An Object of Beauty: A Novel

by STEVE MARTIN

  I walked and took notes, which gave me away as a journalist and not a buyer, but I was still welcomed as I scratched on a notepad while staring at whatever, and I would exchange smiles with the assistant or owner when I left. A few smiles were returned warmly, or perhaps provocatively, but I’m not a pickup artist. Like Tanya Ross, I prefer to talk for months.

  The art fair was designed to appeal to almost any type of collector, and there were throngs of people to maneuver through. There was no way to go from start to finish without doubling back, which created an ongoing loop of déjà vu, and I was surprised to see a painting for the second time yet have no recollection of the other pictures around it. It became impossible to evaluate the artworks but easy to enjoy them; they were like a steady parade of beauty queen contestants where you find yourself saying after the fiftieth lovely one, “Next.”

  Around two p.m., I felt a quiver in my legs and realized I was fatigued and famished. I went to the center of the arena, where wrapped sandwiches were served after a twenty-minute wait in line. Coffee, illogically, was at another line, infuriating me. There was impractical seating, a dozen ottomans strewn around the sandwich bar. I found a tiny corner on one and perched on it, the sandwich balanced on my knee and the coffee set on the floor. As dense as this place was with art world heavyweights, lightweights, and underweights, I realized just how few people I actually knew. Artists weren’t likely to show up here, and Lacey was in the hinterlands.

  My cell phone rang. The caller ID said Alisa Lightborn, my editor at ARTnews. She was pretty, too, and pretty married.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “I feel like I’m in Calcutta.”

  “Me too!” she said.

  “I’m at the sandwich bar.”

  “Oh, jeez…” The woman in front of me turned around. It was Alisa. We laughed and both closed our phones.

  “Are you coming tonight?”

  “Coming to what?” I said.

  “Ah, I was right: you didn’t get it. ARTnews is hosting a dinner at Joe’s Stone Crab, at least a dozen people. We have the glitterati, you could be the literati. And you could take notes.”

  “Would that be okay with them?”

  “When a magazine hosts a dinner, everyone knows it’s on the record.”

  I wasn’t so sure they did, but I was chuffed to have a dinner invite at one of the most desirable restaurants in Miami.

  I trudged through the rest of the fair and its satellites, and even revisited standout displays. These second visits were valuable; what had charmed me on first glance often bored me on the second. I said hello to Lacey, whose booth was a standout because of both the art and her dress. But I didn’t tell her about the ARTnews dinner because I figured she’d invite herself, and I didn’t want her there. I knew that she could turn an evening upside down and somehow make it about her. Still, when I left her booth, she said, “Have fun at that dinner tonight.”

  I was glad I had brought a suit and tie. I clean up well. Joe’s was an easy taxi ride from my Deco splendor, but I walked in the warming night, glad to be out of New York during a particularly blustery December. I neared the restaurant, which was as much high-end tourist spot as it was a chow-down family restaurant. Crowds waited in an expansive lobby for a table, and although Joe’s ostensibly didn’t take reservations, the maître d’ dealt with people like a shrink, eagle-eyeing the famous and connected and treating the RV-touring family with equal respect and facility.

  I asked for the ARTnews table and was guided through a vast dining room where robust waiters with pins on their lapels indicating twenty, thirty, or forty years of service cheerfully entertained while taking and delivering orders. This was not an art world restaurant, even during the busy Miami Basel week. There were families, and there were businessmen sporting lobster bibs. There wasn’t a solo diner to be seen; the place was too much fun for that. I was taken to a private dining room with paneled walls and a wagon wheel chandelier looming over an empty table for fifteen. I guessed I was the odd man. The din from the main dining area reverberated in this small room, so things still felt active.

  Alisa was there—it was her job to be there first—and there was a well-dressed Englishman already holding champagne. I debated abstaining since I was, in fact, working, but as I might be a poor reporter if I didn’t blend in, I took a glass. The Englishman was Kip Stringer, who was in the vanguard of the coming vogue: curator as artist. It was he, he decided, who determined that he could use artists’ works to make his point, not theirs. He took the artists’ right to be obscure and turned it into a curator’s right. This resulted in a show in Milan where artists were forced together as though in a hadron collider. Pollock and Monet were hung in the same room under the premise that the heading “Material/Memory” or “Object/Distance/Fragility” clarified everything.

