(no subject)
A rough draft for you all. It probably moves too fast near the finale, but I was under a time crunch. Any feedback would be wonderful, both good and bad. Don't worry about my feelings. (this time).
It was winter and Geoffrey Kenner could hardly stand it. Even the quick trot from his car to the doors of the museum was grueling and left him hyperventilating; as he rubbed his gloved hands together he made sure to politely nod to the greeter while glancing haughtily away.
"Welcome to the Centre Pompidou," the man said, probably with a smile but Geoffrey did not look.
Just as he had expected, the exhibition hall (not bright enough, completely insulting his personal convenience) was crowded with a fairly bourgeoisie clique, having a martini glass swinging from one hand and the other one preciously pressed against a membranous layer of mink or cushioned velvet, all looking rather the same as though they had for the night been removed from an especially tight can of sardines. They trotted around and looked at the art on the walls, their eyes lazily sweeping across it, possibly stopping at a particularly intense concentration of colors or the momentarily pleasing frame, the whole time imagining the painting hanging above the toilet or perhaps in the hall. As glad as he was that he had not been born nor bred an elite Parisian, Geoffrey enjoyed their presence-though not their company-and felt that they added an unmistakably film-like quality to his artistic experience. In a way, they complemented the art.
The artist in focus on that night was called Benoît Arnaud. Geoffrey had read about him, and studied a few pieces. It was his job, after all, an art critic, and one of the world’s youngest, at that. He was 27.
One strikingly handsome picture caught his eye, and he meandered towards it, dodging sporadic huddles of pearls and satin.
Its title was Les Baigneurs Qui Embrassent. Standing a little to the side was a decent friend of Geoffrey’s, a short man named Arthur, who had the same snide perception of the class around him.
"Do you like it?" Geoffrey asked.
"I don’t know. I don’t dislike it, anyway. It’s a little hard to see, you know?"
He smiled and nodded.
Les Baigneurs Qui Embrassent was just that; it was not on a very big canvas. In the foreground there were figures, both nude with an antique obesity, the dominant male reaching over to kiss the less prominent female, who was on her side and appeared to be denying him the privilege. They were on a grassy hill above a lake. Obviously trying to be Impressionistic, Arnaud had, in Geoffrey’s opinion, failed. The throwback to antiquity was clear, but the background of the painting-a short canopy of trees that were presumably on the other side of the lake-was blurry and not consistent with the rounded and demure foreground that had been created with brisk brush strokes. He made a mental note to mention that in his critique.
"Have you seen any of the others?" Arthur politely inquired. He was French but had impeccable English.
"Not yet, I’ve just arrived. What are they like?"
"Better than this. If I recall, this one is just an experiment, which is a bit risky to include in an exhibition, but apparently Arnaud was proud of it. Most of the other works are much more modern."
"That may save him a scalding article, then," Geoffrey commented, and grinned. "Where is he?"
"There, by the table. He’s a bit of loner, I’ve noticed."
"I don’t feel any need to talk to him."
"You probably shouldn’t. I’ve read that he can be a bit snappy."
"It’s hardly to his benefit to be snappy at his first real show," Geoffrey said, and strode away.
For several minutes he slid down the hall, looking at more of Arnaud’s work. They improved dramatically. Most of them took on a Dalí-esque feel, however, which Geoffrey disagreed with. The works, though by no means masterpieces, were innocent enough, and he would not destroy poor Arnaud in a few strategically bound sentences describing the horrifically conspicuous influences and the lack of artistic integrity and individuality.
While observing the bizarre portrait of a gross-faced man in a church, someone tapped his shoulder, and he calmly turned around to face a man of about the same height as him wearing a tweed sports coat with and thick rimmed glasses. Geoffrey stood back in minor shock and said, "yes?"
"You are Geoffrey Kenner, the American art critic, no?"
"Yes, I am." He did not validate any response and looked over the man’s shoulder impatiently as though he was wanted at the other end of the room.
"My name is Theo Hugues. I am an artist."
From what he was wearing, Geoffrey would not have presumed Theo to be anything else.
"I’ve heard your name." In fact, a friend of Geoffrey’s who detested almost all visual art with a finely sharpened passion had brought up the name on several occasions, maintaining that but for Theo’s paintings, she would never have any intrigue towards the world of museums and galleries. For a while he had researched the name, finding nothing. At last his friend purchased one of Theo’s sketches and mounted it in her bedroom, where it remained as the glory of her notably minimal collection of astute aesthetics. It was very impressive.
Theo was flattered, and gave a weak smile that quickly vanished. "I am not well known."
"Yes."
