The forecast was distressing. Convincing potential patrons that any of these paint-caked canvases deserved more than a passing bon mot and a laugh – by at least a five-digit sum and an obligatory unveiling party, for decency's sake! – was a task made exponentially easier by the simple presence of the artist. Moreso, by the presence of someone artistic: young, handsome, vaguely European in accent and style of facial hair; detached from the hoi polloi yet retaining selected elements of bohemia; capable of the appropriate grandiloquence when justifying some colourful contusions on canvas; and above all else, appearing to possess rampant self-destructive tendencies. The last was important, because whenever an artist has most unfortunately kicked off in as tragic, salacious and socially deviant a fashion as can be related in a diverting anecdote when polite company turns slightly cheeky after a few fluted glasses of prosecco, their final works tended to knock their market value's decimal place a column or two to the right. Bradford preferred his artists to look as though recently stricken by a near-terminal bout of hedonistic impulsiveness that had compelled them to ingest the contents of a midsize pharmacopoeia. On the other hand, convincing a prospective buyer to drop the 'prospective' was a task made markedly harder by appearing, as Bradford did, not quite a stereotypical art dealer to the élite, but perhaps a caricature of one: middle age, balding, paunchy; tailored suits not quite disguising the extraneous weight that defied his attempts to rid himself of the accumulated foie gras, filet mignon and potatoes au gratin by spitefully churning away on an elliptical machine; worse still, he was in no danger of meeting an early end for any reason apart from elevated cholesterol or perhaps a lacking sense of urgency in scheduling prostate exams; and perhaps most damning of all, he was transparently conscious every moment that a few loops of a pen could ease the pressure of the second mortgage, the alimony payments, the expensive combination of refined tastes and ravenous appetites. Bradford thought about these and other criteria in which he did not quite measure up, some of which his ex-wife had been more than ready to point out, and the renumeration of his flaws stressed him ever more.
An urbane-looking couple meandered throughout the space, and Bradford recognized the older and more ornately gilded of the pair as Evangeline D’Averjonois. An heiress, her illustrious father had trekked from his penniless roots in France to start a new life in Italy, where he spent half his life mining feldspar and then bought the mine. Through fastidious management and meticulous care he built a mineral extraction empire which, at his death, was worth nearly a billion dollars – much to the delight of the Chinese investors who purchased it at half that price from his socialite daughter, who spent the subsequent five decades languorously and vaingloriously following trends among high society. Bradford mentally prepared to make an approach as they paused before a massive canvas, entirely mauve. No, not entirely -- an almost imperceptibly small square of canary yellow was positioned just at eye level to a viewer of average height, about one millimeter to a side. This was the latest by Aldric Maël, 'Aniline No. 15.' The temperamental artist had, along with his insincere regrets, sent a statement of explanation to assist his dealer in communicating the true meaning of the piece to the evening's philistian gawkers.
'In exploring the concept of post-contemporary experiential reductionism as a means of interpreting and deconstructing world events, one begins to see more and more ways in which ideas, truths, beliefs and phenomena are not distinguishable from one another if the concept is followed to its logical conclusion. Some say all ambiguosities [sic] are shades of grey -- I believe they are slightly magenta tinted as well. All times, places, and people become one, interlinked by a pleasant purple unity. But there is yet more complexity in the world than belies a quick glance, and attentive viewers will see that the painting, too, contains an element of the unexplainable among the indistinct, like life.' Drivel would be a compliment. Though its insipidness left him reeling, the reading did not flummox Bradford's business sensibilities, which were emphatic that an opportunity lay before him, even as he began to doubt that Aldric's work had been inspired by anything deeper than the last few inches of treacly dregs remaining in the can after painting a light purple living room somewhere.
Bradford swallowed his compunctions and dove in. "Magnificent, isn't it?"
“Aahum, yes,” said the woman in a way that made ‘yes’ two syllables long. “It’s very, oh, vast.”
Bradford laughed. It was forced at the beginning, but quickly took on a life of its own and he stifled it uncomfortably. “Ah yes, it certainly is, and good to see you again, Mrs. D’Averjonois.”
She blinked in a flutter belying the heaviness of the makeup on her purpled eyelids, which resembled velvet curtains. "D'Averjonois, actually, but you have me at an, ahm, disadvantage, nonetheless. You are?"
