Modern Art
Tal Vinnik
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012
Cover photo Copyright 2011 Billy Frank Alexander
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The halls leading up to the chapel were lined with various works of art that you would probably expect me to pay attention to, but I was interested in only one piece in the Sistine. No, in the halls what interested me were all of the maps and charts of the world. My parents were always keen to remind me how backwards the Christian world supposedly was, people believing they would fall off the flat world if their ships traveled too far, when the Greeks knew the truth thousands of years beforehand. But here were maps laid on globes, hundreds of years ago. Certainly the church was not at the forefront of modernity, but occasionally, like today, they took steps to make sure they did not fall behind.
When she saw my badge, she said, “Benvenuto alla cappella Sistina!” and that was all I need to be home. I was fearful that I would be disappointed after the plain and dreary tan exterior of the chapel, but seeing her and that ceiling was a massive relief.
“Uh, Bon-jour-now...” She knew how beautiful she was and had the good sense to buck the American trend of shoulder pads and permed hair; she didn't need to power dress to make men-no, to make boys-like me putty in her hands. She giggled when she noticed my eyes darting back and forth between her slender face and her un-Vatican-like cleavage; this girlish outburst took something away from her. Love at first sight often lasts only as long as it takes to get a good look at someone. I stopped stammering in something it would be a favor to call Italian and asked, “Speak English?”
“Of course!” She giggled again. “How may I help you?” Her accent almost made me fall back in love with her again.”
“Umm... I'm here for the...the restoration. I mean, I'm here to restore...for the restoration. My name's Garner.” I inwardly shook my head at myself and she looked at her clipboard, smiling.
“Oh, yes, yes, come this way. You're early. This is the best start. My, my, the master himself. Come this way, please, this way.” We rushed through a crowd of people with their heads lifted up. The crowd was smaller than I expected since they were limiting visitors since the restoration started in '84, but it was still, well, a crowd. I had not yet craned my neck; I wanted to savor the moment when I would see it. I could see all of their eyes maneuvering around my colleagues, around the scaffolding that I would soon be climbing. They had sponges in their hands and stood inches from the ceiling. My career-defining moment would be walking in the footsteps of the greatest painter who had ever lived. Maybe it was arrogant, but I saw us in a partnership, unbound from language or time (or fame, or prestige).
The woman had gone ahead of me, but I could clearly see her head towering above a sea of enamored Japanese tourists. Then she stopped; we didn't go to a ladder or an elevator. We stopped at the “Scenes of the Life of Moses.” This badly maintained fresco of seven episodes was impressive in scope, but was only remembered for the religious value it held. She now looked at me as if it was my turn to lead. She nodded, indicating that we had reached my new home. Botticelli? Fucking Botticelli?
My voice cracking, I said, “No, no. I don't think this is right. I was told I would be working on the ceiling.” I hadn't. In my excitement, I had completely forgotten that anyone besides Michelangelo worked in the chapel. The word Sistine came over the receiver and I practically yelled out my acceptance.
“Oh my, signor Garner, I'm very sorry, I think there has been a bad communication. For a work so close to our visitors, we need a professional like you to handle it. If we could afford you for the more minor restoration of the ceiling of course we would do it in a second. I must say, your previous work is flawless. Not to put any pressure on you that is not necessary, but we all expect the same from your stay here.”
I lowered my hand which had been resting on my chin because of how much it was trembling. Perhaps this was for the best. An artist of Michelangelo’s caliber, he would do fine without a restorer of my particular talents. This five-hundred-year-old piece however... I nodded to the woman. She motioned again toward the frescoes with her clipboard and I started to examine them. The work really was in dire need of resuscitation—the colors were fading, the gaps between the paint growing larger; the whole scene made me physically ill. I could even make out the faintest trace of a small fingerprint engraved in chocolate on the edge of “The Journey into Egypt.” She had to be told.
“Come here. Do you see this? Look at this, do you see this?” I pointed at the stain. She squinted her eyes and had a dumb expression on her face. I tightened the muscles in my hand and pointed again, thinking it would do the trick. I felt an impending apology.
