The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery) (3 page)

And yet here he was, raising the question that no one else had dared ask.

“Ah, the rest of the departments,” Clark said. “I was coming to that. Now, I want you to know there’s nothing personal in this. I hope that’s understood.”

“Oh, that’s really reassuring,” Madge said dryly.

“Yes,” Drew agreed, “that makes all the difference in the world.”

“I have to tell you that there’s going to be some necessary streamlining in the next few weeks,” Clark said. “The museum reopens in early April, and by that time . . .” He pushed the glasses up on his nose and studied the papers in front of him as if he didn’t already know perfectly well what they said.

“First, Prints and Drawings.” (A nod toward Alfie.) “The Prints sub-department, which failed to meet the customer-interaction criteria devised by IMS and approved by our board, will be closed down, and the number of prints sharply reduced. What remains will be combined with Paintings” (a nod to Prentice) “into a single department of Paintings and Drawings under one curator, so I’m afraid we will be eliminating one more curatorial-level position.”

Alfie’s head came up sharply. “You going to offer me the gift shop too, if Werner doesn’t take it?”

“I didn’t say that, Alfie. Whether you or the good professor will be offered the curatorship has yet to be decided. We’re working on it now. Be reassured.”

“Oh, right,” Alfie said with a laugh that seemed genuine enough, “you’re going to give it to me and tell Prentice Faversham Vandervere to take a hike. Oh, yes, that makes sense.”

Clark was enjoying himself even more than he’d expected. In four months, this was the first time he’d come close to getting a rise out of boozy, laid-back Alfie. “Actually, that is highly possible,” he said, with a more meaningful look at Vandervere, who returned it evenly. “As I said, it has yet to be decided. All options are on the table.”

Now he turned to Madge and Drew, who were looking satisfactorily apprehensive. “A similar situation exists with your two departments. Our Furnishings gallery and two of our three Decorative Arts exhibits will be closed down for lack of interactive client activity. Costumes, however, does very well. Therefore, the two departments will be folded into a new Costumes and Decorative Arts department under Madge’s directorship. Drew, you will remain in charge of the Decorative Arts portion.” He paused. “We envision an assistant curator title.”

That brought a rare serious expression of emotion from Madge. “But that would mean that I would be my husband’s . . . my husband’s . . .” She looked to Drew for assistance.

Drew, however, said nothing, but only eyed Clark with flinty dislike.

“That Drew would report to you?” Clark said innocently. “Why yes, now that I think about it, it would certainly seem to follow, wouldn’t it? That is, if it’s decided that a head of Decorative Arts is necessary at all. And that”—he fixed Drew with one of his cooler smiles—“will depend largely on what we see from you in the next few weeks, Drew.”

Clark gathered his papers and stood up. “That takes care of the first part of our agenda. Be back at ten thirty. Mrs. B will be here. So will Alix London. And we’ll have pastries to go with the coffee.”

“Wow, pastries; what a jolly affair this is turning into,” Madge grumped as a frowning, abstracted Drew dragged her off. Vandervere, whose knee had been shattered in the Korean War, stood up with a wince and limped grimly away. Alfie hurried off to his desk for some Jim Beam to put in his coffee.

“See y’all at ten thirty!” Clark called happily after them. “Y’all come back now!”

T
his, Alix thought with a sinking heart,
is going to get me in trouble. Big time
.

She was standing in front of an enormous painting, seventeen feet long by eight feet wide, so large that it couldn’t be hung on the museum’s curving walls, but stood a few feet out, attached to a steel framework built especially for it. The picture’s surface was all sweeping, brightly colored skeins and swirls, and swarms of glowing white specks and spots, thousands of them, on a field that seemed a deep, velvety black until you looked harder and saw the grays, the rusts, the umbers that ran through it. There was nothing even close to a solid form, let alone a recognizable object. It was the kind of picture that could be interpreted in a thousand ways. For some, the works of this artist conjured up the vastness of the Milky Way, for others the dark and unfathomable depths of the ocean, or the mystery of a single cell or an atom. Still others saw in it the ineffable, orchestrated chaos of the cosmos.

So it was said. But Alix was smiling to herself. She would have been willing to bet that the most common reaction was more along the lines of a bemused “My kid (my dog, my cat, a trained monkey) could do better than that.”

The title didn’t offer much help as to what it was supposed to be:
Untitled 1952.

Neither did the “explanatory” legend:

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956). Pollock was an early exponent of Abstract Expressionism. He electrified the art world with his method of tacking canvases to the floor and walking up and down alongside them, flinging, dripping, pouring, and splattering paint. Many of his works, such as the one you see here, are either untitled or simply assigned numbers in order to “make people look at a picture for what it is and not what it ‘represents’—pure painting.” Pollock frequently attacked art critics who claimed to find hidden symbols in his work. He insisted that there was no “meaning” in the finished work, but only in the process of creating it. His advice to viewers was to “look passively and try to receive what the painting has to offer and not bring a subject matter or preconceived idea of what they are to be looking for.” Any interpretation or evaluation of the finished work was a personal projection, neither wrong nor right, but perfectly valid . . . for that person.

