An Object of Beauty: A Novel

by STEVE MARTIN

  “Please, take down the Aivazovskys,” said the director. “It’s for their own good.”

  The brunette leaned the two paintings on either side of the Van Gogh on the floor, giving the gouache breathing room. The director turned to Talley. “Do you know this picture?”

  The subject was a green boat on yellow sand next to a blue sea, eighteen by twenty-four inches, under glass. “Of course I know the painting, but I didn’t know there was a gouache. It’s wonderfully fresh,” said Talley, standing and examining it. Lacey came close. The signature, “Vincent,” made her feel the artist was nearby, that his brush had just lifted off the paper.

  There was among them—five of them now—a sudden, communal silence. They stood motionless for several seconds, as though the desire to remain still had coincidentally struck each of them at exactly the same time. These were thoughtless seconds. The object was not for sale, not for trade; it had already ascended. It was for them only, to be seen by them only, as though the artist himself had placed it before them, a holy thing. The object seemed, in this brief encounter, sentient. It sat quietly, and everyone was quiet. It spoke in silence, because that was the language of the moment.

  “Well,” said the director, “thank you, Sylvie.” Sylvie picked up the picture and started in motion, a double whammy of beauty. “It’s leaving, sadly,” said the director. “We’ve owned it since the war. We got it from the Germans, as spoils, after they looted us and we looted them back, and we kept it all these years. Now we make nice. Give back.”

  The director poured another round of vodka as Patrice moved the Aivazovskys off the floor and back to their makeshift easel. Several Russian pictures had been excluded from the trade, the too small and the too inconsequential. Lacey looked, through affected eyes, at one minor Aivazovsky, lit by reddening sunlight, of moonlight on the water. The Aivazovskys were looking more beautiful to her now.

  20.

  LACEY UNDERSTOOD the ways of men, but she did not know how clever they could be. That night at the hotel, she walked into the bar and saw Talley and Claire sitting at a table with Sylvie. She could not remember any contact or any efforts made in that direction. It all must have taken place after they left the museum, by phone, which was impossible to use, or by messenger, which was even more impossible to imagine, since she was the travel coordinator and had never run across anyone like a messenger. Lacey, in rare confusion, didn’t know whether to join the table, but everyone’s eyes met at the same time and there was no other alternative for anyone.

  “You met earlier at the Hermitage. Sylvie is one of the curators of drawings,” Talley said.

  Curator of drawings? Lacey thought. Jesus Christ, she can’t be thirty.

  Sylvie was a five-language European with a soft voice that was raised only to laugh at stories about rich-world: so-and-so’s yacht or a Greek’s rowdy behavior at a restaurant that ended in broken plates. All this seemed very cosmopolitan to Lacey. She did, however, remain composed. Lacey wondered if Sylvie had been so beautiful from birth that she didn’t know her power was unearned. Like the cooing attention lavished on a three-legged dog.

  Talley spoke: “Too bad you have to give back the Van Gogh.”

  “He’s not giving it back. He just likes to say he is.”

  “He can do that?” said Claire.

  “In the new Russia, lies and truth are indistinguishable. He may give it back, but it will take years. We gain years of diplomacy with only announcements.”

  “Will our deal stick?” said Claire.

  “Stick?”

  “Will our deal hold?”

  “Oh yes, it’s too insignificant. These deals go on all the time. There’s no supervision.”

  Lacey pried into the conversation. “That little Aivazovsky, how much?”

  “What do you mean?” said Claire.

  “How much is it?”

  “It’s worth around fifteen thousand.”

  “I didn’t ask how much it’s worth. How much is it to buy?”

  “You want to buy it?”

  “I might.”

  “It’s twelve thousand.”

  “That’s what it’s worth,” said Lacey.

  “I said it’s worth fifteen.”

  “Same difference. Fifteen, twelve. The same.”

  “I’ll sell it for eleven.”

  “You have nothing in it. You made enough today that your cost is covered. I’ll pay you what you have in it. Nothing.”

  “Maybe you should pay her to take it,” Talley added.

  “I’ll pay six thousand.”

  Lacey was doing two things at once. She was letting the table know she was funded and letting Patrice know that he owed her. She persisted: “You don’t want to take it back. I can put it in my suitcase.”