“Signor, I'm sorry. I see nothing, but you are the professional. I trust what you say is there, is there. All I can say to you is I loved what you did with the El Greco last year.” I was intrigued. “It was...of course part of it was the painting, but I had never seen a work by him so beautiful. I, and the Church, we put our full faith in you.”
For the rest of the day, I stared at the fresco. I examined the flaws, wrote out an inventory of possible chemicals to test and brushes that I would need. Jetlagged and frustrated, I left the Vatican after a few short hours. Because my work would stretch into weeks rather than days, the Church rented out an apartment for me in Rome. The place was clean, but small, and unfurnished save for a bed. It was suitable only for sleep, and it was terrible even for that; the springs dug into my back and I would have to buy more comfortable pillows. Where was the lavish spending of the Church now? Almost as soon as I jacked in the phone line, it started ringing. I knew it must be the last museum that I worked for; I hung up before they got a chance to speak and sped out of the room.
At least the people on the street were joyous enough to distract me from the filth on the street. No, friendly isn't the right word for it. Many of them were shouting at each other and there was a near constant stream of honking from Vespas nearly mowing me down. But the energy; these people were alive.
Wandering from street to street, I couldn't find a single prostitute who looked anything like the Sistine woman; few of them actually looked like women. Half had the problem of being in the midst of pubescence and quite a few more had the problem of possessing penises. Perhaps the majority weren't out yet because the sun had just set, but I had been sitting around all day and my patience was waning. A liquor store owner happily passed me a Vodka called “Mezzaluna.” That night, it was obviously going to be my only means of arousal. I dramatically smashed the bottle on the street after it was half gone and I continued prowling, at this point for almost any woman. Every time I thought I would find a suitable one, I would get up close to her and decide otherwise.
For a large part of my adult life, I've found solace in whores because of the simplicity they brought to relationships, which a real woman could never bring me. And it was so difficult to find a real woman to stay with me with all the traveling anyhow. Because they were used to requests so exceedingly depraved, something as simple as asking a whore to wipe off a little make-up would result initially in confusion and then would be seen as a compliment (a whore not having enough make-up on had never been a problem). I had tried being honest with a girl I dated briefly in my college years who was a carry over of the last decade's feminist movement and insisted on living her life “naturally,” sans bra, sans razor anywhere on her body. When I told her what I thought about her underarm, she cited some passage from the bible about trusting God's decisions and then some other quote from Gloria Steinem. She broke up with me immediately; when I saw her the following week, her upper lip was waxed clean and she was obviously wearing a bra that God didn't intend for her to wear.
After walking around for two hours, pausing a few times to take in the famous fountains, I went somewhere with a blurry figure who offered to give me a hand job for five American and I reluctantly agreed. She seemed bored with the proceedings and at some point poured a line of cocaine on me which I only noticed when she started snorting in my chest hair and then sneezed. I didn't want to be with someone more intoxicated than I was, so I stormed out. When I got home, I used a pair of tweezers to pull out the mixture left on my chest. The powder reminded me of the eraser residue that had nearly gotten me arrested in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I was in a room that housed thousands of black hats stacked in a fairly well constructed headwear-pyramid. There was an open book, which I thought was a guest-book, on a tattered wooden table next to the “piece.” I walked over to the table and cleared off the bits of eraser on the page to get a better look at the writing on the page. An alarm suddenly went off. A young man, musty, rushed at me and grabbed me by the collar.
“I knew something like this would happen!” he shouted. “Puritans trying to impede modernity!”
“What? I'm so sorry, I'm not sure what I did.” I was only seventeen back then, on a sort of field trip for uni. I genuinely felt perplexed and ashamed for ruining something. I was so young.
Two grumpy men arrived in the room, seemingly going through the motions. One of them interrogated me on the details while the other got to work on the book with a set of tweezers and a small tube of eraser shavings. He opened up a binder of photographs on the table that he used to set the scrapings in their original (and seemingly arbitrary) positions. When I was done with my interrogation by the arranger of the hats (“artist” seems a bit much) and the curator, the curator convinced the man not to call the police because his comrade was so good at putting the shavings back having done it three times earlier that very week. I approached the book to at least see what the fuss was about. The only thing on the page was the word “work” written over and over again, in various sizes, differing capitalization and all kinds of punctuation! This brought a thought to mind: if I had set the hats and the book on fire and took a photo of it, would that also be “art”? That was probably the beginning.