"Bradford Shawe." Hadn't he emphasized the last syllable properly? He smiled and stuck out his hand, which she took with a grip like a used tissue. "We've met before, at Sotheby's." The cue hung in the air. "I resent the artist. Represent. The artist." He coughed to retroactively cover the parapraxis.
“This artist?” She tilted a wing towards the lavender canvas.
“Yes, Mrs.” He did not make a second attempt at her name.
“Sold at Sotheby’s?”
“Ah, no,” Bradford said, deflating slightly, “it was for another artist. Who isn’t here tonight. But we met! Briefly.”
"Good to see you again, in that case, Mr. Bradshaw." The affluent heiress curtseyed in so subdued a fashion that it was really more of a long blink, and then returned her attention to her glass of wine. Her accompaniment, a tall and arborescent gent with a furrowed brow, extended his hand. “Creighton Windermere,” he huffed. Bradford’s stomach leapt into the gulch of his throat. Windermere? The art critic? “The art critic,” Windermere added, confirming Bradford’s suspicions of his occupation while creating new ones regarding telepathy. “Tell me about the work.”
Bradford wrung his hands. “It’s a challenging piece,” he began.
“I can see that.” Windermere looked daggers at the canvas.
Bradford tried to remain unfazed. “…a museum quality, with a lot of, er, provenance behind it.”
“Provenance? At primary sale? That’s new,” came the acid reply.
“Karls Naatchi has expressed interest.” Bradford felt his back was against the ropes. Naatchi, a collector renowned for his taste and influence, had never seen the piece.
Windermere scoffed. “But not enough interest to buy. No doubt he finds the work, shall we say, less than germane? And wants it nowhere near him.” His words had sent many an artist, and their dealers with them, scurrying into other careers. Cabinetry sounded nice.
Bradford flushed. He felt the blood rush past his head, directly to his mouth. “Actually, he said it would be best to let the piece stay on the market long enough to cause a stir – always thinking of profile-raising opportunities, you know, earning more publicity by scooping up work by an emerging artist while the name is still hot on everyone’s lips?” The last word's sibilance lingered. The blush left him and he went gaunt, certain he’d just written his own death warrant with a horsefeather quill. His eyes wide on Windermere, he waited for the executioner’s axe.
“Oh,” Windermere stated with insouciance. “Oh!” His brow raised, his tone shifted diametrically. “What else did he say?”
“He, ah, he said a few things, that is, let me recall,” Bradford collected himself like a handful of marbles, “this painting is a post-conceptual reduction of experience, exploring and interpreting the demolition of the world. Ambiguousness is logically magenta, unified by interlinks with quick glances at complexity. It’s unexplainable and indistinct.” Trying not to gasp for air, Bradford flared his nostrils and inhaled deeply.
Windermere, who had been staring at Bradford as though he were an earthworm, turned to the painting like it was the overturned sidewalk tile crawling with his brethren. He sneered. “Brilliant.” The word crackled from him like a bag of glass being stepped on. “Naatchi’s instincts are perfect. This will indeed create a stir.” His lips curled with self-satisfaction.
"Should I buy it?" Madame D'Averjonois possessed the disaffected air of a restaurant patron inquiring whether refills were free.
To Bradford, the answer was obvious. "Absolutely. With luck, you might even sell it to Naatchi himself."
Windermere was tickled with the prospect. D'Averjonois was less convinced. "You businessmen, selling before you buy. Consider the décor! I'll have to repaint an entire wing in complementary color." She squinted at the bid sheet.
Bradford intervened with the confidence of an acrophobic tightrope walker. "Madame, when you pay a high price for the priceless, you've bought it. Cheaply!” He grimaced; he hadn't meant to put a pause there. “Think of the impact on a visitor to your home. The colors of the walls and such, mere ephemeralities compared to the sensation of walking into the room and seeing this. That impression, that is forever.” He smiled shakily. This seemed to satisfy her, and Bradford offered his pen. As she took it, he added, "With the level of interest in this piece, it would be prudent to avoid being outbid." Attempting to maintain his cool demeanor, he did not look at what she wrote, fearing it would elicit a giggle. His eyes probed the ceiling; he tried not even to smile.