"And I was wanting to know would you come and look at some of my art? In my studio. I can let you in."
This was not a request that he’d ever received face to face, but being prone to any new submergence in culture, Geoffrey rarely turned down the offers to attend small, if not entirely personal, visits to homes and studios. Besides, if Theo was ever to become a figure in the artistic world, he’d have to start somewhere, and it would be harmless kudos to an already flourishing career as an art critic if Geoffrey were to jump start his fame.
"Yes, I could do that. Do you have many pieces?"
"Quite a few, but not as much as Mr. Arnaud." Theo laughed nervously and flattened his palms together, with a few shadows moving gently across his face as he looked down to see his toes meet.
"That’s fine. I would be delighted, really."
"I would welcome you any time you could arrive."
"Where do you live?"
"Le Marais."
"It would probably be best for me to come within the next few weeks-I leave for the United States in February."
"That would be brilliant. Here is my phone number-" Theo pulled out a small piece of paper with a number scratched into it. "It would be an honor to let you see what I have been working on."
"Well, I would be thrilled to partake. Have you been painting long, Mr. Hugues?"
"Most of my life, yes."
"I’m sure that you have quite a bit of talent-from Paris, are you?"
Theo nodded.
"I’m American, but I grew up in Paris." Geoffrey offered this as an invitation to speak in French, but Theo seemed to decline.
"I have heard much about you. You are very well-known."
Geoffrey looked away and noticed a blatantly blank painting in the corner of the room, another installation of Arnaud’s, and vowed to visit it once he’d disposed to Theo. The man was making his anxious, with some bizarre aura, suggesting he was a very bohemian type or perhaps just insane. "Yes, I get around."
"Again, it would be an honor if you could see my art."
"I would love to see it, Mr. Hugues."
"You can say Theo." He smiled, the corners of his mouth curving almost grotesquely into crimson dimples below his eyes.
"Yeah," Geoffrey said, looking at his feet and suddenly feeling panicked. "Anyway-I’ll see you later. I’ll definitely give you a call in a few days."
"Thank you!"
Geoffrey walked away and could feel Theo’s eyes on his back. He stood and stared at more paintings, but he could not soak them in; they all seemed to have been diminished in color and brightness. Besides, during very cold weather, he felt vulnerable when not at home.
***
Two Saturdays later he went to visit Theo in his studio loft. It wasn’t so far away that he couldn’t drive, but the temperature was fierce, so he took a cab.
Le Marais was a district predominantly populated by gays and Jews, and Geoffrey rarely visited it, though it was a pretty part of the city and he did not mind traveling through it.
The flat was large and open, but the windows were small, and he was surprised to notice that it was very warm. Most of it was taken up with sculptures and canvases, scattered around the open spaces. Theo greeted him enthusiastically and offered him wassail. Geoffrey declined, as there was nothing he hated more than to eat or drink while viewing art. Only one or the other could be done with sufficient precision.
Theo showed his several sculptures, all very modern and dadaistic, portraying an odd division of household objects and furniture that had, for what could have only been the artist’s own pleasure, been converted into an array of overturned and paint-splattered monuments to some cyst of the imagination. Though marginally good, Geoffrey had seen both better and worse and, in his opinion, more important. The paintings were fantastically an improvement. Theo enjoyed to use larger canvases, which Geoffrey loved in an artist, and his images hit the small and obscure mark of being surreal and realistic at the same time. Overall, they were quite well-done.
"Are you trained as a formal artist?" He asked, strutting around the room.
"No. I have tried to be, to go to school, but I cannot afford it and I do not think it would do me any good."
Nodding unnoticeably with concurrence, Geoffrey noted to himself that the art world probably had more to gain from Theo than he had to gain from it.
"What do you think of them?"
"It’s all very good-very advanced, for someone who hasn’t been trained. Have you ever had a mentor?"
"Only textbooks." He laughed.
Geoffrey turned and saw a canvas he hadn’t yet observed, and was almost knocked back in enthrallment.
Never in his life, through hours of art history and survey or his constant perusal of galleries and exhibitions, had he seen something so stunning. What he saw he could never have described for any magazine or forum, although if he could, his prestige would be endless.
The painting-though that was too modest a word for it-seemed to move, almost writhe, as though the images were trying to leap off the easel and become three dimensional. There were human-like figures, in some strange artistic formation, and they very well could have been alive, swaying and dancing, rhythmic and potent. Vibrant colors bounced into the corners of the canvas. Prodigious white spaces drew the eye smoothly from side to side, up and down, back and forth; Geoffrey felt as if he watching a movie, each exposure reflecting on his pupils and shining into every end of the spacious studio. The painting was organic: breathing, growing, palpating, strangely disturbing yet incredibly beautiful, a gem, a compliment to everything in the room.