Alix, being classically trained, did not much care for this all-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder approach to art, which she considered just this side of hokum, but that wasn’t the source of her unease. What was bothering her was that she thought the painting was not a genuine Pollock. Or more accurately, it wasn’t that she
thought
it wasn’t genuine, it was that she
felt
it wasn’t genuine. And that’s what she was so depressingly certain would get her into trouble. It hadn’t failed yet.

This was not one of the pieces destined for auction, but would remain at the museum, so no one had asked her to look at it, no one had requested her opinion on its authenticity, and, for sure, no one was going to be happy to hear it. But what choice did she have? She couldn’t just let it pass. Well, all right, she
could
, but she knew she wouldn’t.

“Jack the Dripper,” somebody said behind her. “What a piece of work.”

She turned. “Pollock or the painting?”

“Take your pick.”

Jerry Swanson, in his forties, dumpy, balding, and brash as a carnival barker, was the appraiser from Endicott Fine Art Auction Galleries who was assessing the works to be sold by the gallery—twenty-eight in all. It was he who had suggested to the Brethwaite that a little competent touch-up work on some of the paintings would dramatically increase the prices they would bring; a suggestion that had resulted in Alix being there now.

“Jerry,” she said, turning back to the canvas, “what do you think of this picture?”

“Hey, they don’t pay me to think about them, lady, they pay me to set the expected price ranges.”

Jerry’s standard mode of speech was the wisecrack. With his old-fashioned, black-rimmed spectacles and his round face, he made Alix think of a smart-aleck owl. He had a snappy delivery; talking to him could be like catching a Borscht Belt comedian in mid-shtick—that, or a hang-on-to-your-wallet used-car shyster. Nevertheless, he was a friendly, engaging, outgoing guy, he laughed a lot, and he was pleasant to be around.

“Okay, go ahead and set it. What would you say the market value would be?”

“Sorry, I’m being paid to appraise exactly twenty-eight pictures, and this ain’t one of ’em.”

She smiled. “You only give your opinion if somebody’s paying you?”

“Of course. Why would I waste a perfectly good opinion when somebody might be conned into paying me actual money for it some other time?”

“Come on, be serious for a minute. Just a general idea. I’m not going to hold you to it.”

He lifted his plump chin and drew himself up. “Sorry, I have certain ethical and professional standards to which I adhere.” He followed with a conspiratorial eyebrow wiggle. “So how much are you offering?”

“Well, it’s pretty important. I guess I’d go as much as . . . oh . . . how about a nickel?”

“Now you’re talking. Done!” He looked back at the painting. “Somewhere between ten and thirty million, I’d say.”

“That much?” Her heart sank a little further.

“It’s a Pollock,” he said simply. “You don’t know what they sell for?”

“Actually, no. A lot, I gather.”

“I thought you advised people on what to buy.”

“I do, but not on the basis of market value. What I try to gauge is artistic value.”

“Oh,
artistic
value,” he said merrily, as if it were a private joke between them. “Okay, but why all the interest in this particular one?”

“Well, actually, I’m having some doubts about it. Jerry, tell me, honestly, what’s your opinion? Not its monetary value—I can’t afford another nickel—but its—”

“Artistic value?” he supplied. “Well, let me see.” Arms folded, he slowly scanned it from one end to the other, all seventeen feet of it. “When I look at this,” he said, seriously for him, “you know what I see?”

“The vastness of the universe?”

“That, too, of course, but mostly I see the tarp under my eleven-year-old Volvo after I’ve finished its six-month maintenance.” He grinned, hearing her groan. “Seriously, though, you’re talking to the wrong guy. Artistic value just isn’t my line, but I can tell you this much: People must like it because it’s the museum’s number-one attraction. As determined by the latest thing in eyeball mono-macro-moto-ridiculization.”

“I don’t even want to know what that means. But the thing I’m after is . . . are you satisfied it’s an authentic Pollock?”

Now a look of genuine surprise. “You’re not?”

She pulled in a deep breath. “I’m not, no.”

“Okay, you got me. What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know,” she said miserably. “Not specifically, not yet. But I do have some serious doubts—”

“Hello there, children. Should you be dawdling like this? Staff meeting resumes in ten minutes, and you know Mrs. B,” a new voice interjected.

“Not my problem,” Jerry said. “Nobody invited me.”

“Fortunate man,” said the tall, dignified newcomer with a smile.

