The Forger's Apprentice: Life with the World's Most Notorious Artist

by Mark Forgy

  Their relationship was, after all, strictly one of convenience, and that unique aspect had pretty much evaporated in well-founded distrust. Despite the trappings of wealth and genteelness, Fernand had not actually risen in Elmyr’s esteem since the first day they met, though, he had more reasons to find him intolerable now. For once, his instincts did not fail him; placing some distance between him and Fernand was a good idea. Lapsing a moment longer into lucidity and giving the devil his due, Elmyr thought his selfish partner may have been good at business, but that talent was designed to serve himself, and he was just Fernand’s tool to be used toward that end. For as obvious a fact as this might have been to any casual observer, Elmyr was consistently impenetrable to this marrow-sucking reality because his perceptions routinely passed through a filter of humane optimism; he always tried to live by the golden rule, and his true friends recognized this trait. This fleeting clarity about Fernand, though, did not assuage his worries about what scandal he might create during his vacation on the island.

  The day Legros and company arrived, Elmyr left for the south of Spain. He knew that in the best of circumstances, any visible link between him and Legros could bring their house of cards crashing down. Unlike the incautious art dealer, Elmyr was always a strict observer of social convention. Even in pursuit of his private life, he was discreet and did as little as possible to ruffle local sensibilities. Conversely, Fernand thought nothing of behaving outrageously, and if others were offended, it was unimportant. Elmyr sensed his dreaded visit was a bad omen, and his suspicions would unfortunately prove correct. Legros was about to make a sort of Normandy Beach landing of the Follies Bergère.

  Fernand took the hippy mantra of “if it feels good, do it,” and embraced it with a bear hug. Ibiza was now under a siege of foreigners invading its quaint fishing villages, renting countryside farmhouses and introducing their counterculture values to the local population that was barely aware of living in the twentieth century. Ironically, those throngs looking for unspoiled bucolic simplicity were in a way their own worst enemies. This sudden influx of new residents and tourists catapulted the island’s economy forward, and boosted land values like the California gold rush. It was rapidly becoming the new Riviera, where everyone enjoyed the sun and fun, none more so than an ex-cabaret dancer turned flamboyant entrepreneur.

  At Fernand’s urging, the spacious guest quarters of La Falaise boasted his favorite color, aptly christened, “the red room.” It was mostly white, but had red wool curtains and matching cushions for the sitting area banquette. He took the guest suite, and the rest of his entourage moved into Elmyr’s bedroom and the small, attached servant’s quarters. Over the following two weeks, Elmyr’s new home more accurately resembled a portside bar, with parties occurring almost nightly after Legros and his inebriated retinue returned, expressing their festive spirits and drinking all the liquor and wine on hand. When the supply of alcohol ran out, Fernand simply had more delivered from a nearby bodega and promptly signed Elmyr’s name to the bill. Even though Fernand had a new boyfriend, he continued to cast his net each night at the bars and nightclubs to see what fresh fish he could catch. Life at the new villa was making Sodom and Gomorrah look like a convent of Benedictine monks. Neighbors started complaining about the late night music and noise; the local police began responding regularly to bacchanals at the cliff-top nightspot. Elmyr’s visions of Fernand’s shocking comportment lived up to his worst fears.

  Legros most likely enjoyed being the grist of the café society’s rumor mill. He was, in fact, the bipedal social disaster that Elmyr desperately wanted to avoid since the beginning of their association. In a matter of days, Fernand triumphantly ruined his cohort’s image of respectable model citizen he had diligently worked to cultivate since he first came to Ibiza. Upon his return, he would not only have to confront the immediate ordeal of public relations damage control, but clean up the wreckage in the wake of the ransacking revelers.

