by Ruth Hartley
Tim and Lara looked at each other. It was a moment of intimacy but neither of them felt they wanted to, or could, risk making that moment last too long.
Chapter Eight
Oscar’s Art Collection
Lara felt the discomfort of a sneak who has looked uninvited at a private letters and who is faking ignorance about them. Oscar was showing her the paintings in his library and Lara needed to explain that she had already seen them.
“I have already spent quite a long time looking at your paintings.” she said, “You have an amazing collection – Enoch and Tim showed them to me when I came here to have lunch with them.”
Is Oscar offended by the freedom with which she and Tim had made themselves at home in his house?
One day she had spent almost two hours alone in Oscar’s study not only looking at the prints and paintings but also running her finger along she book shelves and taking out the books that most aroused her curiosity. She had seen both novels and non-fiction about Africa by writers such as Wilbur Smith, Laurens van der Post, and Robert Ruark. There were also books by Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, Hammond Innes, Alex Haley and Kurt Vonnegut and whole shelves of twentieth-century histories including all those by Winston Churchill. There was Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ and ‘Kapital’ by Karl Marx. Lara had first noticed a recent copy of ‘Capital’ in English then saw old and rather battered copies of the same books in German on a higher shelf. Lara’s neck prickled. She hadn’t read them and didn’t have a clear idea of what they contained but something about the place they occupied in the mythology of her parents’ lives suggested they signalled danger.
Lara ran her finger along the edge of the shelves tapping the spines of those she wanted to remember or already knew. There were also books by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
“Dreams and desires and the secrets of human experience. Will I ever really truly know myself and understand what my motives are?”
Of course all those disquieting names and books had been current in art school conversations. They might be names used to conjure up ideas, but who at art school had done the hard work of reading the literature?
None of my art class, had lived long enough or experienced enough to really understand it all.
For a moment Lara felt her confidence diminish. She was on the brink of new excitements and achievements. What would happen to her?
When Tim had shown Lara around the bookshelves before Oscar’s return he had pointed out some books about the Marquis de Sade including those written by him with women’s names, ‘Justine’ and ‘Juliette’ as the titles.
“Strange taste for a man who runs a business in Chambeshi.” he had commented.
“Very strange.” Lara agreed, “Do you imagine Oscar is an admirer of Sade?”
“Well” Tim said, “The Marquis was a revolutionary, feminist, sodomite, erotic writer, the original sadist obviously, and spent most of his life in a madhouse, some of it with a woman who loved him till he died. That would make him one helluva role model?”
Lara shrugged. Madness was actual and revolution possible in Chambeshi. The erotic? Well yes, perhaps. The erotic is fascinating. Lara stared at the bookshelf avoiding Tim’s eyes. She kept seeing Oscar’s smile. Artists were often interested in such things. Well – male artists were weren’t they? What about herself? Was she different? Among Oscar’s books was a Dover Edition of erotic drawings by Pablo Picasso of bulls and satyrs and naked females. The drawings were clever, amusing and suggestive. There were also books of Audrey Beardsley drawings and Gustav Klimt paintings of a perversity that was eerily disturbing. Lara was intrigued by the Japanese and Mughal paintings of couples explicitly engaged in unlikely couplings with each other or with octopuses in physically impossible variations of sexual intercourse but she preferred to look at those when she was on her own. Tim’s company made the two of them complicit in some way. They aroused her and she assumed they must have the same effect on him. Did this mean they were engaged in a literary version of consensual sex? She had to stop and think about sex and morality. Sex seemed more and more to pervade her life and her thoughts.
Weird sex and any version of sex and sex just for pleasure seem okay for artists – at least men who are artists – but what about women artists – or me? Lara thought.
She had made some pen and ink sketches herself. One was of a the bare back of a man looking at a naked woman spread out asleep on the bed in front of him. The other was of a naked woman looking back over her shoulder in a provocative invitation. Lara had hidden them away under a pile of unused paper not sure what her purpose was in drawing them. She had portfolios full of life studies of nude women and men but they were technical exercises quite different to her drawings about sex. She wasn’t sure why she had made them or if she had a future purpose for them.
Tim however, noticed her interest in Oscar’s selection of erotic art.
“Beware!” he grinned. “Rabelais says that to speak of love is to make love – I think that might apply to looking at drawings of love-making too.”
So Tim had sussed her out.
“It does feel kind of voyeuristic doesn’t it? Go away Tim – I don’t want a voyeur watching me being a voyeur!”
Tim laughed.
“Let’s go eat! I thought that’s what all artists are – voyeurs of a sort!”
“Yes,” countered Lara, “and so are journalists.”
During Liseli’s period of madness, Lara had completely forgotten about Oscar’s erotic books. Now, some weeks after Liseli had returned to England and psychiatric treatment, Lara was back in his house and Oscar was asking her opinion of the art in the library.
“What do you think of the paintings? Are there any that interest you particularly?”