****
About two weeks later, when I was standing at the “Daughters of Jethro,” I noticed the beautiful woman that first greeted me in the chapel, looking at me with admiration. I turned quickly toward the fresco, my heartbeat picking up, and tried to posture my body in a way that made me seem thoughtful, but relaxed. While I was imaging her undress me with her eyes twenty feet away, a finger tapped me on my shoulder. The finger belonged to Her, Concettina. Although it couldn't have been, it seemed to be the first time that I'd seen her hands free of that clipboard and pencil, which seemed to be surgically attached to each respective hand.
“Signor Garner?” Something about her tone got me. She was always a warm woman, but she seemed to remain on professional terms with everyone I had seen her interact with. With a nearly-whispered phrase, she let me know that this would be a conversation between friends. “Do you have a minute?
“Are you still upsetting about not working on the ceiling?” I tried a look of confusion, but her eyes stayed on me, seeing through the act.
“Okay...I admit, I was disappointed at first.” As seemed to be more often the case, I walked a thing line between disclosure and outright deceit. “Michelangelo is indescribable. It seems that lately I've worked with lesser artists. I mean, Botticelli is no slouch, don't get me wrong. He was a master in his time, but his work just doesn't make the cut these days. Look at it. The work bears every mark of his ear. Artists like Michelangelo, some of Da Vinci, the Dutch Realists... their work is beautiful. It will always be beautiful. Restoring them can't even be called work.” I paused, looking up to make sure she was still listening and also not brandishing a weapon. My eyes went back to the ground, and I continued, “but I feel like these artists, they really need to be in the absolute best condition to be appreciated. They give my work a sense of purpose.”
She disagreed with my view of Botticelli, of course, and listed several points as to why his work was great. I glossed over them, but we debated for over twenty minutes and it was wonderful engaging someone with my actual opinion, although it was a distilled version of it.
“Excuse me a moment,” I told her. I felt bold and began strutting to the bathroom. Within seconds, I tripped and fell to the ground. Little pieces of broken glass in my pocket pierced my skin and pain rushed through as my leg got moist.
“Charles! Are you okay?”
“It's...nothing,” which is second only to “It's fine,” of things to say when something is horribly wrong. I couldn't let her see. I gave some mumbled apologies and ran out of the Sistine and out of the Vatican as fast as I could. Terror grasped me when I got home and the glass in my pocket only made up three vials. Where was the fourth? I ran to the sink and let the red disappear into it. The desire to replenish them as soon as possible was incredible, but it would be far too dangerous tonight. I ran back to the Vatican. Concettina approached me as soon as she saw I got back. She was saying something, but I couldn't hear her. The vial was nowhere near where I had fallen; of course it wouldn't be. They kept the floor pristine, thought the same couldn't be said for the walls. Had she taken it? Picked up the vial and figured out what I was? My only option was to pretend it never happened, and hope the police wouldn't show up at my door. My work wasn't done.
****
My output was as good as it had ever been and my hand invariably steady; weeks passed with many ignored phone calls from prior clients, but without any incidents. There were only ten brushes in my satchel, so I went over to the scaffold to see if they had anything, just in case. No one seemed to hear me in the din of it all, so I took it upon myself to climb up to them. I realized how close I was and I was awestruck; right below Adam and God, fingers almost touching, and I couldn't help but think in spite of myself of the alien film Spielberg released three year prior. As my hand moved up with my finger drawn, about to make a T with the fingers of God, the first man, and me, it became obvious to me how lazily Michelangelo had treated the ceiling: the distance the piece is typically viewed from masked the fact that three of Adam's fingers appeared to be almost random streaks of paint.