He did not want to let his eyes off it, because perhaps it would vanish and he would miss something, a color or element, an illuminated character sweeping over the landscape.
"Theo-" he stumbled backwards.
"Do you like it?"
"Theo-" Geoffrey stammered and almost feel over himself. The words came out: "It’s brilliant."
Plainly, the picture was of a small group of people standing beneath an awning in a surrealistic setting, but there was much more occurring around them, inside of them and on them. It could have been raining, or it could have been sunny, but that was obviously not the focus, for there was much more going on. Even the blank spots were filled with activity, sprawling bustling white.
"When did you do this?"
"I have not yet. I am still working on it."
"What?"
"Yes. I only started it about one month ago. There is still much to do."
"Nothing needs to be done! You are finished!"
Theo glared with confusion, and Geoffrey stood religiously in front of the painting, still looking it over, clutching his chest.
"Why did you do this? What-what was going through your head?"
"Nothing, I just painted. Is something wrong?"
"There isn’t anything wrong! It’s perfect! Theo, you must leave it alone, it must stay like this! Do you realize what this painting could mean to you? Us?"
Theo crossed the room and looked at his art, still not comprehending, and he almost displayed some disgust, since Geoffrey seemed to be upset. "I do not understand. It needs to be finished."
Geoffrey took his eyes reluctantly off the painting and began to search the room, scrutinizing the other pieces of art or maybe looking for another work that could be paralleled in magnificence, but it was not to be found. Nothing else in the apartment compared. As he furiously scrambled back towards the painting, to make sure that no ill had become of it in the few moments he’d not been protectively viewing it, Geoffrey realized that he could never look at art the same way again. This painting had spoiled him.
"What do you call it? Does it have a name?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"The Futility of Art."
Some panic rose into Geoffrey. He looked at Theo and then back to the painting. Each time he set eyes on it the piece had changed, morphed, evolved, and was something different, something new and elegant, and he felt like a goldfish moving perpetually in and out of the plastic castle in its bowl, every new cycle a fresh experience full of renewed vitality.
"Why is it called that?"
"Because while I was making it I saw that what I was doing was futile. I had tried to remake a photograph but I could not."
"Theo, that’s terrible. It should remain unnamed."
"There is no matter anyway. I can name it what I wish because no one will ever see it on a wall." Theo laughed.
Geoffrey looked.
"You’re joking. Everyone has to see this."
"I do not want to have fame. I only wanted you to see, and say how it was good or bad."
He didn’t know how to respond. At first there was anger that curled up his lip (a terrible tendency) followed by extreme anxiety. His entire body was swept with a few seconds of numbness. Again Geoffrey looked at the painting and met the irresistible urge to cry and bend before it with some pious reason; it was good enough to be worshiped, it was, enough so that men would die for it and live their lives in its shadow, a tormenting but graceful deity, giving purpose to life.
Theo had begun to get irritated. He stood around the art critic and stared with a grim countenance, a look that Geoffrey might have reserved for looking at a particularly disgusting piece of art that was too large and belonged in the obscured corners of someone’s hallway.
"You have to."
"No."
The two men, with all their artistic manna approaching boiling point and starting to bubble over the lid, stood, motionless, even dadaistically, resembling very much the other sculptures in the room: crammed with emotion, eerily encroaching on the viewer, yet blending in perfectly with the surroundings. It was possible that they had grown there.
Geoffrey refused to make a move, and half believed that the damn painting would stir before him or Theo.
"You don’t understand," he said. "You don’t understand. This is art. True art. I’ve never seen anything more incredible in my life. The world deserves this."
"I did not paint it for the world."
"All art is painted for the world, because if it’s any good, it means more than the artist."
"You need to go."
He didn’t want to leave, while the masterpiece was still held behind enemy lines, but Geoffrey realized there was nothing he could do at that moment. As he left the studio, briskly walked down the avenue in front with his hands tucked in his pocket and his breath clouding in front of him, he told himself, promised himself, that Theo’s artwork would be exposed, one way or the other; it had touched him in ways that he could never comprehend.
***
Poring over books and magazines in his home Geoffrey noticed no work so striking as Theo’s. He was glancing upon the plain women of the world after setting eyes upon Helen for the first time. The most amazing part of the artistic experience there was that he could still see the painting, crystallized in his mind, emblazoned on the lens some intangible eye: standing in an orchard in pearl-white garments with the lips pressed puritanically shut, right hand clenched at the side and the left thrown against the breast with a golden apple inside of the palm as though it were inside the womb of a protective mother.