Lara recognised the Käthe Kollwitz at once. She knew that the prints and paintings were from the German Expressionist period between the two world wars but she hadn’t known who all the individual artists were apart from Otto Dix. Seen up close enough to touch, the work seemed so extraordinary that she wanted to find out more about it. From her knowledge of art history and visits to museums, Stanley Spencer’s war paintings appeared to be the closest comparison she could make to these, but Spencer’s work was so gentle in its emotions and its colour and rhythmic forms that it suggested to her England and hopefulness. She had used Goya’s passionate and horrifying etchings about the Spanish Peninsular Wars to inspire her final exam work but though they had moved her she had thought of them as past history like the Slave Trade. Nothing, however, matched the despair and cynicism of these, or the brilliance of the colours and power of the brush marks. Oscar had both art catalogues and art history books of the period and Lara soon had all the information she wanted.
“I recognised the Käthe Kollwitz immediately – are they really original prints? How wonderful! I love her stuff but it is so painful – women – mothers crying over their dead children – I didn’t really know all the others. I’d heard of some. I couldn’t believe that you own original paintings by Otto Dix. I’d never heard of Conrad Felixmüller – so I did look through your art books to find out about them both – hope you don’t mind?”
Lara turned to look at Oscar’s face. He smiled without turning to her and replied, “What else should be done with books and paintings except to look at them and use them?
“I keep these paintings in my study rather than display them in the lounge because not many people here in Chambeshi would understand them or approve of them. They are terrible and tragic. It is also more secure here and they are valuable. Your mother hated them by the way.”
“My mother’s seen them! She never said!” Lara was surprised and silent for a moment. When had that happened and why was it never mentioned at home?
She looked again at the art. It was even more interesting. The first time she had seen these paintings she had been repelled by them b
ut her art school liberation war work based on Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’ had not been dissimilar in nastiness so she forced herself to study them more closely. It was only honest to do so. Nancy, her tutor, had suggested that Lara look at the German expressionists who had been through the 1914 – 1918 World War as well as Goya.
“They probably all suffered from post traumatic stress disorder,” Nancy said.
Lara knew Dix had painted murder as well as war.
“Murders did take place after the war.” Nancy said. “The killers must have been driven insane by the ferocity of the fighting and the thousands of mutilated, bloody corpses.”
One of the Dix paintings in Oscar’s library showed a disembowelled prostitute whose vagina had been slashed by the maniacal knife-wielding figure rampant above her body. Another was of a group of card players all hideously disfigured without eyes and limbs.
“The Otto Dix subject matter is really awful – how did people carry on living after their war experiences – these deformed crippled men – these open bloody wounds – the made-up eyes of these women – so hard and cruel – and damaged. It is all so cynical and upsetting. What was the artist saying and feeling?”
Lara looked at Oscar again but his expression was stern, his face closed up, hard, as if he reflected the faces painted by the artist. Lara almost reached out to touch him and break the spell of the framed pictures. After a momentary silence, he relaxed again and turned towards her.
“Let’s get back to the other guests.” he said and put his hand lightly on her shoulder as he guided her through the study door.
“Wherever did you get these paintings from?” she asked. She really needed to know why he owned them.
“Ah!” Oscar said, “Family stuff, you know.”
Then he expanded again into the genial party-giver as he joined his other guests on the veranda.
“How are the drinks?” he asked, “Time for some more aperitifs – or wine instead?”
Part Seven
Oscar 1985
Chapter One
Tim’s Farewell
Oscar was giving a farewell party for Tim on the front veranda of his ranch house. Helen was there with an admirer of hers from the French Embassy, a diplomat called Michel Landes. Also among the diners were Chimunya and Pascal, Enoch, his wife, Inonge, and Enoch Junior, Maria and Bill, plus several acquaintances of Tim’s including Ben, a local newspaper editor, and William, a satirist who wrote critiques of the Chambeshian government under an assumed name. There was also a house guest of Oscar’s, a man so quiet, so buttoned up in his suit, so carefully shaven, thin-lipped and unsmiling that Lara assumed he was foreign and did not speak or understand English.
“Ah Lara – you have seen Oscar’s wonderful collection of paintings and prints have you? What did you think of them?” Helen asked with interest.
“I can’t say I loved them – they aren’t likeable – the subject matter is so dreadful – but I don’t think I will ever forget them. The colours and the paint in the Otto Dix are rich and beautiful. It is strange to be so attracted to them in one way and to find them so repulsive in another.” Lara turned to Oscar, “Please, Oscar – do show them to Chimunya and to Pascal – I know they will find them so interesting – won’t you Chimunya – Pascal?”
Oscar smiled. He shook his head lightly.
“Lara please you show them to your friends if you like – you know more about art than I do – Chimunya and Pascal – you are welcome to go and have a look – perhaps after we’ve eaten lunch.”
Lara was flattered at being singled out to have a unique relationship with Oscar’s art collection. She nodded at Chimunya and Pascal who looked pleased. Maria pulled a face. “I’ve seen those paintings and I think they are really horrible – I said so didn’t I Oscar? Honestly Lara – your own work is so beautiful and – well – I just think that animals are so much nicer and much more suitable subjects for pictures – don’t you Bill?”
