The Muralist: A Novel

by B. A. Shapiro

  “That’s no fucking Rothko,” Anatoly growled. He loved to overact the part of the besieged executive, and he also loved to swear. I think he enjoyed the paradox of a cultured exec speaking like a street thug. “Thought we were talking fucking Rothko.”

  “George is, but I’m thinking we should keep our options open.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest.

  I put the three squares on his desk, ignoring his pseudoindignation. “He thinks these are Rothkos, but I think they might be Alizée Benoits, the same woman who painted this.”

  “The great-aunt.” Anatoly smirked at me, then put on his glasses and scrutinized the squares. “Potent,” he admitted. “There’s a lot of Rothko in them.”

  “Benoit worked for the WPA, right before World War II, the same as the others. Allegedly very close friends. There are claims she strongly influenced them all—”

  “You have any proof of these claims and allegations?”

  “It’s possible she affected the growth and thrust of Abstract Expressionism.” I paused. “Might even be the missing link.”

  “That missing link crap is bullshit,” he declared. “A bunch of white-tower academics jerking each other off over nothing.”

  I put Lily Pads on the desk next to the others, positioned it so it was closest to the two squares it most resembled, and pointed out the similarities.

  “Don’t see it,” Anatoly said. “Look at the strength of the lines, the alienation in the faces of these men.” He waved his finger over a cluster of abstracted, yet still clearly self-satisfied, lionlike creatures. “The hubris of these.”

  “Rothko didn’t mix styles.”

  “We’re talking early works here. He was a kid when he did this, probably just a student. Could have been an assignment. Could have just been screwing around. They had to hand x number of paintings into the WPA to get their paychecks. Could have been a slow month.”

  There was no way I could argue this, so I said, “There are rumors Benoit was Mark Rothko’s lover, so he may have been influenced by her or—”

  “Let’s pursue the Rothko angle first. There’s no need to consider an outlier when we have a perfectly legitimate contender.”

  “Why can’t we do both at the same time?”

  “We can revisit this if it’s determined they’re not Rothkos.”

  “But—”

  “Give it up, Dani.”

  I knew exactly why he wanted me to give it up. If the squares were authenticated as Rothko’s, Christie’s was in line to make a fortune, but if they turned out to be the work of an unknown painter, there would be no line to stand in. “The thing is,” I persisted, “she disappeared. Mysteriously. No one knows what happened to her. One day she was there, and poof, the next day she’s gone. Never to be seen again.”

  “And the reason we care . . . ?”

  “She was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt’s, that’s where this painting came from. It seems that Eleanor bought them from Benoit and then gave them to my grandfather. Which means it could be—”

  “This is getting convoluted.”

  “—an important find,” I continued as if he hadn’t interrupted. “Don’t you think it’s strange that three paintings by an unknown artist were attached to the backs of possible Pollocks and Rothkos and Krasners? That they might be the work of an artist Eleanor Roosevelt collected? Who happened to vanish without explanation? Who was hiding what from whom? And why?”

  “Or, more likely, your so-called unknown artist is an extremely well-known one.” He stood.

  I didn’t move. “I’d like to actively pursue this now. Maybe even go to Paris. They’re setting up for that Early Abstract Expressionist show. At the Louvre. Must be getting tons of paintings from all over the world. We could ask for access. I could inspect the backs. There might be more squares.” Desperate, I shifted tacks. “It could even work in your favor. Maybe I’ll find proof they actually are Rothkos.”

  “Even if I agreed to this—which I’m not—it sounds like a job for someone with a little more experience.” Anatoly came around from behind his desk. “Someone with a little less of a fucking point to prove.”

  I’ve never been very good at following directions, so as soon as I got back to my office, I logged on to a website called the Archives of American Art, the largest digitized compilation of primary sources on American artists in the world. If I could find a reference to Alizée in the Pollock, Krasner, or Rothko papers, maybe it would give Anatoly what he needed to let me follow up on her. He hadn’t actually said no. All he’d said was “Give it up.” Not exactly the same thing.

