Prochownik's Dream

by Alex Miller

  Toni dropped the blind and pulled on his underpants, then went out along the passage and opened the front door. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I’m looking at your pictures.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Two.’

  Andy followed him into the bedroom and stood watching him pull on his clothes.

  ‘You know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t show.’ Andy waited for his reaction.

  But Toni was not listening.

  ‘You don’t get into that circus. You stay out of it. It takes too long that way. On the show circuit you’re just another performing bear. You don’t need to build up that kind of CV. Bream Island’s the last time you show. We sell your three pictures before the opening. When they come to the island your stuff ’s all got red stickers on it. Nothing’s available. The day they discover you, they find they’re too late already. We don’t pass up a chance like this one. The first thing they think is, Hey, this guy must be good, everything’s sold, so how do we acquire one of his pictures? Then I tell them. Listen, it’s not so easy with this guy. Be patient. He’s sensitive to deal with. He likes his privacy. He never shows. Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do for you, that’s what I tell them. And I’ve got some good news for you, too. You’re going to like this.’

  Toni was hearing Andy’s voice but he was not registering the details of what his friend was saying. Andy talked all the time, that was the way it was. Andy’s dad had been the same. In the backstreet car yard in Port Melbourne, Andy’s dad telling them his dream of running a new Ford dealership out on Burwood Highway with the big shots. Andy growing up in the yard developing an instinct for closing a sale. Now his business was selling art. Andy Levine was the dealer who, in his early twenties, had transformed the old Port Melbourne biscuit factory into one of Australia’s most successful contemporary private art dealerships. Andy would have made more money selling cars. As he said, everyone needs a car. But he preferred selling art, which no one needs. Andy preferred artists to cars. He liked the way they took risks trying to make sense of their precarious lives. Artists fascinated him. He used to say it was like watching a movie, seeing someone’s story unfolding, and you knew they could fall. And they did fall. And when they were on his books, and sometimes even when they were not on his books, Andy picked them up and dusted them off and gave them some money and sent them away to repair the damage. And he liked the people in the art business who were like himself, the dealers and promoters. He was one of them. These people were his other family too. He loved the strange intimate association of it, the rivalries and the shared hopes and the comradeship when someone took a fall or when they suddenly began to fly.

  There was a wayward instinct in Andy that Toni loved. They both knew there was nothing objective going on in the art business. Selling is not the ennobling art, Andy was fond of telling anyone who was willing to listen to him. Selling is the enabling art. Without sales, he would tell them, everything goes cold and the world comes to a standstill. Without sales no one has any fun. Andy enjoyed making money, but that was not the whole story with him. He loved his artists. He was their champion. He was on their side. He was in awe of what they did.

  Andy had been waiting a long time for his old friend to come good. You can never tell, he would say. Sometimes they come good and sometimes they die away and never do it. It’s touch and go. No one can give you the reasons for those who produce and those who don’t produce. Andy had known Toni even before they went to school together. Andy’s gift was an instinct for reality. He did not claim infallibility but, as some horse trainers have an instinct for speed and stamina in a horse, he had developed this sense about art. He did not need someone to tell him what was what about contemporary art. Andy could not have dealt in old masters. For the old stuff, the decisions have all been made, the risks have all been taken. There was no need for Andy’s gift of divination with old masters. As far as he was concerned, the old stuff belonged in the auction houses. That’s what the auction houses were for. Dead artists did not interest him. He loved to see and touch and be with the living artists, to be surprised by them, the weird and wonderful things they came up with. That was where it was at for Andy Levine. With the living. A hand on the shoulder when they needed it. A kiss. A little hug. Buy them a drink. A meal. Coax them back up out of the trough until he got a smile.

  Andy followed Toni out into the living area, talking his enthusiasm.

  ‘I think we might get Harvey to take The Schwartz Family for the National. We’ll see. We’ll see. Now hear this. After you left Richmond the other day, Geoffrey goes over with Marina and he turns your picture around and he talks admiration for your work for the next half-hour.’

  Toni looked at him. ‘That’s hard to believe. He dismissed it and me with it.’