  “I would be doing you a favor at ten thousand.”

  “You would be doing me a favor at six thousand.”

  “She’s eating you alive,” said Sylvie, displaying rapport with Lacey and facility with English.

  “I’ve got ten thousand in it.”

  “You’ve got nothing in it. It’s all profit to you. I’ll give you eight thousand.”

  Talley, amused, spoke: “You are whimpering and wounded, Patrice.”

  “All right. Eight thousand. But only if I buy the drinks.”

  Sylvie laughed, Talley laughed, Patrice laughed, Lacey laughed.

  Later, in her room, the phone rang. She knew who it was. She did not answer.

  21.

  SHE HAD WRAPPED the Aivazovsky in a bathroom towel, wedged it safely in her suitcase, and transported the émigré back to the Upper West Side of New York, where she realized, after sending Patrice Claire a check for eight thousand dollars in Paris, that she hated it. It was half as good as an American picture of the same period, and it did not accomplish in her uptown apartment what the Avery had accomplished in her downtown apartment. This was an eight-thousand-dollar souvenir, the price tag on an exotic and egotistical moment far away. However, it was the most expensive thing she owned, so she hung it in a place of honor in her new flat, where absolutely no visitor, art-wise or not, ever noticed or commented on it.

  22.

  LACEY’S NEW DIGS brought small quakes to her accustomed way of life. Old friends were now subway rides away instead of around the corner, local restaurants had to be scouted, and her route to work was now on a crosstown bus, which meant that on rainy days she had to dodge slush much more frequently than when she was downtown. However, movie theaters abounded, and bars were classier and friendlier to her new, upscale life. On weekends and holidays, she bicycled down the West Side bike path toward Chelsea, sometimes meeting the girls for lunch, dropping into galleries on Saturdays before work, and on Sundays she circled the entire city of Manhattan if the day was lazy enough and warm enough. Nearby, Central Park grew into an oasis of biking, jogging, strolling, street music, tanning, fashion, summer theater, and solitude. For nightlife, though, she eschewed the Upper West Side and would head below 14th Street on weekends for a taste of rambunctiousness.

  Barton Talley had given her high marks, and Lacey was more entrenched than ever at Sotheby’s, but the summer was under way. The art world was moribund. Promotions and pay increases were unlikely when there was no money coming in. August made Manhattan bake and stink, and her trek to Atlanta for, she assumed, a last look at her grandmother did not relieve the oppression, as Atlanta was under a tidal wave of humidity. There were solemn moments in Granny’s bedroom, but in the living room, there were small, quiet talks of inheritance, and Lacey could gather that with priorities going to her mother and aunts, little would come her way. She was thankful for her own sudden wealth.

  Labor Day weekend stretched long and slow, and I met her for lunch at Isabella’s on Columbus—at an off time, thank God—when we could sit outside and idle away several hours without guilt of table hogging. Lacey’s art knowledge had trebled, and she related the entire Russia trip. My face stayed in a frozen grin while she told me of her lia
ison with Patrice Claire, hiding my real feeling of envy for the lucky Patrice.

  “You know what I think now?” said Lacey. “He didn’t fuck that Sylvie person. But, oh well, I wasn’t up to a second night of high jinks anyway. Plus, I never have sex on the second date.”

  “Only the first,” I said.

  “Zackly,” said Lacey. “So, Thursday,” she continued, then stared at me.

  “Thursday. What’s Thursday?”

  “It’s the beginning of the high holy days.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “The art season! The art season opens Thursday. Why do you think Barneys stays open on Labor Day? To sell clothes for Thursday!”

  I laughed. I was removed from the money side of the art world, but I liked that so much excitement was stirring around a subject I had decided to devote my life to.

  “There’s a show opening at Talley, Giorgio Morandi. Let’s go,” she said.

  “Jeez, Lacey, and then we hop over to Hirschl and Adler for some real kicks? Let’s go to Chelsea. There’re about a dozen openings that night.”

  “We’ll get Angela and Sharon to come, too.”

  I said yes, and then I said, “So… how is… you know, the thing?”

  “We are fine,” she said. “You and I are fine.”

  23.