  As I assumed, the materials on Pollock, Krasner, and Rothko were vast, and although they spanned from 1914 to 1984, the majority were after 1945. Rothko and Pollock weren’t making real waves in the art world until the mid- to late 1940s, and Krasner even later than that, so it made sense that’s where most of the substance and interest would be. Unfortunately, I was interested in 1937 to 1940, the years Alizée was in New York, when Jackson, Lee, and Mark were unknown artists working for the WPA along with thousands of others.

  The deeper I dug, the more frustrating it got: useless business records, awards, family photos, and documents—Lee’s social security card was particularly uninspiring—clippings; exhibition lists; résumés; correspondence with art historians, critics, gallery owners, artists, and collectors. As advertised, almost all from much later than my time period. There were audio and video interviews and recordings, which at first excited me, but it turned out only a few were with Mark and the others were mostly Lee, well after Jackson’s death, talking about his legacy. The small number of interviews with Jackson were only about Jackson, clearly his favorite subject.

  I clicked on “Sketchbook of Unidentified Artist,” knowing it wouldn’t be Alizée’s but hoping it might. PDFs of the pages of the sketchbook were displayed, and I looked them over closely. I was pretty sure the drawings were of New York City, scenes of ordinary urban life circa 1940. They were very well done, with strong lines and great use of negative space: women and men reading newspapers on park benches, riding buses, in line at the grocery store, eating at what appeared to be a drugstore counter. There was a strong sense of detachment, a lack of outward emotion that was particularly haunting, Hopperesque. But it didn’t look like anything Alizée would have done.

  I searched through the correspondence, which was all handwritten, difficult to decipher, and mostly letters—lots of thank-you notes, how yesteryear—written to Lee or Jackson or Mark rather than anything they wrote themselves. Again, predictable. Who kept copies of letters they had sent? I switched to the interview transcripts, scanned for the words WPA, Alizée, Benoit. An hour later, all I had was a headache.

  6

  ELEANOR, 1939

  Eleanor couldn’t get her visit to the warehouse out of her head. What a fever that young artist had, what determination and pluck. She’d written down the girl’s name, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember it. And why not something different, as she’d suggested? Something new? After all, wasn’t the WPA/FAP itself revolutionary? She’d just have to persuade Franklin and Harry Hopkins, who headed the WPA, to see it her way. So she called her secretary, Malvina Thompson, and asked her to collect all the information she could on American modern art and leave it on her desk.

  Malvina was nothing if not efficient, and when Eleanor returned to the White House, a pile of articles, books, and photographs were in her study. She had a couple of hours before an informal supper with Franklin and Harry, an unusual event amid the more commonplace formal dinners. Given the fortuitousness of the arrangements, she immediately sat down to go through the materials.

  The paintings didn’t look like anything and didn’t make her feel anything other than perplexed. She’d imagined art similar to Picasso’s reversed faces or the Impressionist paintings that became clear only when you stood at a distance. Works with a distinct focus, subjects that resembled what they were meant to portray. She had no
idea how to interpret the pictures in front of her. Alizée was her name. Alizée Benoit. Alizée had told her to take her time, to give it a chance, so that’s what she did.

  Considering the photos longer and more carefully, she began to feel a stirring. She stared without blinking, burning the colors and images into her retina. She pushed to merge the impressions with emotions. And there was a shift, a flicker of understanding. She caught her breath.

  Hartley’s Mountain Lake—Autumn, vibrant colors and thick brushstrokes far more evocative of a Maine landscape than a re-creation of how the foliage actually looked. Moonlight over the Arbor, summer light and a quiet breeze, so filled with longing for those fleeting days of sunshine and warmth that Eleanor could almost smell it. Goin’ Fishin’, a tangle of bamboo and pieces of denim work shirts, Huckleberry Finn’s Mississippi without a drop of water. And then there was Georgia O’Keeffe’s Large Dark Red Leaves on White, an intense close-up of a leaf, tightly cropped, rendering it abstract in its exact depiction. Here were works by American artists revealing the heart of America through means beyond strict representation.