  ‘Not so. That’s just Geoffrey. He gives people the impression he’s aloof. He’s not, he’s shy. Oriel and Robert came in and stood listening to him. Geoffrey makes a serious business of collecting the work of his contemporaries. He always has. He’s very choosy. Get me one of Toni’s pictures, he says to me when he’s done. While I can still afford him, he says. So how’s that? You don’t get a better start than Geoffrey Haine putting one of your pictures into his collection. He won’t keep it a secret. It’s going to make them sit up and take notice in Sydney. Believe me. You’re on your way with this. Geoffrey’s been on his own with this figurative stuff for twenty years. He’s the one who persisted through the bad times with it. He did the hard yards when it was a sin to use paint and canvas. He went hungry. He was suspect with the critics for years. Some of his best early shows were never reviewed. Like your beautiful installations. It’s true. The public curators didn’t want to know him. But he stuck at it. Now he sees you coming in and it looks to him like he’s having a voice with the new generation. Which thrills him. You’re the young bull and he likes what he sees. He can see you’re dangerous. Geoffrey is your first serious admirer. This is how all the best love affairs begin.’ Andy laughed. ‘You and Teresa should consider moving to Sydney. Geoffrey would open your show. You’d be on a boom in that town. They know how to celebrate their artists. Did I tell you I’m opening a new gallery in Paddington in the spring?’

  Toni was standing at the big windows looking out into the courtyard. The living area and kitchen were flooded with sunlight. Teresa had switched on the wall fountain in the courtyard before leaving for the office, and the water was spraying and sparkling in the sun. The blackbird was taking a bath. Then he noticed the obvious. She had had his pile of installation stuff removed. There was nothing left of it. The heap of old clothes and timber racks was no longer there. He felt a touch of nostalgia. There was going to be no reinstalling his old life now. No going back along that road. It was finished.

  He turned from the window and went into the kitchen, where he picked up the coffee pot and held it up for Andy, who was still talking. There was a note from Teresa on the bench. Dearest, I let you sleep. I hope the work goes well today. Give me a ring if you get a chance. Love you!

  Andy was sitting on the couch fiddling with the television remote. ‘I take a couple of your smaller oil studies and maybe a couple of the bigger drawings and I give an exclusive look to one or two of my Sydney collectors. Geoffrey’s getting too dear for them these days. I make it special for them to be looking at previously unseen Toni Powletts.’

  Toni called, ‘I’m signing my work Prochownik from now on.’

  ‘Hey, that’s good! You’ve got it there, old mate. That’s beautiful, Toni. You’re doing it for your old dad. Brilliant. I love it. Prochownik. That’s it.’ Andy watched the television for a couple of seconds then switched channels, as if he were searching for his own wavelength. ‘Prochownik,’ he said admiringly. ‘I wish I’d thought of that. Wait till we get you into a couple of the big collections, then the word’s going to travel around. Look, I got myself a Prochownik! They don’t keep it a secret, either. You got a Pr
ochownik? What the hell’s a Prochownik? How come I haven’t got a Prochownik? What am I missing here? Maybe I’m slipping. Next thing you know the only question they’re asking each other is, How big’s your Prochownik? They don’t know art from horseshit. They know money and they know size. They don’t need to know art. They know everything else.’

  Toni stepped across and handed him a mug of coffee. He was not listening to Andy’s spiel. He was preoccupied with how The Other Family was going to look to him this morning. He was working at visualising the picture in his mind’s eye. It was an obsessive exercise in anxiety, coloured at the edges by his waking apprehension of violence from across the road. How to be alone with his work was beginning to be a serious problem for him. He was missing Marina’s support, missing her confident assurance about what he was doing. He felt in danger of losing a vital connection.

  Andy yelled, ‘Hey you! Prochownik! You listening to me? I’m not doing this with anyone else, okay? Pay attention. It’s a special. A one-off for Moniek Prochownik’s boy. It’s him I’m doing this for. Me and Geoffrey are coming in behind you on this. Prochownik’s the one who doesn’t show. That’s this new guy as he’s coming onto the market. The one whose work is hard to get hold of. He’s not showing his tits to everyone. I can’t do this with two or three artists. It’s an exclusive situation. Okay? You getting this?’

