“Not much,” I say. “And I don’t think she’s awful at all. She was really nice, showed me her artwork. Although she didn’t seem particularly pleased with your museum.”
“To say the least,” Rik grumbles, then brightens. “Guess what I have for you?”
“A present from Paris?”
“No. I mean, yes, I bought you a present in Paris, but this is better.” He pauses to build the suspense. “I nabbed an extra ticket to the reinstallation, and it’s yours.”
“Reinstallation?” I repeat, stalling for time.
“After the Bath. It’s going to be the event of the season. Aside from your opening, of course. The museum’s going all out. The Boston Pops, the international press, literary lights, artists, a caterer to the stars … Very la-di-da.”
“Aiden’s going. He tried to get another ticket but couldn’t.” I’d been half relieved, unsure if I was ready to stand in front of yet another of my paintings hanging in a great museum but attributed to someone else.
“Do we have to call him Aiden now?” Rik asks, with a pseudo-frown.
I punch his arm again.
“It’s the Saturday night of Thanksgiving weekend,” he says.
“That’s only two weeks before my show.”
“It’s just one evening, Claire.”
“I’ll be wreckage.”
“Perfect time to mix with influential art lovers,” he cajoles. “Couldn’t ask for a better PR op.”
“You sound like Aiden.”
“Not taking no. After the ceremony there’s going to be a megaelegant black-tie dinner.” He grins. “You’ll need a stunning new dress to hobnob with the rich and famous. And if you’re too wasted from working, Aiden and I will be your front men and broadcast the news of your imminent opening.”
I remind myself that this time won’t be like MoMA. This painting isn’t mine like 4D was. It’s Degas’. He composed it, painted it. Sort of.
“It’ll be great fun …”
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it. Thanks.” This time Aiden will be there to help me if there are any tough moments, to stand beside me so I’m not the only one who knows the truth.
Rik leans in very close. “It’s possible by then we’ll know more of the story.”
“What story?”
“Hello? Claire? After the Bath, the painting we’ve been talking about for the last ten minutes?”
“Sorry.”
Rik heaves a great sigh. “By the reinstallation, we should have more information about what really happened to it. Maybe even some of the other paintings.”
I suck in my breath.
“Rumor has it that Patel is considering an FBI offer of immunity.”
“He’s going to rat?” I gasp.
Rik laughs. “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but yeah, and who knows how much he knows?”
AIDEN IS UNMOVED by my news. “Patel’s got nothing to give the FBI.”
“That’s not what Rik said.”
“Rik’s getting his information second- and thirdhand.”
“His sources have been pretty right-on so far.”
“Not this time.”
I called Aiden as soon as I left Clery’s and went right to his house, although I should have gone home to my windows. We’re in his kitchen, and he’s making grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches, which I’m thinking are going to be about as close to my two-American-cheese-singles-on-white-bread as his macaroni and cheese was to my Kraft special.
He slides his creation onto my plate: multiple cheeses with cherry tomatoes and fresh basil oozing out of slabs of homemade, multigrain bread. It looks and smells brilliant. He puts knives and forks on the table as the sandwiches are way too thick and gooey to eat with our hands. I push mine around with the fork. My stomach is squeezed shut.
He sits down across from me and takes a bite of his. “If you don’t eat, you’re never going to have the stamina to finish those windows.”
“Patel can’t be an idiot,” I say. “He’s got to know how it’s going to be for him.”
“Got himself caught. Can’t be all that bright.”
“Even worse.”
“Tell me what you think of the basil.” Aiden points his knife at my sandwich. “It’s a new variety. Not sure I like it.” He takes another bite. “A little too bitter.”
“We’ve got to have a plan.”
“Okay,” he says amicably. “Let’s plan.”
“You’re the one who knows about this stuff.”
He stands. “Want wine?”
“Beer.”
He opens a Sam and hands it to me, pours himself some wine from an open bottle of Cabernet, sits down, and resumes eating his sandwich.
