The Museum of Modern Love

by Heather Rose

  The Museum of Modern Love is Heather Rose’s seventh novel. Her novels span adult literary fiction, children’s literature, fantasy/sci-fi and crime. Heather’s previous novels are White Heart (1999), The Butterfly Man (2005) and The River Wife (2009). Heather also writes the acclaimed Tuesday McGillycuddy series for children (written under the pen-name of Angelica Banks with fellow author Danielle Wood and published internationally). The series is Finding Serendipity (2013), A Week Without Tuesday (2015) and Blueberry Pancakes Forever (2016). Heather won the Davitt Award in 2006 and her work has been shortlisted for the Nita B Kibble Award and the Aurealis Awards, and longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award. She is also a recipient of the international Eleanor Dark Fellowship. Heather was the inaugural Writer in Residence at The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart 2012–13.

  Published by Allen & Unwin in 2016

  Copyright © Heather Rose 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Lyrics from Leonard Cohen’s ‘Last Year’s Man’ reproduced with permission from Music Sales UK.

  Lyrics from Antony and the Johnsons’ ‘Hope There’s Someone’ reproduced with permission from Mushroom Music.

  Allen & Unwin

  Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 9781760291860

  eISBN 9781952534799

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Text design by Sandy Cull, gogoGingko

  Cover design by Sandy Cull, gogoGingko

  For David &

  for Marina

  &

  all people of art

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  PART 3

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  PART 4

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  PART 5

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  PART 6

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  PART 7

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  IN GRATITUDE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THIS BOOK IS A STRANGE hybrid of fact and fiction. All of the characters are completely fictional with several notable exceptions.

  Ms Marina Abramović gave me permission to include her as herself. I have drawn extensively from interviews and performances given in the years leading up to her 2010 performance at MoMA. This does not mean that the thoughts I have attributed to the character of Marina Abramović at any time in this book are a true reflection of any event in history, nor how the real Marina Abramović thinks or feels. That is the risk the novelist takes, bringing to life what we can only imagine. In allowing me complete creative freedom, Ms Abramović again demonstrated her unremitting courage.

  Also, with permission, the photographer Marco Anelli appears as himself as does Ms Abramović’s assistant, Davide Balliano. Any thoughts or acts attributed to either of these people are completely fictional. Also referenced is Klaus Biesenbach, the curator of The Artist is Present and Director of MoMA.

  The character Carlos is based on Paco Blancas who sat with Marina twenty-one times.

  I am indebted to James Westcott for his biography The Life and Death of Marina Abramović. Also to Chrissy Isles, Klaus Biesenbach, Sean Kelly and other curators, art historians and commentators who have contributed to the review and analysis of Ms Abramović’s work.

  The event that was The Artist is Present and Retrospective at MoMA took place from 9 March to 31 May 2010. Fifteen hundred and fifty-four people sat with Ms Abramović over 736 hours, and more than 850,000 people observed from the sidelines. Marco Anelli’s book: Portraits in the Presence of Marina Abramović is a complete record of all those who sat.

  This novel is in part a gift to them all.

  Further reading:

  MOMA, Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present

  Marco Anelli, Portraits in the Presence of Marina

  Thomas McEvilley, Art, Love, Friendship: Marina Abramović and Ulay Together & Apart

  James Westcott, When Marina Abramović Dies

  Marina Abramovic, The Bibliography

  Stiles, Biesenbach, Iles, Marina Abra Abramović Movic

  THERE ARE SEVEN STEPS IN EVERY PROJECT:

  1. AWARENESS

  2. RESISTANCE

  3. SUBMISSION

  4. WORK

  5. REFLECTION

  6. COURAGE

  7. THE GIFT

  MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ

  HE WAS NOT MY FIRST musician, Arky Levin. Nor my least successful. Mostly by his age potential is squandered or realised. But this is not a story of potential. It is a story of convergence. Such things are rarer than you might think. Coincidence, I’ve heard, is God’s way of being discreet. But convergence is more than that. It is something that, once set in motion, will have an unknown effect. It is a human condition to admire hindsight. I always thought foresight was so much more useful.

  It is the spring of the year 2010 and one of my artists is busy in a gallery in New York City. Not the great Metropolitan, nor the Guggenheim, serene and twisted though she is. No, my artist’s gallery is a white box. It’s evident that within that box much is alive. And vibrating. But before we get to that, let me set the scene.

  There is a river on either side of this great city and the sun rises over one and sets over the other. Where oak, hemlock and fir once stood besides lakes and streams, avenues now run north–south. Cross streets mostly run east–west. The mountains have been levelled, the lakes have been filled. The buildings create the most familiar skyscape of the modern world.