  I joined Kip and Alisa just in time to hear him bemoaning the fair, saying that the auxiliary shows that sprang up to capitalize on the influx of art enthusiasts into Miami were much better than the shows in the main room, but he did like that Pace Gallery had hung an Agnes Martin opposite a Robert Ryman so that they were “in dialogue” with each other. “In dialogue” was a new phrase that art writers could no longer live without. It meant that hanging two works next to or opposite each other produced a third thing, a dialogue, and that we were now all the better for it. I suppose the old phrase would have been “an art show,” but now we were listening. It also hilariously implied that when the room was empty of viewers, the two works were still chatting. I was tolerant when he said “in dialogue” because I can get it, but when he said “line-space matrix,” I wanted to puke.

  The air was cleansed when Hinton and Cornelia Alberg entered, Hinton emitting a big laugh for no reason except to greet everyone. Next came another idol of mine, Peter Schjeldahl, the great art critic for The New Yorker, and his wife, Brooke, who gave off such a vibe of fun that I knew it was she I would try to sit next to.

  A quorum was struck when the Mexican collector Eduardo Flores and a young man entered, along with Gayle Smiley, his default dealer, who stuck to Eduardo like a barnacle, lest he be spirited away by the ghost of Larry Gagosian. The Nathansons, Saul and Estelle, were next, and I started to wonder how ARTnews could draw such a diverse crowd. When the actor Stirling Quince and Blanca entered, I thought maybe they were the main attraction, but it didn’t seem likely. But soon, a woman ninety-one years of age but a dyslexic nineteen years of age in her soul, entered the room, and everything made sense. It was Dorothea Tanning, a painter whose career had slid into being when this Illinois born woman found herself in Paris married to Max Ernst and aligned with a slew of Surrealists and other “ists,” including, in her words, “Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, and Max Ernst.” After a decade of accomplishment in Surrealist painting, she climbed aboard the New Yorker magazine and became a poetry contributor, active into her eighties. An upcoming retrospective at the Metropolitan made her not only hot stuff, but enduring stuff, and her painting, A Little Night Music, executed in 1943, made her unassailable, and ARTnews had the story. She charmed us with her greeting: “I apologize for being alive.”

  Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Dorothea Tanning, 1943

  16 × 24 in.

  I wondered how Lacey could have managed to miss a dinner attended by so many of her acquaintances, which in turn made me wonder if perhaps this dinner had missed her.

  I knew I was at the position on the totem pole that got chipped by the lawn mower, so I stayed away from Ms. Tanning except to say I admired her work, which I do. With her at one end of the long table, I planted myself at the other, more gossipy end. I was delighted because all I could have done with Ms. Tanning was compliment her, but here in the panhandle I could hope for some loose lips. The conversation started when thespian Stirling Quince stopped everyone with, “How about this war?” referring to the born-again Iraq war, but before we could even nod sadly, he added, “Nobody’s
makin’ any movies!” After the silence and a poor attempt at commiseration, talk of the art fair nicely combusted.

  “What do you think of the fair, Mr. Nathanson?” I asked. I remembered him from Lacey’s Milton Avery story years earlier.

  “Well, things are different. What happened to paintings? Nobody’s painting. We found a little Nadelman drawing, but they wanted too much. We went back a few hours later and someone had bought it.”

  Hinton Alberg broke in. “You gotta snatch! These things aren’t lasting. You pause, you missed it.”

  “Did you see the Gober?” asked Eduardo Flores.

  “Too much,” said Hinton. “Too much. A million two or something. Even so, I went back. It was sold.”

  “I bought it,” said Eduardo. Fortunato, his young friend, sat prettily next to him.

  When he said, “I bought it,” Gayle Smiley went white. When, she must have thought, did he leave my sight?

  Schjeldahl was uninterested in money talk, so he sat mute. But his wife, Brooke, was forthright and funny, which made Brooke and Cornelia instant friends.