“What do I do if you get arrested?”
“Chantal and Kristi will handle the show.”
“I’m not talking about the show, and you know it. How can you be so laid-back about this?”
He puts down his sandwich and looks at me with a patient expression. “Just tell them you don’t know anything about it,” he says, with annoying calm. “Artists aren’t responsible for their dealers’ actions.”
“How long do you think it’s going to take them to figure out that I’m a professional Degas forger?”
“We discussed this before. I brought you a high-quality copy and paid you to paint a high-quality copy from it, which I told you I was going to sell as a reproduction.” He raises his knife and fork triumphantly. “Even better, our story matches Patel’s exactly.”
“But you didn’t bring me a high-quality copy, did you?” I watch him closely.
“No one can prove what you believed,” he says. “Or what I told you.”
I notice he didn’t answer my question.
“I’m not going to get arrested.” He takes my hand. “I promise.”
I just look at him.
He lets go and leans back in his chair. “Claire, I know you’re under a lot of pressure with the show and all—”
“It’s not about the show. It’s about you. Going to prison.”
“This isn’t helping.”
“And ignoring it is?”
“Freaking out’s no better.”
“It’s better than digging your head in the sand.” I want to shake him out of his complacency. Shake him until he acknowledges the danger.
“Even if Patel tried to turn evidence, he has no idea I’m involved. He’s only got a flunky to give them. And that guy knows even less than he does. It’ll prove worthless to the FBI. There’s no deal to be made.” Aiden’s tone is assured, his equanimity perhaps a bit too sound. I’m thinking he knows something I don’t. Or he believes he knows something I don’t.
I drop my head to my hands. He’s lying to me. I’m lying to him. Our fates are inextricably entwined. And being together doubles our vulnerability.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, staring through my fingers at the uneaten sandwich swimming in its own juices. The cheese has hardened, and oil glistens darkly where bread meets plate.
The frown lines in Aiden’s face deepen as I raise my eyes to meet his. “Don’t know what?” he asks.
I look back down at the soggy sandwich. A split basil leaf protrudes from the slabs of toast like the tongue of a snake.
Thirty-two
THREE YEARS EARLIER
After Karen Sinsheimer said good-bye and hung up, I continued to stare at the phone in my hand. The tendons holding my knees in place turned to mush, and I slid to the floor. It was as if I’d been told a friend died unexpectedly. Half of my mind raced ahead, taking in the message and its meaning, while the other half remained frozen in denial. Although I’d been worried for weeks about this exact outcome, I clearly hadn’t believed it would happen.
For how could it? I’d painted 4D, I’d painted the second one, and I’d given Karen three of my paintings for comparison. The museum had access to many of Isaac’s paintings, and they must have evaluated them against mine. How could the experts have gotten it so wro
ng? Didn’t they have all those fancy high-tech techniques? Didn’t they have PhDs and decades of experience? My eyes flew around the studio, searching for something, anything, to throw.
This was bullshit. An injustice had been done. To me, certainly, but also to Isaac, and not to get too hyperbolic, to all artists and art lovers. What does it mean when a top museum acknowledges the wrong artist of one of its own paintings? What does it say about all museums and all the great works of art? Isaac had to appreciate this, had to know how wrong it was. He was, after all, an artist before all else.
I e-mailed, texted, and called him, leaving message after message to contact me, that it was important. No response. I changed tacks and went for the guilt. “How can you do this to all the people who love and appreciate your work?” “How does it feel to have one of my paintings as part of your legacy?” No response. “How can you look at yourself in the mirror?” He changed his e-mail address and cell number.
“Way to go, girl,” Beatrice Cormier had said, surprising me with both her youthful cliché and her intimation that she believed I’d painted 4D. Of course, she’d never said anything of the sort, but Karen had told me that Beatrice was an art historian and a major collector, and I wondered what she thought of all this.
