The Art Forger (14 page)

T
HE CANVAS IS
completely stripped down to the sizing in three days, and I’m hunched over and moving around the studio like an old lady. I think about going to see Rik’s massage guy, New Age Bob, he calls him, but decide it’s not worth the money. I dig my fingers into a spot under my left shoulder blade and press down hard. Not much relief. What I wouldn’t do for one of Isaac’s backrubs.

The two canvases sit on easels side by side. I’ve cleaned the Meissonier canvas with hydrogen peroxide and the sizing glows pearly white. This is important—more than important, it’s imperative. As oil paint ages, it gains translucency, allowing more light from the sizing to refract through it, giving the painting its depth and luminosity. Degas was a master at this, so the proper base is vital if anyone’s going to believe he painted it.

Charcoal in hand, I begin my task: sketching
Bath
on the new canvas. It’s the same process I use for Repro, and in a few hours, the drawing is done. I make a mixture of raw umber and turpentine and, using a very fine brush, go over the charcoal lines. I do some online research on Degas’ use of mediums while I wait for the paint to dry. When it does, I brush off the charcoal. Before me stands stage one of
Bath II,
a drawing in line and wash.

Which is good because Markel is on his way over to check out my progress and take a look at the new stove. The stove is a beauty: all stainless steel with digital wizardry and a door more than big enough to accommodate the canvas. I can’t imagine what Han van Meegeren would think of such a wonder.

When Markel arrives, he heads straight for the stove. He’s dressed down today—or dressed down for Markel—in a casual but perfectly fitted pair of khakis and a silvery-green shirt that plays up his eyes and well-muscled shoulders. “One big mother oven,” he says.

“Yeah. They delivered it yesterday. It’s going to be great. Perfect. Thanks.”

“And when you’re finished, you can go into the cupcake business.” He pulls open the oven door. “You could easily bake a hundred at a time in this thing. Two hundred.”

“I’m hoping the art business is going to work out.”

He glances over at my window paintings still hanging on the wall. “It will.” He turns to the two canvases and points at
Bath II.
“This Meissonier’s sizing?”

I’m surprised that he would even ask this question, but it adds credence to his claim that he hasn’t done this before. “Of course.”

“The drawing looks great. Really good.” He takes a step closer. “No underpainting yet?”

“Next step.”

Markel glances at the couch.

“Oh,” I say. “Sorry. Want to sit down?”

He takes a seat. “I see you’ve been shopping.”

“I couldn’t help it.” I run my hand along the soft red fabric. “It was 70 percent off.”

Markel tilts his head and looks at me with something between humor and compassion. “Don’t have to rationalize it to me.”

I wonder why I never noticed what a nice man he is. I guess I was too intimidated by the prestige of Markel G and his power as dealer-to-the-stars to see him as an actual person. I was younger then, too—and much more naive.

I sit down next to him. “I think I’m rationalizing it to myself.”

“That’s not necessary either.”

“Oh, you know, ill-gotten gains and all that.” I wave my hand airily to indicate that I don’t really mean it.

Markel isn’t fooled by my posturing. “There’s no crime in copying a painting.”

“It’s a crime to be in possession of a stolen Degas.”

“What if it weren’t a stolen Degas? What if it were only a copy? Would that make you feel better?”

I sit up straight. “It’s a copy?”

He leans toward me. “Look, Claire, if anything happens, which it won’t, my plan is to say I told you it was a copy. That’s why I gave you the $8,000 check. In case someone follows the money, your deposit is substantiation that you accepted and then carried out a standard reproduction. We’ll both claim I told you my painting was a copy and that it never occurred to you it was the Gardner painting. No one will be able to prove otherwise.”

I scan his face. “Is that what you’re telling me? That the painting isn’t a Degas?”

“If that’s what it takes to get you to relax.”

“Is it true?”

Markel rests his hand on my thigh for a brief moment. “You know as well as I do that she’s as real as they come.”

Seventeen

THREE YEARS EARLIER

The first week after Isaac left, I spent almost all my time feeling sorry for myself: crying, whining to friends, eating little, sleeping much. The following week, I flung myself into a frenzy of work, creating some of the most maudlin paintings ever made. I threw them all out. It was a month before I finally emerged from what I guessed from my undergraduate psych classes was a “situation-specific manic-depressive episode.” Not truly nuts, just momentarily so. When I returned to myself, my grief and self-pity edged into fury.

Isaac and
4D
were still everywhere. Hardly a day went by without a piece in the “Names and Faces” section of the
Boston Globe
about Isaac eating at some fashionable restaurant with some Red Sox player or celebrity chef. And everything from the
New York Times
to the
South End News
contained articles about him or his work. It made me want to throw up.

Much attention was given to my hourglasses, to “Cullion’s remarkable exploration of time on every conceivable level, including the inspired juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary painting styles.” The critics waxed ecstatic about his “brilliant marriage of theme, image, and meaning within the paint itself” and his ability to “mesh the abstract and representational” into a conceptual whole greater than its parts.

“Artist of the Hour,”
ArtWorld
claimed in its Spring catalog issue, and the
Wall Street Journal
did an editorial on the effect of curated museum shows on the price of a rising artist’s work. Of course, Isaac was their case in point. It seems that his earlier paintings were being snatched up for between ten and twenty times what he’d received before the MoMA show.