  But it was John Marin’s Bryant Square that finally brought it home for her. The drama and intensity of New York City emanating within its brash, searing lines. Abstracted skyscrapers leaning inward, pushing against each other, fighting for space, for supremacy, just like the tiny, sketchy figures rushing beneath them. Thin zigzags and thick black strokes, the excitement, the movement, the electricity of the city she’d just left, all there. All inside her.

  When the butler arrived to announce dinner, Eleanor brought the photographs with her. When she entered the dining room, Harry was already there, but Franklin was still in the Oval Office. Harry didn’t look well, and Eleanor was concerned. His clothes hung too loose on his bones, his hair appeared to be thinning before her eyes, and his face was pale with a slightly greenish hue. Both she and the president had begged him to see a doctor, and he’d finally promised he would. Although, as far as she knew, he hadn’t yet.

  “When I was up in New York, I visited a FAP site on the piers,” Eleanor said as she sat down, hoping to cheer him up with his favorite topic. “Near Battery Park.”

  “Where they’re painting all those murals? Isn’t it the most amazing thing?” Harry lit up. “I wish I had the time to go up there more. I’ve only been once.”

  “Is there a reason why there aren’t any abstract murals?”

  Harry shrugged. “You know the murals have to be approved by a committee that includes the people who’ll use the facility. Maybe they don’t like abstract art. Frankly, I have to agree with them.”

  “But there’s no official policy against it?”

  “There’s no official policy.” He grinned at her. “Except common sense.”

  “Don’t be such an old fogey, Harry,” Eleanor retorted. “I did a little research. Look at these.” She laid the photos of O’Keeffe’s Leaves and Hartley’s Mountain Lake on the table. “Nature in a completely different way. Not exactly what it looks like, as one of the artists told me, but what it feels like.”

  Harry shrugged again.

  “Look at this one.” Eleanor handed him Bryant Square.

  He quickly glanced at it and gave it back to her. “Reminds me of everything I hate about New York.” He shuddered in exaggerated revulsion. “All those people. All those buildings.”

  “That’s the point!” Eleanor crowed. “This painting makes you feel what it’s like to be in New York, to experience it, not just to see what it looks like.”

  “But I don’t like how it feels.”

  She frowned at him. “I met a girl up there today, one of the artists, who wanted more than anything to paint an abstract mural.” She paused. “There was something about her . . . She was so passionate, so fearless, yet oddly sad . . .”

  “Another duckling to take under your wing?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Harry sighed. “And I suppose you want me to make sure that she gets her abstract mural?”

  “What’s this about abstract murals?” Franklin boomed cheerfully as his valet pushed his wheelchair up to the table.

  “I think we should expand the type of art we’re supporting,” Eleanor said. “We need to be behind all kinds of American art. All American artists. Those of the future as well as the past.”

  The president picked up the photographs. “This is the future? Except for this one”—he pointed to the O’Keeffe—“I don’t know what I’m looking at, and frankly I’m not sure this is really a leaf. Are these supposed to be buildings? They’re all sideways, sloppy, something a kid would draw. Seems like taking up with this is going backward”—he winked at Harry—“not forward.”

  “She met an artist at one of the warehouses.” Harry raised an eyebrow at the president. “An abstract artist.”

  “For forward-thinking men, you’re both being extremely bullheaded,” Eleanor declared. “The world is flat. Bloodletting cures diseases. Women will never win the vote.” She glared at each in turn. “Is this where you want to stand?”

  “I like pictures I can recognize,” Franklin insisted.

  “So you’ve said,” she countered. “But maybe this isn’t about what you like, it’s about where American art is headed, with or without you.”

  The president looked sheepish. “Guess one abstract mural won’t hurt anything.”

  “Two.” She turned to Harry. “I’ll give you the artists’ names. You vet them, and if all’s well, please take it from there.”

  7

  ALIZÉE

  Alizée had gone to the ERC office on March 29, which meant she had to wait three days to send Oncle and Tante the wire about the visa money. An interminable delay. While her salary of seventy-nine dollars a month covered the basics, by the end of any given month her icebox was close to empty and she had no more than a few pennies in her change purse. Not nearly enough for a telegram. Just about everyone else on the project was in the same situation; a lot fewer beers were sold and a lot less levity ensued at the Jumble Shop when the calendar turned to thirty and thirty-one.