I reached her at the John and Beatrice Cormier Foundation, and she took my call immediately. “Claire,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
My hand holding the phone shook. “Because of what happened?”
A long pause. “And because of what didn’t.”
“Did you agree with the decision?”
Another long pause. “Can we meet somewhere?”
“I can come to New York any day but Tuesday.”
The next Monday, we sat at a back table in a crowded deli on a side street in the Lower East Side. An odd choice, I thought, when she’d suggested it. But not so odd if she didn’t want us to be seen together.
“I can’t tell you anything definitive,” Beatrice said, after we’d both ordered matzo-ball soup and a salad. “I wasn’t a voting member of the committee. I was just there to give my report.”
I waited.
“I told them that you’d painted the second painting, that I’d watched your every brushstroke, and although it wasn’t my job to say, I added that after spending that much time with you, and more than a few hours with 4D, it was my opinion that you were responsible for both.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. “But no one agreed with you?”
She looked at me with both compassion and sadness. “I wasn’t there, but I heard later that there were others.”
“But, but then, how …?”
“The decision didn’t have to be unanimous.”
I poked at a matzo ball with my spoon. “I’ve tried to reach Isaac, to get him to come clean, but he won’t.”
“And MoMA probably won’t either.”
“What does that mean?”
“Isaac isn’t the only one with a reputation at stake,” Beatrice said. “Or a lot of money.”
I put down my spoon. “So they did this to protect their own asses?” I was immediately sorry for speaking so crudely, but Beatrice didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, to care.
“Did you ever hear of cognitive dissonance?” she asked.
“No.”
“Basically, it’s a theory that people subconsciously reinterpret their motives and actions in a way that makes them feel better about themselves afterward. And then they start to believe that the basis of the reinterpretation is also true.”
Sounded just like Isaac.
“So,” I said slowly, “you’re telling me that even though they know I painted 4D, they’ve convinced themselves that they don’t believe it because it’s in the best interests of the museum?”
“Some of them, maybe.”
“Then I’ll just have to force them to see the truth. To tell the truth. I’ll go to the higher-ups in the museum. The media.”
Beatrice placed her papery hand over mine. “I don’t think you want to do that. You’ve got a great talent, a great future ahead of you. Now’s not the time to look back. Leave it be, Claire. Move on.”
So I went home and tried to do what she advised.
Thirty-three
I scuttle into my building like a cockroach running from light. I never should have gone to Aiden’s. I should have come straight home from Clery’s, back to my windows, away from my fears and Aiden’s pat answers. I think about the Faustian bargain Aiden mentioned the first time we discussed the forgery. He quickly reconsidered and decided the better analogy was to pawns on a chessboard. But he should have stuck with his original assessment. A deal with the devil is exactly right.
Now that I’m inside, out of view of the millions of people who could care less about the absence or presence of my soul, I feel somewhat better. I make myself a pot of coffee and put Bay Village and Apple on the easels. The drawings look at me patiently, reminding me of Aiden’s tranquil expression, of his unruffled practicality in the face of Patel’s potential betrayal. I pick up my palette and a brush. I hate it when these suspicions rear their nasty little heads, yet I’m afraid to ignore them. I can’t allow my feelings for Aiden to cloud my common sense.
I mix a few batches of middle-range tones and begin painting. If I’m losing my soul for this show, I’d damn well better get the work done on time. It feels good to work. In a few hours, Bay Village is in the oven, and I’m mixing up some pale blues for the reflections.
When the oven chimes, I pull Bay Village out and replace it with Apple. I’m exhausted, more than ready for my first nap of the night, but I can’t sleep until Apple’s finished baking. So I brew up another, stronger, pot of coffee and pour myself a bowl of cold cereal. As I eat, I check the Internet for news on Patel. There isn’t any, but this does little to allay my fears. If Patel knows more than Aiden believes, it could easily lead to Aiden’s arrest. And while it may not be against the law to copy a painting, conspiracy to commit a crime—knowing my copy was to be sold as an original—could lead to my own. As could possession of stolen property. And then there’s the whole stolen masterpiece thing.
