on her neck. “We’re constantly ripping each other off. Every conversation or representation is a rip-off. Language is not authentic. Nor is painting.” She aggressively stirred the tea in her cup.

  “I’m just wondering. What if you pushed the work a little more toward your intentions? Softened it a little, worked more from an emotional place? If I don’t tell you this, no one will. It’s what I’m here for. Paint what you can’t forget, right?”

  She acknowledged the source of the comment and paused and lowered her gaze. Silence filled the room.

  “I suppose so,” she said, reluctantly. “I’m so very tired, Edward.”

  “As you should be. It will be magnificent. It’s almost there.”

  It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear, he knew it, but he also knew in his gut that it was what the work needed in order to hum, and he believed that she would come around. She trusted him. “I’m just saying we should look at it from all sides. That’s what I’m here for. In the end it’s your work, but my job is to tell you what I see.”

  “Excuse me a moment,” she said, and turned abruptly away so that he could not see her face. “I have to check on the girls.”

  He heard her in the next room on the phone. She sounded agitated. Minutes later she returned and paused for a moment before entering the vast, sparsely furnished room. She looked betrayed, hurt, and defensive all at once. He wondered whether she had called Nate.

  “I have to take the twins to the pediatrician. I’ll have Ryan call you and we can discuss the details.”

  “The work is brilliant. It’s going to be huge. It’s been worth the wait.”

  She walked him toward the steel door and a large mirror where they both stopped to see themselves in the glass, clear and without pretense. “Do you think it’s been too long between shows? Is that what you mean?” she asked boldly to conceal her fear. “I have to know.”

  “There are ways to get around that and make it an advantage. The work is powerful. Really, Agnes.” The canvases were painterly and well executed. You couldn’t take that away from her—but whether the public would respond was another story.

  “Do you think so?” Her composure broke and she trembled. “It has to be.”

  “I do.” A light smile crossed his lips.

  “I’ll think about what you said. I’ve come to think of you as my compass.” She reached up and hugged him.

  “Have a great Christmas,” he said.

  HE WALKED A few blocks uptown before hailing a cab back to the gallery. Lost in thought, he nearly bumped into a sad-looking Santa in a faded suit collecting coins for the Salvation Army. It was cool out. He felt a frost coming in. The stalls outside the greengrocer were piled with clementines, oranges, and grapefruit. He listened to cars stop and start and the sound of Christmas music coming from outside a shop. He walked slowly, pleased with himself. From time to time he looked at his BlackBerry and slowed to answer messages. Walking, he pictured the paintings in his mind. He’d given her just enough praise and encouragement to allow her to think about his few hesitations. And he had mostly kept his commercial concerns to himself. Never talk to an artist about what her paintings are worth. That’s why she had Reynolds. If Agnes was willing to push the work a little further, it would come across as more agile and less lugubrious and break through the chains of influence to become fully her own. The work would be more difficult to get across than her last show. There was little zest for life in the paintings. They were made with precision and technique but the energy and continuity had been sucked out. How do you get the viewer to see that the darkness and seriousness of the composition, its ability to make the viewer uncomfortable, is its asset? That would be the gallery’s job.

  A painting was built up in
layers. Start here, add this, subtract that, and so forth. It expanded and developed undertones and richness. Then the painter pulled back and added more texture, more shade and nuance. He knew what Agnes needed to do. In their next conversation he would articulate it for her more clearly. It was best that he hadn’t overwhelmed her. If she wanted to use materials that mimicked the debris of 9/11 she needed to let the materials speak for themselves. He thought of a few collectors who would connect with the work and value it. He’d just begun a relationship with one in Stockholm and a hedge fund mogul in New York and he was sure both would be interested.

  Back at the gallery he answered a few e-mails and returned some calls. He read over a contract and made notes for his assistant, trying to get work off his desk before the holiday. Then he went in to see May. “Agnes’s work is good,” he said. “It could be brilliant. But we have some hurdles to jump. It’s painted with dark energy.”

  “Not 9/11 again? Will it sell going into the trough twice?”

  “It better. It will take some engineering to make the public believe they’re bettering themselves by viewing these paintings. And that what they need is art that conveys a deeper, more serious experience. We need to send out the message that the paintings are historic works. We should begin to get the word out soon. I’ll have Cynthia drop a teaser to the Observer.”

  “You’re happy that we’ve bet the farm on her, then?” May smiled wryly, in her way making sure that he knew (as if he could ever forget) that his ass was on the line.

  “We’ve tripled our expectations on Immortality. I don’t think we’ll do better but I doubt we’ll do worse. Every dealer in America wants to represent Agnes Murray. At the end of the day our job is to sell obsessions articulated as objects. Agnes’s obsession is with mass annihilation and its historical significance. It’s a big statement.”