  “What was the Gober like?” Brooke asked.

  “It’s a kitchen sink,” said Hinton.

  “A what?” said Saul Nathanson.

  “It’s like a kitchen sink that hangs on a wall, but with an elongated back,” Flores told him. “Plaster and wood; it’s an amazing piece.”

  Kip Stringer couldn’t resist: “The sink is evocative of cleaning, but the fact it is on a wall, without plumbing, not functioning, creates cognitive dissonance. It embars the viewer from the action it implies.”

  Schjeldahl, whose art criticism goes down like good wine, said, “Huh?”

  “Sort of like a locked door,” said Saul. Saul Nathanson did not mock art, so his response was probing rather than cynical.

  “Well,” said Kip, “Gober actually did install a locked door in the wall of a gallery.”

  “I would only pay a million for that,” said Brooke.

  “Not if I’m there first!” said Hinton.

  Kip tried to laugh but couldn’t.

  “No kidding. Hinton would buy paint in a bucket,” said Cornelia.

  “Is he a bad boy?” said Brooke.

  “You would think each gallery had a pole dancer,” Cornelia said with a grin, “but honestly, art has enriched us. With things, with thought, with conversation, with people. Don’t you think so, Hinton?”

  “Art has de-riched me, honey. You know what I thought when we bought the house in Montauk? Walls! More walls! You know what I think when I buy a car? No walls. No goddamn walls.”

  Nathanson jumped in. “I find it strange that when we have people over for dinner, no one, not one, mentions or ever looks at the paintings. We have all these beautiful works, and it’s as though they don’t exist. And if we give them a tour, I can feel their struggle to enjoy it, but really they don’t care.”

  “They will notice my sink on the wall,” said Flores, now on his third vodka.

  “And if they don’t, they’re not invited back,” toadied Gayle.

  “I find the fair very hard to navigate,” said Saul. “

  As I wander around, I don’t know what anyone is.”

  “There is tremendous diversity,” said Kip.

  “Look,” said Hinton, “up to the seventies, art proceeded in movements. Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Minimalism, so everyone, including me, was on the lookout for the next movement. But instead, art in the eighties was at an evolutionary moment where it split into chimps, birds, fish, plants, and cephalopods all at once. Saul, artists can make a living now as a bad painter. I’m not kidding. You ask them what they make and they’ll say ‘bad art.’ And they can put the implied quotes around it, too, with just their voice. And you know what? It’s bad, but not that bad.”

  “Do you have any?” said Brooke.

  “We’ve got a roomful of it,” said Cornelia.

  Hinton went on, “We sure do, and sometimes the bad stuff can make the so-called good stuff seem boring and stiff.”

  Kip Stringer didn’t go for this kind of plain speaking. “The artist has fractured the iconicity,” he said.

  “Exaaacctlly… ,” said Brooke, looking over at me with her mouth agape.

  “There are a hundred categories,” said Hinton, now getting revved up. “There’s ‘pale art,’ faint things with not much going on in them. There’s ‘high-craft OCD,’ you know, those guys who take a thousand pinheads and paint a picture of their grandmother on every one. There’s ‘low-craft ironic,’ a fancy name for wink-wink nudge-nudge.”

  I dared to speak. “What about ‘animated interiors’?”

  “Good one,” said Hinton. “Apocalyptic scenes of stuff flying around a room. And don’t forget ‘angry pussy’!”

  “Hinton!” said Cornelia.

  “Oh, do go on,” said Brooke.

  “Oh, you know. Stuff made with menstrual blood.”

  “I’m so glad I asked,” said Brooke.

  “How can we forget ‘junk on the floor’? You walk into a gallery and there’s stuff strewn everywhere. I’ve got three of those. Wanna buy one, Eduardo?”

  “So if you think it’s silly, why do you stay involved?” I asked, reporter style.

  “I don’t see it as silly. But outsiders do. What was that guy today, honey? Oh yeah, there’s an artist who’s documenting his own peeing. Photos, videos, he’s…

  “The artist is making us question the act of urination,” said Kip.