I chew at a cuticle. If I found the original painting, could that help us? I scan the studio as if the clues are hidden here. My eyes light on Degas’ sketchbooks, and it occurs to me that maybe I could work backward. Maybe finding the forger might lead me to the original.
It’s a long shot, I know, but the desperate can’t be choosy. I begin scribbling on a piece of paper. Everything I’ve learned points to the conclusion that the Bath Aiden brought me, the first forgery, was installed at the Gardner Museum when it opened in 1903. Assuming Degas painted his original After the Bath in 1897, then Bath was created sometime in those six intervening years. Given the difficulty of travel in those days, it must have been painted by someone living in either Paris or Boston. Ergo, my forger lived in France or the United States and, figuring that he painted between the ages of twenty and eighty, he was born between 1820 and 1880.
I Google “forgery between 1880 and 1903,” but it’s not cut that finely, and the best I can do is “known art forgers.” There are roughly fifty on the list, all men. Who knows, perhaps I’m the first female to join their illustrious ranks. Great. I’ve always wanted to be a gender-busting role model.
Laboriously, I exclude the artists one by one. Most don’t fit my timeframe: Giovanni Bastianini died in 1868, while Tony Tetro and my buddy Han were all born too late. Many of those who remain don’t fit geographically: William Blundell lived in Australia, Zhang Daqian in China, and Elmyr de Hory in Hungary. Others specialized in sculpture or medieval miniatures. At the end, I’m left with four possibilities and a couple of revelatory tales that might reflect on my own.
The first story is about Alceo Dossena, an Italian stonemason and struggling artist who copied classical Greek and Roman sculptures, which, unbeknownst to him, his agent sold as originals to collectors and museums, including Boston’s MFA. When, according
to Dossena, he stumbled on some of his work in museum collections of ancient art, he realized his agent had been reaping far more than the $200 he’d paid Dossena. He sued his agent, claiming that he hadn’t known his work was being sold fraudulently. He won at trial and received thousands of dollars in restitution. This appears to be a good omen for me, but I’m unsettled by the fact that when he had a one-man show at the Met following his acquittal, it was a complete failure.
Then there’s David Stein, a French painter who created pastiches of his favorite masters and made millions of dollars selling fake Chagalls, Klees, Mirós, and Picassos. When one of his forgeries was discovered in a New York gallery, he was arrested. But his prosecution proved difficult: Art dealers refused to cooperate because they feared publicity questioning their expertise, and collectors wouldn’t give up Stein’s paintings, claiming they filled important holes in their collections. Unfortunately for Stein, and for me, he was found guilty anyway and sent to prison for art forgery and grand larceny.
Ambition, talent, antiestablishment vengeance, greed, and hubris run rampant through all fifty stories, and I see myself everywhere. Plus, they all share the same outcome: the ultimate exposure of the forger as the charlatan he is.
“WHY ARE YOU doing this to yourself?” Aiden says when I tell him about the forgers. He showed up around nine to make sure I was all right after I left his condo right after dinner last night.
“Curiosity?” I offer.
“Masochism.”
“The forgers, they all had the same baggage. Most with the same motivations as me.”
He throws his hands in the air. “All medical students want to help people.”
“Almost every one wanted revenge of some sort. Usually on the art world. For not appreciating their work.”
Aiden’s eyes soften. “You’ve got true talent, Claire.” He waves at the completed window paintings lined up against the wall. “And your grievance comes from a very different—” He squats in front of Nighttime T, stares at it, then turns back to me. “This is great. Very compelling. The depth of the color …” He reaches a finger toward the canvas, then stops himself. “Maybe your best. I’m thinking front window. Major frame.”
The Art Forger Page 19