  Andy got up off the couch and walked across and stood beside Toni and put a hand to his shoulder. ‘You’re an innocent, brother. They’ll eat you alive out there. I’m doing this for you and me and your old dad. You got that? For his belief in your gift. For Lola, too. You understand? For us when we were kids in the rat flats. I can’t do this for someone I don’t know.’ He tapped Toni’s skull with his forefinger. ‘You in there, buddy? You hearing what I’m saying? This is the style for you. Prochownik, the one who never shows. What’s your old dad thinking about this? It’s your moment. Take it. We only get one moment. Hesitate and we lose it. No one recovers from bad timing.’

  Andy walked back and sat on the couch again and sipped his coffee. He picked up the remote but did not put the television on. ‘And get yourself a good accountant. There’s only so much one man can do for another.’

  Toni drank his coffee standing at the bench. Andy was always talking. So what? That was Andy’s business. The piped music of continuous enthusiasm. Keeping the spirit strong. Creating the buzz. No one looked for long reflective silences from Andy Levine. Silence is for the next life, Andy always said whenever someone told him to shut up. In this life I’m talking. Andy was sitting there looking at him now. A rare pause in the flow here. Andy sitting forward on the couch with his elbows on his knees looking thoughtfully across the room at him as if he was making a diagnosis. Toni smiled. He loved his old friend. They went back so far they were family.

  ‘Prochownik’s studio is out of bounds,’ Andy said, thoughtful and slow, as if he were telling a story. ‘But for the director of the National, for Harvey, we make an exception. Harvey will like Prochownik. Harvey is Irish. Prochownik doesn’t know Harvey. It’s better Prochownik doesn’t know him. There’s no prejudice with him there. And Prochownik’s not Irish. Harvey is about to discover Prochownik. I let him discover him. I give Harvey the right of discovery of Prochownik. Critically, Prochownik is virgin soil. He’s unspoiled and he’s got a touch of the ethnic. Which is a handy flag to have on the mast these days. Prochownik is nobody’s darling. He is terra incognita. The prestige of discovery is all Harvey’s. And Harvey is a man with a serious budget. I’m not asking him to go out on his own either. These people don’t like going out on their own. I show Harvey The Schwartz Family and tell him to talk to Geoffrey Haine. Then I leave the two of them to get on with it. Geoffrey is buying a Prochownik and he won’t be able to hide his admiration for that picture. He won’t even try hiding it. Geoffey Haine is not a mean-spirited man. Believe me. I know the guy. Obstinate he may be, but not mean. I could tell you some stories about our Geoffrey. So it’ll be Harvey’s call after that. After Geoffrey speaks to him, Harvey’s got the choice of going down in history as the curator who passed up Prochownik or being the genius who discovered him. Don’t worry, there’s going to be a waiting list for Prochowniks if Harvey takes The Schwartz Family. You want a Prochownik? Join the queue! We’re talking the words here. Committed. Innovative. Challenging. Prestigious. These are the words, Toni. The trade words. They don’t mean a piece of shit but without these words you’re nowhere in the market. Work of the highest standard. A new benchmark. Prochownik and Haine are the forefront of the contemporary neo-figurative school. That’s the way this operates. Trade words coming out of the right mouths and going into the right ears with the right timing. Smart. They like the idea of smart, it reassures them that they’re smart. But first they’ve got to be told. If you don’t tell them they’re buying a work of genius, they’d never guess. They can go and tell their friends, This is a work of genius I just bought. It’s a Prochownik. Owning the Prochownik almost makes them the genius. That’s the whole idea. These are the people who collected Aboriginal dot and line thirty years ago and are unloading it in New York today and making a bucket of money. This is not about love. This is about money. Don’t forget that. Art, shmart! Forget it! Prochownik is the next spin of the wheel for these people. They’ll see with him it’s cool to celebrate being white Australian male and figurative again. That’s going to be a big relief to them.’ Andy drew breath and put down his coffee mug. ‘Well, let’s go and do it! Show me what you’ve been up to. What are we sitting around here listening to me for?’