  The pavements convey people and dogs, the subway rumbles and the yellow cabs honk day and night. As in previous decades, people are coming to terms with the folly of their investments and th
e ineptitude of their government. Wages are low, as are the waistbands of jeans. Thin is fashionable but fat is normal. Living is expensive, and being ill is the most costly business of all. There is a feeling that a chaos of climate, currency, creed and cohabitation is looming in the world. On an individual basis, most people still want to look good and smell nice, have friends, be comfortable, make money, feel love, enjoy sex and not die before their time.

  And so we come to Arky Levin. He would like to think he stands apart from the riffraff of humanity, isolated by his fine musical mind. He believed, until recently, that he was anaesthetised to commonplace suffering by years of eating well, drinking good wine, watching good movies, having good doctors, being loved by a good woman, having the luck of good genetics, and generally living a benign and blameless life.

  It is 1 April, but Levin, in his apartment on Washington Square, is oblivious to the date and its humorous connotations. If someone played a practical joke on him this morning, he would be confused—possibly for hours. The morning sun is spilling into the penthouse. Rigby, a grey rug of cat, lies sprawled on her back on the sofa with her paws stretched high above her head. In contrast, Levin is curled forward over a Model B Steinway, his fingers resting silently on the keyboard. He is so still he might be a puppet awaiting the first twitch of the string above. In fact, he is waiting for an idea. That is usually where I come in, but Levin has not been himself for many months. To write music he must hurdle over a morass of broken dreams. Every time he goes to leap, he comes up short.

  Levin and I have known each other a very long time, and when he is like this he can be unreachable, so caught on the wheel of memory he forgets he has choices. What is he remembering now? Ah yes, the film dinner from the night before.

  He had expected questions. It was why he’d avoided everyone, hadn’t attended a function since December. It was still too raw. Too impossible. For the same reason he’d ignored emails, avoided phone calls and finally unplugged the answering machine in February after one particularly upsetting message.

  And then last night, in a living nightmare, three of them had got him at one end of the room and harangued him, berated him. Outrageous claims of abandonment and lack of responsibility.

  ‘You don’t seem to realise I had no choice in this,’ he had told them.

  ‘You’re her husband. If it was the other way around . . .’

  ‘Her instructions are perfectly clear. This is what she wants. Do I have to send you a copy of the letter?’

  ‘But, Arky, you’ve abandoned her.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. If anyone has been abandoned . . .’

  ‘Please tell me you are not suggesting, Arky, that you have the raw deal here?’

  ‘You can’t just leave her there.’

  ‘Well, what exactly did you have in mind?’ he had asked. ‘That I bring her home?’

  ‘Yes, for God’s sake. Yes.’

  They had all seemed stunned at his reluctance.

  ‘But she doesn’t want that.’

  ‘Of course she does. You’re being unbelievably blind if you think anything else.’

  He had excused himself, walked the twenty blocks in a rage, aware also that he was weeping and grateful for the handkerchief he never went anywhere without. The bitter taste of helplessness lingered on his tongue. He scratched at the rough patch on his hand that might be cancer. He thought of the night sweats too. Waking drenched at 3 am. Having to change his soaked pyjamas and slide over to the other, empty side of the bed where the sheets were dry. He wondered if it was his heart. If he died in the apartment it could be days before anybody noticed. Except Rigby, who would possibly settle on his corpse until she realised he was not getting up to feed her. It would be Yolanda, their housekeeper, who would find him. Yolanda had been in their life for years. Ever since they were married. Lydia had thought it as normal to employ a maid as keeping milk in the fridge. She had stayed on, Yolanda, through the move to Washington Square. Levin never liked to be home when Yolanda came. Lydia was good at small talk with shop people and teachers and tradespeople. Levin was not.

  Levin thought that if he died, the trees on the deck in their tall glazed pots would almost certainly die too for lack of water. He got up and made another pot of coffee, sliced an onion bagel and lowered one round into the toaster. Within minutes it was smoking and blackened. With the second half he assumed complete vigilance, spearing the thing with a knife when he sensed it was ready, hoisting it up and reinserting it in a slightly different position. Why had Lydia bought this particular toaster and not a version that didn’t destroy his breakfast every morning? How was it possible they could invent drones to kill a single man somewhere in Pakistan, but not perfect the toaster?

  Leaving his plate and cup in the sink, Levin washed his hands and dried them carefully before returning to the piano. On the music ledge was an illustration of a Japanese woman with long blue-black hair and vivid green eyes. He wanted to write something spellbinding for her. A flute would be good, he had decided a few days before. But everything he came up with reminded him of The Mission. He felt like a beginner again, searching through old melodies, attempting transitions that didn’t work, harmonies that tempted and then became elusive.