  I MET LACEY at her apartment. Wet, robed, mouth full of toothpaste, she pointed me the few steps toward the living room and then flitted into the bathroom. I looked around. I had never been in a young woman’s quarters that bore the appearance of success; the ones I’d seen looked assembled from hand-me-downs and junk stores. Bedrooms, if I ever made it that far, usually held a lonely futon. Lacey was no longer dragging furniture from her past life into her new one. Her apartment, now furnished in Craftsman style, with mica lamps and hooked rugs, contradicted its inhabitant, this girl who was barely tame, whose businesslike demeanor was a curtain she closed and opened.

  When Lacey reappeared, I changed my opinion. Wearing a dress that uptown looked smart and downtown looked vintage, I realized she was of two worlds, able to exist in either of them without denying her own personality. She had always had flair, even when she had been struggling. She was the type that would be photographed on the street wearing mud boots by The New York Times with the implication that, yes, here was commanding style. Yet this was the first time I saw her that she looked like a woman and not a girl.

  Lacey had made mint juleps from a Times recipe, and we sat by her window at a small round table, sipping them like two grannies. Her window faced south, which meant that the impending sunset ricocheted down the street, turning windows gold and opaque. Lacey always managed to find her light, though I don’t think it was conscious: she looked as beautiful as I’d ever seen her. Then we hailed a taxi to the Upper East Side.

  People in coats and ties were milling around the Talley gallery, and on the wall were the minimally rendered still lifes by Giorgio Morandi, most of them no bigger than a tea tray. Their thin browns, ashy grays, and muted blues made people speak softly to one another, as if a shouted word might curdle one of the paintings and ruin it. Bottles, carafes, and ceramic whatnots sat in his paintings like small animals huddling for warmth, and yet these shy pictures could easily hang next to a Picasso or Matisse without feeling inferior.

  Still Life with Wine Bottles, Giorgio Morandi, 1957

  12 × 16 in.

  Lacey scanned the party and instantly gave me a look that said, “What are we doing here?” The attendees were on the other side of sixty, and Lacey, observing the clothing of the men, with their gold-button blazers, plaid pants, and striped shirts topped with starched white collars, said to me, “Are they all admirals?”

  Talley came over to us and gave Lacey an extraordinarily warm greeting, hugging her like an old friend. I suppose the adventure they had shared made them comrades. “Isn’t Morandi marvelous!” he said. “Every one is the same and every one is different. I opened the season with him because he is uncriticizable! I’d like to hang him in a room with Edward Hopper and see who could outsilence the other. Lacey,” he continued, “if you ever get bored at Sotheby’s, call me. I could use you in all kinds of ways.” Lacey knew there was no double entendre in Barton’s invitation, and she felt flattered.

  Angela and Sharon rolled in, looking like dressed-up secretaries, which they were, and I could read on their faces the desire to back out the door, hoping no one would notice. But we corralled them, did an obligatory walk around the gallery, and then were standing on the street in perfect September weather, now officially on the town. I realized we were really on the prowl not for art, but for a party. We took a taxi for luxury and charged into the steaming heart of Chelsea, energized and wearing our best outfits. People spilled out into the streets, and the gallery fluorescents did, too, lighting up the sequins on dresses and other glitterati. The plastic wineglasses were appropriate here, where at Talley’s they seemed like a lapse in critical thinking.

  The gallery names downtown stood out from the stolid uptown houses: Exit Art, 303, Atelier 14, Deitch Projects, Feature, Generous Miracles, Metro Pictures. Some of the names sounded more like bars than galleries, and there was a parallel. Here, the attractive waitresses were the attractive gallery girls, the macho bartenders had become the less-than-macho gallery guys, and the customers’ eyes were ever darting around the room, searching for eye contact. The spaces had the buzz of a noisy restaurant, and there were lots of handshakes and kisses for people who only ran into each other at these events. The art on the walls—or on the floor—was duly noted, but if a cynic wanted to make the case that the art was there as an excuse to socialize, he could.