  They crossed the courtyard and Toni opened the studio.

  Andy made an exclamation and went straight over to the corner and put his hand on the old suit, as if he were putting his hand on the shoulder of an old friend. ‘You kept it!’ He stood looking at the suit, touching it respectfully with his fingers. ‘Your old man was the one who made us believe. Now we know. Did we know then? He knew! We knew nothing. We believed him. Remember the day you brought this into the space? Your dad had been gone less than twenty-four hours. You were still finding it hard to breathe without him.’ He bent and read the sign. ‘Moniek Prochownik’s Outsize Sunday Suit. That’s it! He was a beautiful man, Toni. A beautiful man. Jesus, I loved that man. I can still see this suit sitting out there in the middle of the gallery all on its own. That was raw stuff, mate. You were the only one who could have done it. You didn’t even have a clue what you were doing. You just did it and we saw what a massive thing you’d done. It stopped us cold in our tracks.’

  ‘No one knew what to make of it.’

  ‘We knew what to make of it.’

  Toni went over to the easel and flipped up the drop sheet. He stood looking at The Other Family.

  Andy came over and stood beside him. ‘Now we’re here doing this. Your dad should see us today. Would you and me have been thinking about art if it hadn’t been for him?’ He looked around at the clutter in the studio. ‘Boy, you’ve been working! Look at all this stuff!’ He stepped across and picked up the canvas of Marina asleep on the island and stood with it in his hands, admiring it. ‘This is the one for our Geoffrey.’ He looked some more at the painting. ‘So, you and Marina Golding, eh? These things come around.’

  ‘We’re just friends.’

  ‘Friendship’s a great thing.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘You mean everything, Toni boy. I never heard you say anything yet you didn’t mean. You’re a rabbit for sincerity. Meaning something doesn’t make it true. Don’t confuse the two things. Meaning and truth. They’re not the same thing. Your old dad knew that.’ Andy was silent. ‘So, she’s doing a new background for you?’

  ‘We’ll see. Maybe. Who knows.’

  ‘Yeah, what do we know? I never had the hots for those two, I have to tell you. Who are they showing with these days? What brought them back from Sydney? I heard they were doing okay with Number 8 up there. Robert Schwartz is like a guy with two glass eyes.’

&
nbsp; ‘They’re my friends.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Toni was standing in front of The Other Family. He was seeing himself in the empty space to the left of the big group; a figure looking on, an onlooker. The voyeur. That was him! For the first time ever he was seeing himself in his work. The imaginary image of himself in the picture was not so much a likeness as an enigmatic male presence, erotic and naked, a presence bearing a dangerous power to disrupt reality. There was no doubt this self-image owed something to the fantastic intensities of Theo’s drawings, levering a crack in his defences. He was pleased. He liked the idea.

  Andy said, ‘Hey! You’ve still got your mother. I can sell Lola this afternoon.’

  ‘Mum’s not for sale.’

  ‘Prochownik’s mother’s not for sale! You hear that, folks?’ Andy held up the portrait of Toni’s mother. ‘You should be in my business. Tell them it’s not for sale and you double the price. It’s not for sale, it’s the only one they want.’ Andy set the painting down with care. ‘It’s all for sale, old buddy.’ Andy talking to himself now. ‘Your house. Teresa’s underwear. Your mother. Find the price, that’s all.’

  ‘Mum’s not for sale.’

  ‘That’s what they said about London Bridge. You’re making it a serious enterprise for them. You’ve almost got me believing you. Mum’s not for sale!’

  Toni was squinting at the imaginary figure of himself in the painting, seeing in it a confirmation, a move into his own space. So there really was to be no escape for him from art? It was a good feeling. And it was true. Had he ever doubted it? Had there ever really been a choice for him? ‘Maybe Dad was right,’ he said. ‘Maybe it has all been decided and we’re just here filling in between the dots.’