“Perhaps,” she said, and Bradford snapped to attention, his mirthfulness shattered as she handed back his pen, “it is as you say. If the level of interest is high, this will attract many more bids. Best to, how did you put it, snap up a work while it is hot on the lips? Publicity cannot often be bought so easily. It may be worth a premium to gain that, how would you say, social capital.”
Bradford was gobsmacked. He began to stammer something about opportunities wasted, but Windermere was already speaking to the matron with sycophantic approbation. A sheen of perspiration on Bradford's forehead started to emerge, gleaming under the lights meant to enhance the lustre of the artwork. He produced a handkerchief and attempted to remove the gloss in a furtive, pawing motion.
Unsure of what else to do, Bradford was just about to begin the standard art-show valediction: looking into the crowd, he would pretend to have spotted a recognizable face, and excuse himself to go over to this fictional friend. He was momentarily diverted when he caught Windermere doing the same thing. Except Windermere didn't excuse himself, he waved his friend over. Bradford's patina of sweat replenished itself without delay.
"Greetings, greetings," said the thin man in the black turtleneck, clasping his hands and bowing slightly, "good to see you, Windy. What seems to be the astonishment of the hour?"
Bradford was searching for an escape and not really listening when Windermere said something that sounded like "pork and turn grass." Nonetheless, it echoed in his mind. He glanced towards the far wall, where a new troupe of well-dressed would-be patrons was boggling over a rectangle of crumpled foil, Untitled by Anselmo Reyling. They might yet be convinced to buy. "More than stern class." Yes, Bradford thought, he really must excuse himself and make his way over there; sales were waiting. He casually opened his mouth to say so, and shouted "Morganstern Klass!"
"Yes?" The man with the black turtleneck was puzzled, but polite. Bradford realized, all at once, who this captious fellow was. Morganstern Klass was an art dealer, yes, but his appearance before Bradford Shawe was like Amadeus Mozart before an organ grinder, and Bradford was beginning to feel like the dancing monkey.
"It's-just-I-you-here, that is, hello!" He stammered and extended a precarious hand, which Klass cautiously shook. "Bradford Shawe!"
“Nice-to-meet-you,” Klass responded, in exaggerated fashion. “Alright, Windy, let’s look at the work. What do we have here?”
Windermere indicated the next piece up on the wall, a white canvas with an arrangement of coloured circles in a strict grid pattern. “Flavian Hirts, entitled ‘Glycogen, Human, Freeze-dried.’” He waited for his respected acquaintance’s response before venturing further.
“It looks like dots.” D’Averjonois said, and finished her wine.
“Yes,” Klass said. “Polka dots. Well, haven’t seen a lot of dots on the market lately, it could probably work its way up to a few million with good representation. What do you think?”
“Mm, as a comment on the technical culture, the work simplifies molecular biology ad reductio, forcing it to play in the confines of artwork as an iconoclastic counterpart to the scientific dissection and dismissal of aesthetic contribution.”
“Nice one, Windy! What’s next?”
“Let’s carry on this way.”
“I still don’t see what it has to do with freeze-dried humans,” D’Averjonois opined.
Windermere led the group to another piece by one of the absentee artists, with Bradford trotting along silently behind. He felt swept away; not by any transcendent factor of the art, but by the way the showing seemed to be carrying on in a fashion wholly independent of his intentions.
This work, a sculpture, would appear to the untrained eye to be a table with a large tumour on its surface, a blob which made it difficult to envision using the table to stand anything on. The entire thing was painted the same shade of negative-account-balance red, and encased in a glass vitrine. It was entitled, ‘DO NOT DOUBT THE DEADLINESS OF MY KUNG-FU SKILL.’
"Hm. Anything else by this one?" Klass spoke first, and Windermere felt obligated to hold his tongue.
"Emilious Koi," Bradford interjected. "He's made all the things in this section." He nodded towards the other sculptures -- casts of a thin, angry body, painted bright shades of the same rufescent spectrum, in varied poses. Among the agonized rictuses and hackle-raising iterations, one of the figures made a gesture to snub the viewer rudely; another appeared to be in the act of manually stimulating itself, a defiant scowl on its face.
"The artist's own body?" inquired Windermere.
"More or less," Bradford retorted. Koi did look quite a bit like them, most of the time.
"I find them garish. At least a mannequin has the decency to cover up," D'Averjonois moaned. “And what’s that screeching noise coming from the table?”