  Only weeks before Legros’s marauding visit, he had recovered from his long and debilitating Malta fever and moved into his new home. His spirit was the most upbeat it had been in months or even years. As he opened the front door of the villa, the destruction Legros and his friends left behind was instantly apparent. Cigarette burns and stampedout butts destroyed his cream-colored area rugs he had recently bought in Madrid. Shards of broken crystal glasses lay undisturbed on the tile floor. Patio furniture rested peacefully submerged at the bottom of his pool. Other objects vanished as likely souvenirs with the departed nighttrippers. Elmyr sat down in his living room easy chair, disheartened by the thoughtless vandalism, rested his elbows on his knees, sunk his face into his opened hands, and cried. He cried for the senselessness of it all. He cried for every glimmer of hope in his life that always seemed quickly extinguished. Still, he survived. Slowly his sorrow turned to anger. He now detested Legros and knew a divorce was imminent. The question was how to sever his bond with him and not become a victim of his paranoid vindictiveness.

  Elmyr had long thought there was much about Fernand’s instability that justified a lengthy sojourn in a psychiatric ward. He cared less about the reasons for his dangerous irrationality than its damaging effects that could easily swallow those around him down the vortex of his own predictable self-destruction. He was just one of many seduced by Legros’s wiles and now knew he somehow had to redeem his soul and extricate himself from his grasp.

  At the same time, another continent away, an equally poignant drama of Hollywood dimensions was playing offstage. Fernand’s favorite victim in the Lone Star State, Algur Meadows, was about to host many of the art world’s cognoscenti gathering in Dallas for an important Picasso show. The Texan art collector thought it an auspicious occasion to invite some of them to coo over his private gallery of modern masters. The forty-six works gracing the walls of his home would make it not just significant, but über important. His list of invitees included some iconic figures. Among them were Dan Vogel, a respected Dallas dealer; the Perls brothers, Frank and Klaus, who were unfortunately familiar with Elmyr’s work; and Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Saidenberg. Daniel Saidenberg replaced Paul Rosenberg as Picasso’s American representative.

  Upon entering Meadows’s mansion, one of his illustrious guests asked if he preferred their opinions in writing or an immediate oral assessment. He opted for the latter, without the benefit of anesthesia. It is unclear who drew the first drop of blood, but the feeding frenzy was on. They collectively savaged his personal pantheon, condemning everything in sight. Expressed in erudite terms, their unambiguous displeasure ticked off every conceivable objection why this or that piece was not right. In the tumult, the scholarly piranhas gnawed every bit of flesh from the artworks’ bones. Only the teeth marks remained on the frames. It was, of course, akin to calling in the grim reaper to write the coroner’s report and cause of death.

  One should also remember there is a collegial esprit de corps at work here, and if one chimes in his doubts, it can signal a chorus of criticism like an upset Vienna Boy’s Choir. Conversely, one critic’s positive review may be as contagiously influential. One reason Elmyr may have been as successful as he was for so long is that unanimity of opinion among experts is almost unheard of, and that inconclusiveness frequently worked in his favor. In any event, familiar phraseology couched the professionals’ autopsies. This artist would never have drawn a line like this or that. The shading and colors are all wrong, etc. In some instances, their objections may have been correct. Elmyr knew that some of his work might have been weaker than he liked, and he had expressed his reservations to Legros. It is still remarkable how few of his works have surfaced after all these years.

  No matter the reasons for their bleak critiques, the bottom line was that Mr. Meadows would be viewed as the biggest rube the world of art has ever known—for the second time. The mood at his dinner table could have been merrier only if they had dined in a slaughterhouse. To add to the funereal atmosphere at Meadows’s Mortuary of Modern Art, I imagine the n
eatly engraved menu for their meal might have read, “Dead Fish” on a platter, followed by “Cooked Goose.” Well, you get the idea.