  “Right. Now, that line should never be quoted or they’re going to use it against us at our trials.”

  “How would you defend yourself?” I asked.

  “Well, let’s see… Hey, what was that piece that won the Turner Prize last year?”

  “The Lights Going On and Off,” said Kip.

  “Right. So the Tate buys it for twenty thousand pounds, and it’s an empty room, with a lightbulb going on and off. This hit the news so fast… two-inch headlines. They tried to make the art world look stupid. But, you know, I saw the thing and liked it. So at my trial I’d start to say, ‘Twenty thousand pounds really isn’t that much,’ but I’d stop myself because I wouldn’t want to be executed right off.

  “But then I’d face the jury: ‘Let’s say you’re going to buy a puppy. You’re going to buy a yellow Lab. A cuddly yellow Lab. So you read that you should go to a breeder, because you don’t want to get one that’s going to go sick on you. Now you get to the breeder and you find out there’s English Labs and American Labs. American Labs are good for hunting because they’re kind of lithe. But you don’t want to hunt him, so you go for an English Lab, more stocky. Then you’re told that the real prize of the Labrador breed is one with a big head. So you wait and wait, and finally you get one with a big head. Now you take it home and proudly show your big-headed puppy to a friend. You’re thinking, I’ve got this great show dog, an English Lab with a big head, and your friend is thinking, What an ugly puppy.”

  By now the other end of the table was tuned in, Tanning enjoying Hinton. He turned to her and said, “Excuse me, Miss Tanning, I’m orating.”

  “Please, go on.” She smiled.

  Hinton smiled back. “I would rather hear what you have to say.”

  Tanning paused thoughtfully. “I believe the last twenty years has been the most desperate search for artistic identity in the history of the arts. Don’t you think so, Peter?”

  Schjeldahl, now that the conversation had turned to art and not money, finally spoke: “All the cocksure movements of the last century have collapsed into a bewildering, trackless here and now.”

  The table went silent, then the chatter resumed at the same tempo as after a distant gunshot.

  When we left the restaurant, I saw Lacey canoodling at a corner table with a known Russian collector, also known as a playboy, also known as very rich. Now I knew why she’d missed this dinner. Cornelia saw it, too, and she did not like it.

  54.

  BY THE END OF
2003, Lacey had solidified her business. She had several employees and was making a profit. I dropped by the gallery, meeting her for lunch; she was on the phone, and I could hear her voice from the back office as she closed a deal:

  “You know it’s a good picture… Still, you know it’s a good picture. And your Basquiat, how much did you overpay for that at the time? And now it’s worth whatever… Okay, sorry, millions… Look, you know you love this piece. You should buy it because you need it… No, you’re right, nobody needs art. Nobody except for you. You need it. You know I’m right… Okay, then, I’ll take it off hold… No, I’m going to take it off hold. I’m taking it off hold in thirty seconds.”

  Then I heard her laughing. “I’m telling you, off hold in twenty-four seconds.”

  She laughed some more, and I could intuit that the person she was speaking to was laughing, too.

  “I’ve got another buyer on my speed dialer. Twenty seconds…” Then she said, “Smart move. I’ll have it delivered. When’s a good time?”

  I took her to lunch, which began with her saying, “I’m dating a vibrator. I think I love it… him… whatever.” I laughed. “And it never cheats on me.”

  “Have you been cheated on, Lacey?”

  “Never. I always strike first.”

  “Where’s Patrice these days?”

  “Nowhere. He was a bit too interested, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I don’t know him that well.”

  “Plus, I’m thirty-three, he’s forty-five. And when I’m thirty-three, he’ll be fifty-five, and when I’m thirty-three, he’ll be sixty-three.”

  I laughed. “You don’t plan on aging?”

  “Why would I?”

  We both had news, and we both waited until the entrées to report it.

  “I’m moving into a new space,” said Lacey. “Around the corner, window to the street, a real gallery. Like Andrea Rosen and Matthew Marks… well, not that big, but it’ll have clout. Daniel,” she said, “it’s ten thousand a month. I’m going from seven hundred to ten thousand a month.”