  Our group hit about five galleries, in and out, in and out. There were paintings that were intentionally bad, which was an easier goal to reach than those trying to be intentionally good. One gallery had an artificial flower sprouting out of the ceiling; another gallery’s interior was coated with dense wax the color of rosé wine, in which the artist had scratched the names of all his rivals; and another gallery had a robotic machine that either saved or destroyed snapshots according to the whim of the viewer. Some of the art made Lacey laugh, some she admired, some made her turn to me and make a vomit sign with finger in mouth.

  One artist with the pseudonym (it was natural to assume) of Pilot Mouse had taken over a gallery and installed… another gallery. We viewers went in one at a time, and inside was a simulation of an uptown gallery, complete with gallerygoers—really guerrilla actors—who walked around and looked at the antique store paintings on the wall. It was, I supposed, a comment on gallery going, though I don’t know what the comment was. The actors uttered phrases like “The artist is commenting on the calculation inherent in our society” or “The artist is playing with the idea of dichotomies.” These phrases were the smarty-pants version of a car dealer’s “This little baby only has eight thousand miles on it and gets fifteen miles a gallon.” But Pilot Mouse had created something intriguing: I felt a mental disorientation knowing that everything in the room was fake, including the people, especially having just come from a similar real situation uptown; and after I went back into the real world, the feeling lingered uncomfortably. Lacey reported that she had engaged one of the actors in a conversation about a picture, during which neither of them broke character, meaning that she too had become a fake gallerygoer. Afterward, as we walked down the street, Lacey turned to me and said, “How the hell do they sell that?”

  The Robert Miller Gallery had one foot in uptown and one foot in downtown, and his image was that of a reputable dealer who had a good eye and knew the market. We wandered in, ambling through a show of Alice Neel paintings, which to me could qualify as either fine art or a student’s MFA thesis show. Lacey separated from us and found herself looking through a sandwich of glass that divided the offices from the gallery. She had noticed a small fourteen-inch-square silk screen of flowers.

  “Is that… ?” she said to one of the employees as he w
alked into the office, balancing three plastic cups of wine.

  “Andy,” he said, letting the implied “Warhol” appear in Lacey’s head.

  She looked at it again, thinking of the few Morandi still lifes she had just seen, thinking it was Morandi deprived of all its energy, squeezed of its juice, that it was as dead as a thing can be, thinking that it was a joyless illustration of one of earth’s wondrous things, that it could hang in a dentist’s office. After her years of looking at pictures that were working so hard, here was something that exerted no effort at all. And yet, hanging there on the wall, lit, it looked strangely like art.

  We finally left Chelsea, our night of art-looking over, but Lacey was about to confront the problem of Andy Warhol.

  Andy Warhol died in 1987 and, surprising many historians and connoisseurs, nestled into art history like a burrowing mole. He inched up in stature, casting a shadow over the more accomplished draftsman and less controversial figure Roy Lichtenstein, and could be referred to by his first name only, like Jesus or Madonna. As with them, the reference could be either sacred or profane. As Warhol’s prices escalated—some said by canny market manipulation from a handful of speculators—there was a strange inversion of typical market reaction. Formerly, when a masterpiece sold for an unimaginable price, as Picasso’s Yo, Picasso did in 1989 for nearly forty-eight million dollars, it pulled up the prices of equivalent pieces by the same artist. Then, when Van Gogh’s Irises sold for an equally unimaginable price in the same year, it pulled up the prices of all masterpieces. But when Warhol started to achieve newsworthy prices, the value of contemporary art, including art that was yet to be created, was pushed up from behind. Warhol’s presence was so vivid, so recent, that he was identified not with the dead, but as the first nugget of gold from Sutter’s Mill. The rush was on.

  Flowers, Andy Warhol, circa 1965

  48 × 48 in.

  If Andy Warhol had lived to see his conquest of the art world, his response would have probably been a halfhearted “Oh wow.” His artistic legacy is rich, but his legacy as a news item is equally rich. He mastered the laconic interview, never seeming to care how he came off and never caring whether he answered the question. He possessed an indifference that said he was not trying to be popular, which had the converse result of making him popular. When asked once what he would do if he was given a million dollars to make a movie, Warhol replied, “Spend fifteen thousand on the movie and keep the rest.” This makes sense, when you remember that one of his early films was a seventy-minute continuous shot of his friend Taylor Mead’s ass.