‘First,’ said Amiss, ‘I want to propose another toast with whatever you have in your glasses. To Rachel and Mary Lou, for triumphing over the forces of educational darkness yesterday!’
Mary Lou’s visit to Rachel’s school had been an uproarious success. The murders had coincidentally put art so centre-stage that the entire school attended her presentation. According to Rachel’s account, Mary Lou had excelled herself. She had shown them conceptual art from every angle and persuaded them to laugh at it. She had shown them slides of the Sistine Chapel and told them of Michelangelo’s struggles with the sheer physical challenges. She fascinated them with several Rembrandt self-portraits along with stories of some of tribulations he faced in his private life and enchanted them with his Lion Resting. Along with some Van Goghs, she told them of how his mental problems brought about suffering and finally his suicide. She told them simply the story of Icarus, showed them Breugel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and read them Auden’s poem.
Then she spoke about home-grown genius, told them of Stubbs’ anatomical dissections and how they had enabled him to produce Whistlejack, and of Turner’s life of experimentation with illustrating such intangibles as weather and light. The Fighting Temeraire elicited oooohs and aaahs and led her into talking of the Turner Prize with a few choice specimens of winning entries that got them all scoffing.
Finally, she told them the story of the emperor’s new clothes and told them that grown-ups and clever people could be very silly and that they should trust their own judgement. ‘And the result,’ said Rachel, ‘was a demand from the kids to be taken to see what they called “real” paintings and a promise from their now very own celeb that she’d go with them. The head and several of the teachers were furious, but they’ve had to cave in.’
When the acclamation had died down, and to the baroness’ delight, everyone was drinking port, Rachel asked her question. ‘There’s something really bugging me, Jack. I looked up the most famous names that have come up in all these discussions, and far too many of them are Jewish for my comfort. I had a look at the ArtReview Power 100, and it’s laden with Jewish curators and dealers and critics and collectors. It’s only the artists who are mostly gentiles.’
‘Good grief,’ said Amiss. ‘You didn’t tell me this. It’s another international Jewish conspiracy.’
‘I know we get blamed for everything from the killing of Jesus to the collapse of the financial markets,’ said Rachel. ‘And I’m inured to that. But is conceptual art really our fault?’
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said the baroness. ‘You’re being wet, Rachel. You know perfectly well Jews are smart, disputatious, and free-thinkers, and what with being persecuted everywhere they go for those reasons, their skills tend towards the portable. Like ideas and finance and the arts.’
‘I know. But then I looked up even more and found the Frankfurt school that started all this cultural relativist nonsense was dominated by them.’
‘Look here, Rachel. It’s called swings and roundabouts. You buggers are obsessed with education and art, you never stop thinking and arguing and sometimes you get it wrong but mostly you give us great scientists and musicians and thinkers that have a disproportionate effect on business and finance because you’re so bloody brilliant.
‘Although I think the Irish are up there with you when it comes to being good company—and, unlike you, they understand the attraction of alcohol—you are the most entertaining, funniest, warmest and stimulating crew on earth.’
Rachel opened her mouth and the baroness waved at her dismissively.
‘There are downsides, of course. You also produce innumerable clever sillies, like Marx and Freud and Trotsky and, indeed, Serota. Israel fights for its life as much with loud-voiced enemies within as with Jew-haters outside. And because most people are less clever, less successful, less perverse, and less open to new ideas than you lot are, that gets you hated, especially by poor bastards stuck in the intellectual rigidity of radical Islam.
‘There has to be someone to blame for everything. It’s your people’s burden. Live with it, stamp on your tribal propensity for angst and guilt, however much you might revel in it. And for Christ’s sake, lighten up.’
She had another sip of port and looked straight at Rachel. ‘Your choice, Rachel. Do you want to follow this perverse tribal trail in a dreary neurotic search for reasons to beat yourself up, or might you just exult in being alive?’
No one said anything.
‘Have I made myself clear?’ asked the baroness.
Rachel looked back at her and laughed. ‘Abundantly clear, Jack. It’s good to have you back.’
Acknowledgements
I’ve been researching this for years and longing to write it, but other projects and life got in the way.
I owe many many thanks to a large number of friends and acquaintances who’ve variously visited art exhibitions with me, talked and laughed and expostulated with me about conceptual art, listened to my rants and given me helpful suggestions. I have to single out Colm de Barra, Lizzie Bawdon, Rob Bryant, Tony Cahill, Stephen Cang, Mary Devine, Emily Dyer, Barbara Sweetman FitzGerald, Elizabeth Gibbons, Dylan Haskins, Imogen Hartmann, Jo Henderson, Lucinda Hodge, David Martin Jones, Kathryn Kennison, John Lippitt, Jason McCue, James McGuire, Janet McIver, Sean O’Callaghan, Robert Salisbury, Alec Swanson, and David Stuart Taylor, but there were several others.
My beloved Carol Scott, who has been my minder for twenty one years, was as wonderful as ever. Jane Conway-Gordon (who has the misfortune to be my agent as well as close friend) performed the delicate calculation of knowing when to kick me and when to empathise. Nina Clarke, as ever, was the great encourager and made valuable comments on the manuscript, as did my brother Owen, generous, as always, with his time and his prodigious knowledge.
I feel real gratitude to those of my readers who kept nagging me to get writing fiction again, to my American agent, Jane Chelius, and to all at Poisoned Pen for keeping the faith, particularly Barbara Peters, the Evil Editor revered by all, Rob Rosenwald, and Jessica Tribble.
I read many books and much journalism relating to the madder aspects of the art world. I owe most to Roger Kimball’s The Rape of the Masters (which also provided the epigraph), Don Thompson’s The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses, Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World, to the Stuckist website, and to the art criticism of Brian Sewell, who so often seemed to be the only sane person in the lunatic asylum that is the world of contemporary art.
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