“Eh, vous. What are you doing?” My hand quickly retreated. I turned toward the bald Frenchman, lifting up my badge for him to see. He laughed and said, “Ah, oui.” He whispered, “I could not help myself either. In maybe two years we clean all the damage out anyway. It's okay. Go ahead.” He surveyed the area to make sure no one was watching, ignoring all of the people below us whose eyes were directed right at us. I felt too self-conscious now to give it another go. “D'accord,” he went on. “You can wait for me to leave.” He looked down at my badge. “Mon Dieu, are you the same Garner I am thinking of?” His mouth was agape and my face turned rosy. “I admire your work very much. I would appreciate so much if you give me, us, any tips you have.” I scanned my mind for anything I could dole out to him.
“Huh, I don't think I know anything you don't. Right now I'm experimenting with a bit of a new technique. I'm afraid to use it on anything quite as beautiful as this yet. Once I get everything down perfectly, I'd be happy to give you some pointers.” His face lit up; it was like I told him the secret to alchemy. “Not that I think you need it. This looks like it's coming along quite nicely.”
It did not. The colors of the restored portion of the ceiling were so dramatic, almost neon-like, that it could not have been His original intention. I said nothing. If the Vatican took issue with this frog's choice, maybe I could finally get to the ceiling and get paid for quite an easy fix. A messenger boy yelled out and pointed up to me. I climbed down and he gave me a post-it note that said there was a call for me. When I asked him who it was, I think I frightened him with the urgency that was in my voice, and he meekly said that they were from “Neverland.” I ran to the nearest phone almost immediately to make the call and my fingers moved so quickly, it took a few attempts to dial the correct number.
A voice in a thick Dutch accent answered. “Hello, this is the Amsterdam mus-” I put down the receiver and walked away as conspicuously as I could.
Armed with a quart-inch, soft-edge brush, I returned to Moses. I experimented with various plasters to place in the cracks and chipped off a microscopic piece of the picture at the edge to send for chemical analysis. The uniformed like to think that art restoration is taking a sponge with some water and pressing it against the picture. A sponge is a wonderful tool, but restoration artists like to think of what we do more as a detective mystery; I was affectionately dubbed Columbo by the art community. Often, I would also imagine myself as a surgeon; one wrong move and someone's legacy could die. Countless pieces have been ruined by amateurs removing too many layers or using a chemical that would react with various forms of obsolete paints. My original intention was to make a very large portion of this trip a vacation, but with Botticelli's frescoes, my days, and parts of my nights, were taken over by my work.
****
On a foggy Wednesday, I strode into the Sistine after a week's excursion for a small project in a chapel in Sicily. I waved hello to the ceiling workers, whom I had grown to like despite their occupational efficiencies. They were endearing, like the dancing frog from the only Bugs Bunny cartoons. Concettina was looking at my work affectionately. She turned at the sound of my footsteps.
“Bonjourno, Signor Garner.” Unfortunately, following my fall, our conversations had returned to the formality with which we began. “I hope your trip went well. Something happened while you were gone which I wanted to have talk with you about.” I panicked. If anyone had figured it out, it would be her.
“Bonjourno. What happened?” Her face abruptly turned serious, which confirmed my fears. Running out of the Vatican again would have been an absurd gesture, so I stood my ground. “Two days ago...oh, it's horrible. Two days ago, the wife of the patron funding this restoration came to Brazil because her husband heard you had done some work on 'The Daughters of Jethro,' which is his favorite piece. Olivier, one of the guards, he heard a scream come from over here.” I swerved around to see if a guard was on his way to arrest me. Getting caught was something I anticipated, but perhaps not so fast. She was waiting for a cue to continue, but did so anyway when I looked at her blankly. “When he came, the wife was on the floor, almost dead. Stroke, poor woman.” My eyes widened as this was certainly not the turn of events I was expecting.
“Here?” I asked. She nodded, gravely. “That's... horrible? That's horrible.” I tried to keep the relief from my voice, but some slipped through; the things we say in our grief.
“Si. She lay there, and then died right in his hands while waiting for the police. He was so scared. He was on me, crying for an hour.” I could only imagine the consolation that gave Olivier. She looked at my feet where I figured the woman expired, and stepped back.
“Did she say anything? How is her husband?” If it was the man's favorite piece and his wife noticed something, it was certain that he would as well.