In following days, Geoffrey beseeched Theo to leave the painting as it was and try to put it in an exhibition. Each time Theo refused, becoming more and more agitated.
As two weeks passed, he could not pull his mind from the painting. There was very little time before he left the country for several months, and he hated to think of what could become of it in his absence. Thoughts of stealing it or telling his editors and peers in the art world of it passed over him frequently, tempting to a dangerous measure.
What had come over him he could not understand. It could have been an addiction, some kind of dependency. Perhaps he was going insane? An incredibly vague and sickening force was binding him to Theo’s work, a bond that had been formed the second Geoffrey had laid eyes on the thing, and he couldn’t pull away; he did not want to pull away. It was a paradise, that painting!
***
"It is beauty," Geoffrey stated, as he stood again with Theo. It was raining.
"It is mine."
Those were the first words they spoke about the painting, which had stayed in the same place, still as closely unfinished as before, in the middle of the studio.
Geoffrey had been trembling all morning, though not from the cold. He could no longer write neatly or move his fingers with any grace. There was a twitch in his left sinus that had tormented him for days; so much so that at times he held a pillow to his face to ease the annoyance, the soreness developing over much of his face. Deep purple rings were starting to hang from under his eyeballs, pulling down folds of skin under his eyelash and near the nose. It took some effort to even keep his eyelids open.
"Sell it to me. I will accept it at any price."
"I do not know why you want it. It is only a piece of art."
"But-" Geoffrey could think of no way to say that it was not just a piece of art, but it was art itself, a horrifically formidable incarnation of art.
Theo made a nervous tick motion of his head, and looked to the window, where the rain was nailing against the glass.
***
Outside, Geoffrey stood and looked up at the dark brick studio, a tall, ugly building. Rain slapped his face and stung his eyes. He blinked and looked down. The sidewalk was cobbled and littered with trash. For a few moments he stood on the curb looking for a taxi, but one did not come by, so he retreated to beneath the awning of the loft building.
There, he did something that he did not often do, for want of following a moral of clean body and clean mind; from his overcoat pocket he took a pack of cigarettes, old and folded and creased, but intact. He had intuitively grabbed them on the way out of his apartment. Long had they been hidden in a drawer in his kitchen, under packs of Band-Aids and sandwich bags. Removing one of the slim cigarettes, he realized that he’d brought no lighter. Noticing a young woman standing several yards away, he approached her casually.
"Avez-vous un briquet?"
She smiled and replied in the affirmative, and handed him a book of matches, from which Geoffrey grabbed a match, struck it confidently, and pulled the flame up towards the end of his cigarette, deftly curving his fingers inward so that his palm would protect the fire from the unsettling breeze that had begun to rise.
"Merci." He retreated to his initial spot, in front of Theo’s studio.
In the next several minutes, while he finished his cigarette with a masculine, practiced vigor, a number of taxis drove by, but Geoffrey did not attempt to hail them down. His light indulgence was calming him incredibly and he would have had no reservation to walk home, through the rain, down the wet streets of Le Marais. A minor vertigo approached him as he stood, stationary, watching the cars go by and the tourists trying to order a meal in French in the brasserie across the street. The rain seemed to get harder.
Finally, as he finished his cigarette and felt no desire for another (fortunately, in his opinion), a cab came slowly down the road. Geoffrey walked to flag it down, quickly, as he did not have luggage to carry. The cigarette was discarded carelessly, and thrown into the building behind him, where it was presumed dampened by the rain and made harmless. Of course, the rain did not make it past the awning, so the cigarette rolled towards the base of the studio and smoldered, even after Geoffrey and the woman who’d lent him the matches had left.
***
When he woke up the next morning to the phone ringing, Geoffrey felt a stinging in his right eye that made him moan as he rolled over towards the bedside table.
"Yes?" He answered, in his instinctive English.
"Mr. Kennar?"
"Yes?"
"This is Theo."
"Theo. Right. How are you?"
"Not so well."
Geoffrey sat up and looked at the window. The rain had stopped but the day was overcast.
"Why not?"
"My home burnt last night."
He didn’t need to hear anymore. Geoffrey set the phone on the bed, where it rolled off and hit the floor with a piercing thud. Standing up, he threw the sheets off him, and walked towards the window, where he looked at Paris, a beautiful European city that he had visited many times prior to living there, where he worked as an art critic, vainly seeing the creations of others and sharing his opinion. One of the youngest in the world, even, being only 27. Yawning, he scratched his side, and began to shiver suddenly, and realized that he wasn’t wearing any socks. He could hardly stand the cold.