  And so for the next few hours Levin immersed himself in the process, moving from the Steinway in the living room where so many of his ideas began, to his studio in the western end of the apartment with its Kurzweil keyboard, Bose speakers and two iMacs giving him every variation of instrument at his fingertips. He took the ink drawing with him and put it back on the corkboard where storyboard sequences in the same distinctive style were pinned. There were also more illustrations of the same Japanese woman. In one she was bending over a pool of water, her dress the green and shimmer of fish scales. In another she was reaching out to touch the nose of a huge white bear. And in another she was walking with a child along a snow-laden path, red leaves the only touch of colour.

  Levin switched from flute to violin on the keyboard, hearing the same transitions from C to F to A minor. But violin wasn’t right. It was too civilised for forest and river. I suggested the viola, but he dismissed me, thinking it too melancholy. But wasn’t melancholy what he was looking for?

  I had encouraged him to take this film score because solitude may be a form of contentment when you live in a fairy story, but not when you are an artist in New York who believes your best years are still ahead of you. Artists are stubborn. They have to be. Even when nothing is happening, the only way through is to work and work.

  I drew Levin’s attention to the day outside. He went to the window and saw sunlight dazzling the fountain in Washington Square. Purple tulips were blooming on the walkways. He looked again at the audio file on his screen. I reminded him of the previous evening, before the women had pinned him against the table. He had sat with his old mentor, Eliot, who had told him of the Tim Burton exhibition at MoMA. It was not the Burton I wanted him to see, but it was a way of getting him there. For all he wasn’t listening to my musical suggestions, he was amenable to an interruption.

  ‘You will have to wait,’ he said to the Japanese woman, but he might as well have been talking to me. In his bedroom he chose a favourite blue Ben Sherman jacket and his dark grey Timberland sneakers.

  He took the E train and got off at Fifth Avenue, crossed the street and walked into the Museum of Modern Art. With the membership Lydia bought them each year, he skipped the lengthy queue for tickets. The narrow corridor to the Burton exhibition was jammed with people. Instantly he was surrounded by the warmth of bodies, the gabble of voices. Within a few minutes the illustrations of stitched blue women, their wide-eyed panic and long-limbed emptiness, mingled with the odour and proximity of warm bodies, began to make Levin nauseous. He saw with relief an exit sign. Pushing open the door, he found himself in an empty corridor. He stopped, leaned against the wall and breathed.

  He intended, at that moment, to go downstairs and sit in the sculpture garden to enjoy the sunshine. Then th
e murmur from the atrium drew him in.

  IN THE ATRIUM OF MOMA, visitors were observing a woman in a long red dress sitting at a table. It was a blond wood table with blond wood chairs, as if it had come from IKEA. Opposite the woman in the red dress, a younger woman sat wearing a lightweight beige coat. The two women were gazing into each other’s eyes.

  Levin noticed white tape on the floor marking out a square. People rimmed this square. Some were standing, others were sitting cross-legged, and all of them were watching the two women at its centre.

  Levin heard a small girl ask, ‘Mom, is that lady plastic?’

  ‘No, of course she’s not,’ the mother replied in a hushed voice.

  ‘What is she, then?’ the girl asked. ‘Mom? Mom?’

  The mother had no answer and her gaze did not leave the spectacle in front of her.

  Levin could see the child’s point. The woman in the red dress was like plastic. Her skin looked as if the floodlights had bleached her to alabaster.

  Suddenly, without any cue, the young woman got up and left the table. The woman in the long dress closed her eyes and bowed her head, but remained seated. After some moments a man sat down in the empty chair. The woman now raised her head and opened her eyes to look directly at him.

  The man had a crumpled face with untidy grey hair and a short hooked nose. He looked small opposite the woman. The two of them gazed into each other’s eyes. More than gazing, Levin thought. Staring. The woman did not smile. She hardly even blinked. She was entirely still.

  The man rearranged his feet and his hands twitched on his lap. But his head and eyes were very still as he looked back at the woman. He sat like that for maybe twenty minutes. Levin found himself absorbed by this spectacle, unwilling to leave. When the man finally left the chair, Levin watched him walk to the back of the atrium and lean his forehead against the wall. Levin wanted to go ask the man what had happened as he sat. How had it felt? But to do so, he realised, would be like asking a stranger what he prayed for.

  By then another woman—middle-aged, broad-faced, tortoiseshell glasses—was sitting. Levin moved towards the black lettering on the wall that read: The Artist is Present—Marina Abramović. The text beneath was obscured by the crowd entering and exiting the room.