“No comparison, I’d say,” Bill agreed, “but then I think it’s about the difference between animals and humans and the way they behave. Humans are so immoral and destructive. Animals aren’t like that at all.”
Tim was listening with interest. He grinned.
“Humans have to be moral – or have an idea about morality to be immoral. Animals are neither – they are amoral.”
Pascal’s eyes widened.
“What are all these words – amoral, immoral, moral – don’t you just mean that some people are good and some people are bad? I don’t know about animals unless the spirits of very bad dead people and killers have gone to live in them – that’s when animals become bad and come back to kill more people.”
Chimunya shook her head, clicked her tongue and shut her eyes.
“Oh this man Pascal! He is so full of superstition.”
“But isn’t that what your paintings are about, Chimunya? Don’t you paint the spirits and the beliefs of the Chambeshi people?” Lara asked.
“Yes I do.” answered Chimunya, “but I am also a modern person. I go to a medical doctor not a witchdoctor. I fly in an aeroplane. I know when someone dies that the death isn’t always caused by magic.”
Pascal laughed.
“Old people die because they are old but when a young person dies it is the result of a curse and somebody else made the curse and that person is responsible.”
“Perhaps there is something in the concept of responsibility for a young person’s death – why do young people die after all? Wars, accidents, famines, disease – it is a bit of a long shot but I suppose you could argue that if we were all moral and responsible perhaps there would at the least be fewer unnecessary deaths.” Tim was enjoying playing the devil’s advocate.
“Don’t understand that at all, Tim,” Bill said, “and I don’t understand why this man – Otto – Dickson – Dix – painted these dreadful things. What was he trying to do?”
“He was warning people about war. Maybe it was a catharsis for him – an exorcism of his hideous experiences? More than that, he was containing the pain and the suffering,” Helen suggested, “by identifying it, making it, then putting a frame around, it he was keeping it in a safe place – rather like putting an evil genie in a bottle.”
“Iyii!” said Pascal, “Yes – we do that too – but not in paintings – in our rituals. We put an evil spirit in a kind of container – rather like a fridge that you keep meat in, Maria – so that they can’t get out and hurt us.”
There was general laughter at the idea, led by Pascal himself, then Lara asked, “But what was Hitler trying to do with all this art that he removed from art galleries and labelled ‘Degenerate Art’? He must have thought it had immense power if he destroyed it.”
Helen said, “Of course he may just have been jealous – he thought of himself as a great painter who was hated by the critics. He blamed the Jewish press for his bad reviews. He did the same thing to art that Goebbels did to literature with the Nazi book-burnings. No free thought – no terrible visual images of how dreadful war is and then it will be possible for you to start another war – can’t make people fight for no good reason unless you only let them have a part of the argument. One reason given for not exhibiting Dix’s work was that it would spread despair and despondency in the armed forces and that was a treasonable act.
“Dix included a portrait of Hitler in his Seven Deadly Sins painting you know. Hitler’s forces may have wreaked havoc throughout all of Europe and most of the world but Dix saw him as a tiny worthless figure – well -” Helen stopped, then said. “A creature who is – yes – so reductionist that he is disappearing up his own arse!”
Helen’s comment produced shocked amusement and bewilderment among Oscar’s guests but Lara could see that Tim was seriously considering the idea.
“You really think art has so much impact, then?” she a
sked him. The things that interested Tim always challenged her to think harder about her choices and her work.
“For God’s sake, Lara! Of course I believe in the power of the image, of the word, of artists and of writers! Why else would I be a journalist?” Tim shook his head at her and Lara shook her head back in apology. After all why else did she make art?
“Do you like Dix’s work, Helen?” Lara asked.
“Oscar let me write a paper for an art journal about his collection.” Helen replied. “Dix’s work is extraordinarily powerful. It feels to me as if he became possessed by his subject matter. It inhabited him and then boiled up out of him into his paintings. He didn’t observe and judge his sitters – he became them – he knew them and their lives. He was the soldier who killed, the crippled veteran, the amputee, the prostitute, the sex murderer and his victim. Somehow he knew what it was to inhabit their flesh and suffering. He hated all ideologies and he resisted any political analysis that would diminish one of his portraits. They are all just of human beings.”
Helen’s boyfriend, Michel, turned to Oscar, “So come, my friend, please tell us how you acquired these paintings that were once so dangerous to own?” and with a meaningful sneer he added, “What is the actual provenance of this, your so famous art?”
Oscar smiled but his eyes creased up angrily for a moment. He looked, Lara thought, quite dangerous himself.
“The paintings belonged to my grandfather. He was a doctor in Dresden in the early part of the century. He knew Otto Dix personally and some of the other artists and he bought work from them at a time when they weren’t well known. As things got harder some of the artists paid him with their paintings. He was a shrewd old man and usually got a receipt acknowledging his ownership from the artists. Once the artists were labelled ‘Degenerate’ they lost their teaching jobs and some went to prison. He helped some of them out by buying their work then. Of course it was also not a good idea for him to own such art. He and his brother found a hiding place for the paintings in a cellar at his brother’s farmhouse outside Berlin before the war. Eventually I recovered them – and the letters of ownership!”