Bradford checked his notes. There was, indeed, sound coming from the blob. “That is,” he read the card on Koi’s work, “'A song by the artist in his own private language.'”
"I'd like to meet this artist," Klass said. Silence swept in like the ocean upon a submarine with its hull split in two. He looked at their faces and chuckled. "Oh, sorry. I forgot! Windy, have I told you about my new plan?"
Windermere frowned. "If it involves these horrendous homunculi, I'd love to hear it." He might have said loathe.
"Well, sales at the Square Cube are reliable as ever," he began, the Square Cube being Klass' personal gallery, open on select days to privileged clients by reservation only, "but I've been jonesing after something a little more provocative. So, in London, and Paris, and Tokyo, and here, I am buying galleries."
"What, tired of the Cube, you'll start a franchise? That doesn't sound like a real solution."
"A franchise?" Klass laughed. "No, no no. One show only. I will buy and renovate the galleries for only one show. After which, I will sell the space again -- and I'll probably turn a profit on the real estate alone."
"I don't think anyone's ever done that."
"Nobody has. It's new. And new is really all that's interesting. Everyone's been to a hundred of these, you see," he swept one hand in an expansive gesture, "but there's something about temporary spaces. It's new, it's now, and nothing matters."
"It sounds apocalyptic."
"That’s a good way to put it, yes. An apocalyptic art show. Of course, there's the matter of the art. Not much point in doing the whole shindig if it's just the same old names. So to come round to the point, Windy, I need some exhibits that will, pardon my foreign tongue, make a splash like a turd in a toilet. The sorts of things, you know, that get people talking, get it in the papers, 'Is this what art has been reduced to,' that sort of thing. It gets press, I get publicity, it all becomes a grand spectacle, and some over-prosperous pinheads eat it up. No offense to present company."
"None taken," Mme. D'Averjonois said benevolently. Bradford boggled at this.
"This would be a good start. If I commission this guy to make a few more of these, price them at about three hundred thousand each, that ought to boil some blood. How can I get in touch with, ah, Elmo, here, Brad?"
Bradford staggered backwards. "Emilious. You can't get in touch with him."
"Why not?" Klass seemed to loom over him. His voice seemed different; booming, the bridled rage of stymied entitlement behind it. All conversation around them ceased.
Bradford just about swallowed his tongue. "He's, he’s… dead."
“Dead?” The effect was immediate. The room was abuzz with chatter.
“How?” “Why?” “Who?” The questions came from all sides. Bradford tried to think, but his thoughts froze. He shouldered his way through the crowd. He tried to say “excuse me,” but whatever stammered out of his mouth was fourteen syllables long, and he could not hear what he said.
Bursting through the back door to the fire escape, Bradford held the door shut behind him, subconsciously thinking he’d like to do the same thing in the event of an actual fire. His heart raced; the hot sweat pouring from his brow seemed to steam in the cool air of the night. For once, it was as quiet as the city could be: the dull roar of excitement from inside the gallery continued, but here was the reassuring whisper of the breeze, and a distant car alarm, and the shouting of drunks in the adjacent alley. Bradford began to breathe slowly. He lit a cigarette, and rested his elbows on the railing.
“It’s not your real name anyway,” he said into the cellphone, flicking the stump of his cigarette away. “Just make up a new one.” He held the phone a few inches from his head as the squawking reached a crescendo. Then he turned and listened at the door. “Hold on a second,” he said. Koi continued to yammer as Bradford opened the door a crack to get a better listen. “Actually, I think you’ll come out on top. Yes, yes, I believe they’re buying it, we’ll see where the bidding gets to. Listen, do you have anything else? I can see it now, the posthumous Koi collection. It’s not many artists who get to have two careers, you know. We’ll discuss it later.” He clicked it shut and lit another cigarette, relishing the smoke and breathing deeply. His ears perked up at a hissing sound, and he quickly saw what it was. In the alley below, teenagers in hoodies were spray painting something on the wall. Bradford watched with bemusement as they finished the four-foot-high bubble letters and ran off. He looked at what they’d painted.
With apologies to Yves Klein & Barnett Newman, Damien Hirst, Anselm Reyle, Terrence Koh, Lance Esplund and Larry Gagosian.
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