  On Fernand’s last sales trip to Texas, Meadows failed to connect the dots when one of his last views of Fernand was of him standing behind cell bars of the Dallas City Jail. His incarceration surprisingly had nothing to do with swindling his now slightly less rich client. It was the result of a criminal complaint filed by his former companion who had long benefited from Legros’s nefarious activities and was the most frequent target of his jealous rage. The incident revolved around a stolen briefcase that not only contained damning evidence against Fernand, but, worse yet, reams of papers documenting his own business affairs, indicating a personal and financial independence from Legros. This not only confirmed Fernand’s longstanding suspicions of betrayal; he could not support the idea of his former protégé and lover no longer subservient to him. Since Fernand and his friend were together when the briefcase disappeared from his hotel room, he did not suspect him of the theft. Not long afterward, however, Elmyr was again acting as Legros’s long-distance therapist, listening to his sputtering rage and death threats against the weasel-eyed monster he used to let sleep with him. Fernand had no idea his friend was with Elmyr when he called and heard for himself his tirade fueled by information locked inside that attaché case. He then took the first available flight to Dallas and had Legros arrested for felony theft.

  Oddly enough, when Fernand stood wailing and crying in his jail cell, it was Algur Meadows who came to bail him out. Had he then known the verdict on his art collection, he likely would have been less disposed to come to Fernand’s aid. The negotiated terms of his release were that he had to return the stolen property and admit to the theft. In return, his former boyfriend would drop the charges against Fernand. Cliff Irving later reported that Meadows’s misplaced sympathy deteriorated significantly when he allegedly stated, “The thing I most regret is that the day they let him out of the Dallas jail, there was no Jack Ruby waiting in the courtyard.” His escapade with the police initiated Meadows’s nervousness about the picture dealer’s integrity. That prompted the convocation that was the death knell of his career as a collector of fine art.

  I suspect few things gave Fernand the adrenalin rush of money in his hand or exacting punishment on his enemies. With the righteous indignation of a jihad, he declared a personal vendetta against his former lover for the shame he had to endure at the hands of the police in Dallas. It would be just the kind of cage match, fight-to-the-death, wholesale bloodletting he relished. A scorching letter he wrote to Elmyr offers a revealing glimpse of his gladiatorial feistiness. He starts somewhat tepidly, stating, “…and a lifetime won’t be long enough to punish him, his entire family, mother, father, and little brothers, to punish that son of a bitch. If necessary I would mind to kill the man myself in public, in front of everyone, and afterwards I don’t mind to spend the rest of my life in jail…” (Irving 1969). His intent and tone become even less kind as his declaration of war continues. This scary rant was not just hollow threats; he meant every word of it, and Elmyr knew it. He also knew that in an equally frightening way, he remained tethered to a lunatic.

  Legros’s campaign of vengeance now became his newest cause célèbre. His incentive for payback was, in fact, so great that like Martin Luther, he enumerated his grievances in a lengthy denunciation against his heretical former confidante. The document accused him of crimes that Legros had commissioned him to do and thereby incriminated him as well. Such details were mere inconveniences against the big picture of settling a score. Fernand strategically timed his reprisal for January 26. It was his thirty-fifth birthday. That morning he made a call to the Paris police station nearest the Hôtel Montalambert on the Left Bank, where his traitorous companion was living. He then proceeded to rattle off a litany of crimes his cohort committed and that he, as a good lawabiding citizen, felt compelled to report him to the authorities. If they checked his luggage in the hotel consignment, he suggested, they would find evidence of his illegal activities, and promptly hung up the phone. On the anonymous tip, the police investigated the claim. Upon opening the valise in question, they found a package that included four van Dongen paintings, one Marquet, and a Bonnard, all with their attendant phony expertises and fake customs stamps used to export the works from France.

  When the police brought him in handcuffs to the station, Fernand, parked out front, sat on the hood of his red Ferrari, holding a longstemmed glass in one hand and an uncorked bottle of Dom Perignon in the other. He drank his expensive champagne as they led his arrested enemy up the steps. Fernand then shrieked “Bravo! Bravo!” and rejoiced for putting that “turd” in a cage where he belonged. His premeditated little plot, however, left an open door leading directly to himself. Despite costing him a quarter of a million dollars in confiscated artwork, his brief moment of sweet revenge was apparently worth it.