  Although it was the first of April and yesterday it had been sixty degrees, as she headed north from the docks to the King Street WPA office for her check, a sharp wintery wind off the Hudson River bit through her cotton coat and cut into her fingertips, exposed by the fingerless gloves she wore in the warehouse. She’d brought a pair of wool gloves with her from France, but this was her second winter in New York, and they’d barely made it through the first. In another way, the blustery gusts were a welcome gift. Mounds of garbage sat on the streets and sidewalks and especially in the alleys, and without the wind to move the air, the stench would have been even worse than it was.

  She did catch the aroma of roasting turkey as two women stepped onto the sidewalk in front of her, the door of a butcher shop closing behind them. Her stomach twisted, both from hunger and the reminder of Tante’s home-cooked meals. She’d skipped lunch in order to leave early so she could get her stipend and make it to the telegraph office before it closed. She tried to peer into the shop, but it was impossible to see inside. The windows were completely covered by posters advertising the “sale” prices. Twenty-five cents for a turkey. Twenty-two for a leg of lamb. It wasn’t much of a sale. She played with the thought of buying a turkey on her way home, but for that much money she could get at least five loaves of bread and a couple pounds of cheese.

  It seemed as if food was all around her. Grocers with open bins of vegetables and fruit crowding the sidewalk. A bakery. A horse-drawn Sheffield Farms milk truck. Pushcarts filled with chickens. A kosher market. An Automat. Alizée tried to focus on something else, anything else, but even the red-and-white-striped barbershop pole reminded her of candy.

  There were many stores peddling goods other than food: sign makers, gunsmiths, smoke shops, jewelers, Goldberg’s Suits. But these didn’t interest her nearly as much as the foodstuffs. As she crossed under the latticework of shadows cast by the elevated tr
ain tracks, she wondered how, when so many were unemployed, so much was for sale. But, of course, the shops were mostly empty. As were many of their shelves.

  When she turned onto King Street, she balked at the long queue snaking two blocks from the WPA’s door. She wasn’t the only artist who’d run out of money. She looked to the west. Although buildings obscured her view of the sun, it was clear from the angle of the shadows that it was at least four o’clock. The telegraph office closed at five. She walked quickly to take her place at the end of the line.

  She was standing in almost the same spot where she’d met Lee two years ago. After their first conversation, in which they discussed the brilliance of Picasso’s antiwar mural Guernica but agreed that they both preferred their own art to be personal rather than political, Lee suddenly seemed to be everywhere. They lived only a few blocks from each other, and Alizée would see her on the street, in the grocers, sitting on a bench in Washington Square. Then it turned out they both had scholarships at Hans Hofmann’s art school. And that was that.

  A girl Alizée recognized from the Jumble Shop stepped next to her. “You sit at the Picasso table, don’t you, sis?” She was tall and excruciatingly thin, her hair brushed back like a boy’s. Still, with her high cheekbones and huge gray eyes, she was stunning.

  “And you sit with those regionalists.”

  “Guilty as charged.” The girl held out her hand. “Louise Bothwell, purveyor of the realistic portrayal of the miserable American condition.”

  “Alizée Benoit. Purveyor of the abstract portrayal of the—”

  “Easel, mural, sculpture, poster?”

  “Mural. I’m down at the docks working with—”

  “I did mural for a year at the beginning, but now I’m on easel. It’s okay but gets a little boring sometimes. I have to go out and find people to talk to in order to not go off my nut.”

  Alizée could see that this might be a problem for her.

  “But, my gosh, it’s grand not to have to be at someone else’s beck and call. Harder in the winter, though, when it’s too cold to go to the park. And at the end of the month when there’s no money for a coffee. But I find people. I go to the library sometimes. To the five-and-dime. Kresge’s. Or I sit in the Jumble Shop and talk to the bartender until he kicks me out. Sometimes I burgle the poor box in the Catholic Church on Fourteenth Street just for something to do.”