He never mentioned my name. Never called. Never e-mailed. Not even when I left multiple messages asking him to talk to Karen Sinsheimer about returning my phone calls. Which is how I found myself riding the Chinatown Bus—twenty dollars round trip—into Manhattan. I was on my way to MoMA to see
4D,
my
4D,
and to give Karen another copy of the slides she’d claimed she wanted to see. Her assistant kept telling me they never arrived.

Although I’d been to the museum multiple times since the new addition, it’s always a bit of shock to enter the building. After all those years of the tighter, more confined space, the wide open lobby with its soaring atrium and view of the sculpture garden took a moment to process. But I was on a mission and didn’t dawdle.

The temporary exhibits are usually on the top floor of the Rockefeller Building, and that’s where I headed. But as I wandered through the spacious, sky-lit galleries, I didn’t see any sign of
Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture.
I’d assumed the show would still be up, and I was simultaneously crushed and relieved
.
Were these really the circumstances under which I wanted to view a painting of mine hanging in the Museum of Modern Art?

Apparently so, for I went back to the lobby and got in line at the information desk. It was highly unlikely that a piece so recently acquired would already be hanging as part of the permanent collection, but still, I waited my turn.

“I know this is a long shot,” I said to the woman behind the desk, “but is there any chance that a new acquisition is on public display? It was just bought a couple of months ago. Isaac—”

“Ah, yes, you must mean
4D,
” she interrupted with a knowing smile. “Our new Cullion.”

Our new Cullion
. Like our new Picasso. Our new Rembrandt.

“Contemporary Collection. Second floor, Rockefeller,” she said. “Next?”

I stumbled up the stairs. When I made it to the top, the light from the atrium windows filled all the space around me, seared into my eyes, and for a moment, all I could see was white. Disoriented, I turned toward the bookstore rather than the galleries. I gripped the top handrail, took a deep breath, and forced myself to walk slowly in the right direction.

It took me a while to find it, but when I did, it nearly brought me to my knees. There it was. Between Chris Ofili’s
Prince amongst
Thieves
collage and Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s
Untitled (Perfect Lovers)
clocks.
4D.
A painting by Claire Roth, hanging with an Ofili and a Gonzalez-Torres. In one of the greatest contemporary museums in the world.

And although the little white card on the wall attributed the work to someone else, I knew, and
4D
knew, that she was mine.

O
F COURSE, IT
wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Especially after Karen Sinsheimer’s assistant—who was about my age and much, much better dressed and coiffed—wouldn’t let me see her boss and informed me that although I was free to leave my slides, Ms. Sinsheimer was extremely busy and there was no guarantee she would have time to look at them.

When I explained that Ms. Sinsheimer had asked to see my work, the assistant held my gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable, then, without a word, lifted them out of my hand with her perfectly manicured fingers. I can only imagine what she did with them after I left the office.

On the way back to Boston, the bus blew a tire, and we had to wait on the side of the Mass Pike for three hours before they could find another bus to pick us up. By the time I got home, I was enraged. So enraged, I called Isaac from a phone booth so he couldn’t screen my call.

When he answered the phone, I said, “I just saw
4D.
Nice spot between Ofili and Gonzalez-Torres.”

His voice was a low growl. “What do you want?”

“Just calling to check in. Compliment you on your latest success. A former student connecting with her old prof. A former student who painted your current masterpiece.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Claire. You and I both know she’s mine.”

“I don’t think that’s what either of us knows.”

“Sure, you got
4D
started, and I’ve thanked you for that many times. In front of both Karen and Markel, if I remember correctly. But it was my idea, my series, my style. You didn’t even know how to throw your body behind your brush. I had to show you how to do that. I had to show you! You didn’t know how.”

For a moment, I was speechless. “Who painted it?” I asked softly.

“I did.”

I couldn’t believe he was actually saying this to me. “You ungrateful fucker . . .”

“What do you want, Claire?”

“I want you to tell them it’s mine,” I said before I realized that this was exactly what I wanted. What I’d wanted all along.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, I’m not going to do it.” The phone clicked dead in my hand.

Eighteen

Strong light floods the studio, which is a good sign for the first day of painting. I’ve played with the position of the two easels to make sure the light hits each at exactly the same angle. I’ve ground the underpaint—flake white, raw umber, and turpentine mixed with a touch of sienna to warm it up—to my exacting and secret recipe. A red sable brush, ridiculously expensive, but the only kind of soft brush Degas ever used, stands at the ready. I immerse the brush in the small bowl of underpaint, close my eyes, and visualize the final painting, which in this case is almost effortless since the original, so to speak, is right in front of me. I begin.

Underpainting is fast and straightforward. The perfect first step for a long project. It’s a monochrome wash painted between the initial drawing and the first application of polychrome color, a thin coat covering the entire canvas that sets the tonal aspect of the painting. To make it even easier, the umber and turpentine in the mixture cause it to dry quickly so there’s no need to bake it.

As I work, my thoughts turn, as they do so often lately, to the origin of the forged
Bath.
If it was painted in the late nineteenth century, which I’m almost positive it was, then Belle Gardner and Edgar Degas become potential actors in the scheme. There are many possibilities. Degas sold her a forgery. Belle had it copied after she bought it. In transit between Degas and Belle, someone else forged it without their knowledge. Belle and Degas executed the forgery together.