“Nothing. Not a word. Her husband is flying over after the funeral. I hear he can barely afford it. He poured half of his money in paying for the restoration of the walls and then his company started failing. Maybe your work can bring just a little happiness to him.” The only joy I could bring him would be through my painful death. It was only then that I realized that it wasn't the Vatican who paid for this part of the restoration. At least John Paul had good taste. I contemplated my options, leaving my work on the rest of the fresco, looking on the daughters for hours. The chapel was strangely emptied when Concettina walked over.
“Signor Garner, Charles.” I looked up. I hated these moments alone with her. “Can I ask you a question?” Again, my blank expression signaled for her to continue. “You've never shot up here, have you?”
“Shot up... what?”
“I am not stupid. I heard glass. Why would have run out so fast if not?” Perhaps, I had given her too much credit. Still, the patron was on his way.”
“No. In here? Of course not. Some things are sacred. And, I have to tell you that I'm done. I'm clean. I'm really, truly clean.” She nodded her head, perhaps half-believing me at best.
“That is great. But please, you should go. I know you like to work late, but this place... we're a very...what's the word? Like Stevie Wonder?”
“Blind?”
“No, never mind. The live aren't alone is all.” She began to walk away when I didn't respond as I waited to be left alone with the ghost of the patron's wife. When her steps completely faded, I retriever little test tubes that were hidden in my inner coat pocked.
The daughter on the right was finished, so I set my sights on her companion on the left. I dabbed a brush in the tube filled with paint I had painfully concocted to match the lights parts of the hair. Her eyebrows seemed the most problematic to me, rounded in an impossible fashion. Easily removed. Since I would have no time to let anything dry, let alone even think of layering, I put the correct eyebrows on first and painted over the others. Next, the nose sloped unnaturally onto the girl's face like a caveman's, which could only be solved by constructing an entirely new one, dabbing into the vial for the skin. After I was able to correct her face in its shape and complexion, I traveled down to the neck, which although barely visible, looked unnaturally elongated, so I painted a thicker one over some of the girl's hair. I continued until I reached her outstretched hands, which reminded me of an imp. Her feet? Her feet were almost as monstrous as the difficulty that it took to remove them. Although I despise admitting it, I have to give praise to Botticelli for his use of shadow, which made the task of matching the original colors somewhat difficult. I thought of adding a layer of varnish to the painting as I usually would to match my portion better to the rest, but the paint was far too wet. The painting would end up looking worse than it had started. Unsatisfied with my rushed work, but sure this was going to be the best I could do that night, I traveled back into Rome at about three in the morning after chatting briefly, nervously, with a colorful Swiss Guard. The few belongings I had were quickly tossed into a suitcase. Exhausted, I had the first full night of sleep I had since first arriving in Italy and awoke at six at night that day.
I began returning the messages of various museums that had called to see where in the world my techniques weren't known and where I would still be able to work. Somehow, no one had called asking me to pay in damages. No, nearly every call was the same:
“You brought something out in so and so artist that we had never seen before. Could you come back to do some more work for us?”
Still, my exposure in Rome was imminent and I figured I could finish only one, perhaps two more jobs, before the consequences caught up to me. I listened to the artists each museum quoted, but all of them were too... good. A poor time to peak in my field. Any idiot could restore a talented artist, but to restore someone truly terrible takes someone of my caliber and boldness. That was why I put my hopes on a call to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Any changes I would make to modern “art” would be noticed, but the success would be worth whatever punished they would inflict on me.
“Yeah,” the young girl on the line began. “We had this fire last week at a special exhibit. It was kind of devastating. We got some great referrals for you and were hoping you could stop by, tell us what the damage is and if you can do anything.”
“Well, in my experience anything is salvageable. Who's the artist?”
Her answer had me on a plane in less than 24 hours:
“Picasso.”
###
About the Author
Tal Vinnik resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan, biding his time before fame and success. This is his first published work. He has written several short films including Convenience and had a lead role in the award-winning short film, Heart. Most recently, he was the voice behind the iConsent mobile application.
Connect with Me Online:
http://www.facebook.com/niktalvin