  Unlike Fernand’s stay of a few hours in the Dallas City Jail, the victim of his newly celebrated retribution would spend the next four weeks becoming better acquainted with the Parisian gendarmes. The blood feud between the two would later play a significant role in the final unraveling of Legros’s lucrative art business.

  As usual, Elmyr knew more about who was sleeping with whom from the sidewalk café banter on Ibiza then he did of the uncivil war that broke out in Paris. He was habitually uneasy over his now insufficient stipend and infrequent bonus money from his shifty and unreliable dealer. His ever-precarious personal finances often left him without funds and his bank account overdrawn. Fortunately, his local safety net of friends helped. They knew he consistently repaid their short-term loans and never thought twice about assisting him until some check expected from somewhere abroad came through. It was just mystifying that at times he appeared so flush with cash and then struggled to make ends meet. Many of the foreigners were familiar with currency restrictions of numerous countries and Spain’s almost Byzantine banking system, so these glitches with money transfers were normal.

  Fernand may have had a hiccup of pragmatism after he realized what his cold-blooded Threepenny Opera at the Left Bank police station had actually cost him. Within days, Legros was back in Ibiza, trying to ingratiate himself once more with Elmyr. He made all the right noises to placate his partner. On his hands and knees, the remorseful supplicant begged Elmyr’s forgiveness for trashing his home during his stay there. Other people damaged the house, he explained, not him. “I will pay for everything that is broken or missing,” he swore with believable sincerity. Because of his current penury and Fernand waving a check for $2,000 in front of his face, Elmyr felt obliged to set aside his resentment and once again do business with the devil.

  Fernand was a master of theatrics, but not timing. No sooner had he brought Elmyr back into the fold like a champion border collie than he chose that magic moment to tell him of the devastating Texas twister that ripped through Meadows’s collection in the form of art experts. Elmyr was livid. When he told Elmyr that Meadows’s lawyers were willing to accept financial restitution rather than proceed with a criminal complaint, Fernand laughed. The palms of Elmyr’s hands perspired profusely as he digested the disturbing news and doomsday scenario. He nervously insisted that Legros do what was necessary to avoid impending disaster. Fernand’s entreaties of moments before now turned to petulant defiance. He did not want to talk about that but rather discuss his latest scheme to make more money.

  While Elmyr stood silent, becoming nauseous from worry, Legros’s mood quickly changed again; he now displayed the triumphant smirk of a child whose untiring obstinacy overwhelms a relenting parent. Fernand was cheerily oblivious to the fallout from the mushroom cloud rapidly enveloping Dallas and the shock waves heading toward them both. He could focus only on the new commissions he wanted from Elmyr. They included a number of Dufy watercolors, his usual lighthearted fare; a fauve-period painting of Vlaminck; perhaps a Marquet painting, or one by Derain. “Just outside of Paris, in Pontoise,
there is a government-sanctioned auction house,” he explained to the distracted artist. “There is an important sale scheduled there in early April,” he continued, attempting to pacify his disbelieving listener, assuring him that he would have someone else submit the artworks under their name. When Elmyr cautioned him that it would be too dangerous, Fernand abruptly disarmed his protests by hinting that Elmyr was in no position to refuse his request.

  Elmyr recounted this with a sigh of resignation. “What was I supposed to do?” he asked. “I knew Legros was crazy, but I depended on the son of a bitch.” Any whiff of scandal circulated like an out-of-control prairie fire in the art world, and Fernand simply had no idea of what he had ignited. Elmyr found himself caught between two options, neither of which was safe. He could again cave in to Legros’s coercion and veiled threats, or not cooperate and risk violating the unholy compact he had with a violent, vindictive nut. Elmyr reluctantly decided to give him the artwork he wanted, although he subsequently labored over his creations with the gusto of a condemned man. Near the end of February, he rendezvoused with Fernand at Barcelona’s airport. Elmyr had everything ready but for one Vlaminck oil painting. Legros took his package, then wrote out a check for $2,000 on his Swiss account and handed it to his visibly tired and subdued partner.