He was the curator of Paintings, Prentice Vandervere, for whom Alix had developed genuine admiration—a sort of platonic, scholarly crush—during her three years at Harvard almost a decade before, when she had taken several classes from him. Kind, modest, and thoughtful, it was Vandervere who had instilled in Alix some of her most fundamental ethical and aesthetic values. The monthly Sunday afternoon teas (complete with crumpets and finger sandwiches) that he and his wife held at their house for students and faculty were among her happiest memories from her Harvard days. Learning that he was at the Brethwaite had been a great surprise and was probably the nicest thing that had happened to her since coming to Palm Springs. She was pleased to find him little changed from those days: his hair had thinned and receded, but his bearing was as erect as ever, notwithstanding the unbendable knee he lugged around as a souvenir of his service to his country; his straight, strong prow of a nose projected as proudly as ever; and his Clark Gable mustache was as meticulously trimmed as it had been ten years ago, if grayer.

“Prentice,” she said (she was having trouble calling him anything but ‘professor,’ but he had gently insisted), “what’s your opinion of this painting?”

“As you know, Alix, the post-war movements are not among those I claim to understand or even really appreciate, so—”

A memory of one of his musing, conversational Harvard lectures suddenly jumped up in her mind and made her laugh. “When I encounter a de Kooning, or a Twombly, or a Pollock in the company of students,” he had said, “I find myself in a quandary. Should I pretend I understand what it’s saying, or should I say what I honestly think? Or should I simply throw in the sponge and suggest we go and have lunch? I am ashamed to say I usually choose the last.”

The first few times she’d heard him say this kind of thing, she’d reacted with the indignation that such narrow-minded observations from hidebound old professors deserve—especially from a liberal-minded young representative of the new generation. But it hadn’t taken long before she was seeing things his way.

“So I am dubious about the worth of my opinion in this case,” he continued now. “But aside from that, I most certainly do have a problem with it. More to the point, however, what is
your
opinion?”

“Frankly, when I look at it, I’m a little—”

“A little overwhelmed?” inquired the blond, good-looking man who had come noiselessly up behind them: Clark Calder, slimly built, boyishly handsome, with a stylishly shaggy, Ivy League haircut, a confident air, a winning smile that crinkled up the corners of his eyes, and—as far as Alix was concerned—an altogether too pleased-with-himself quality, like a snake that has just made a satisfying dinner of a mouse. Or is about to. “A little awestruck? A little—”

“A little concerned, actually.”

“Oh? In what way?”

“Well, well,” Prentice said, “I’d better be off to the meeting. I prefer to be on the early side.”

Clark grinned at him. “Want to be sure to get your paws on those yum-yums before the rest of the gluttonous horde, eh, Prentice?”

Alix had taken a dislike to Clark the first time she’d met him, when he’d been delegated by Mrs. B to show her around the museum. He’d done so, but with that phony, bright-eyed smile plastered on his face and the air of a man who could hardly believe how sexy he was, and who had a million
really
important things he needed to be doing. And now, seeing this guy, this shallow, callow bean counter, treat her revered, eminently civil old professor this way, she bristled anew.
Creep
, she thought.

But Prentice responded only with a polite, strained smile, and left.

“You know, Jerry,” Clark said, watching him go, “I don’t think that man likes me.” The smile broadened, the crinkles deepened. Alix expected a wink and she got one.

“Don’t look at me,” Jerry said. “I can neither confirm nor deny.”

“Really, it surpasseth understanding,” said Clark. “But Alix, what ‘concerns’ you about our prize possession here?”

“The museum’s number-one attraction, so I hear,” Jerry offered. “As determined by the latest thing in eyeball mono-macro-moto-ridiculization
.” Never let a good line go to waste, that was Jerry’s motto.

Clark smiled. Alix didn’t. She hesitated before taking it any further without something more than a feeling to go on, but inasmuch as the cat was halfway out of the bag . . . “I assume you’re satisfied it’s a genuine Pollock?” she said.

“And you’re not?” Theatrically, he clapped his hand to his forehead. “God help us, the Art Whisperer strikes again!”

This time she did smile, but weakly. Lately she was hearing more references to herself as the Art Whisperer, and while at first it had amused and even flattered her, it was getting a little old now.

“I wondered how long it was going to take,” Clark went on playfully. “I mean, I knew it was going to happen, of course—your reputation precedes you—but do you really have to do your thing with our
Pollock
? Couldn’t you pick another one?
Any
other one?
Please
? There’s a Childe Hassam in Gallery Two that’s always gotten on my nerves. Let me show it to you and maybe you could—”

“Clark, I’m serious. There’s something . . . something not right with this picture. I know it’s there, I can
almost
see it, it’s trying to jump out at me, but—”

“But at this point you can’t say what it is. Am I right?”

She nodded dejectedly. “Yet.”

“Ah, the old connoisseur’s eye.” He threw an amused wink at Jerry.

Connoisseur’s eye,
another term that was starting to bug her. Or not the term so much—it had once been used with respect—but the implied derision that often went along with it nowadays. To a lot of people in the art world—and Clark’s manner indicated he was one of them—the idea that anyone could claim such a faculty was either snake oil or, more tolerantly, self-delusion. The only ways to determine the authenticity of a painting, so the prevailing wisdom went, were through painstaking scholarship and rigorous scientific analysis—
evidence
—and not some nebulous, mysterious “expert” first impression that was too woolly to put into words.