Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [28]
History was about to repeat itself, McAlister thought. Drewe was a latter-day Bernal.
At their next lunch meeting McAlister told Drewe that before he left the ICA he was organizing a benefit auction for the institute. Would Drewe’s company consider donating a work of art, the proceeds of which would be set aside to refurbish the ICA archives? Drewe immediately offered two pieces, and several days later he brought McAlister a Le Corbusier collage and a simple and transcendent Giacometti drawing. McAlister was charmed by the collage and joked that he would love to have one for himself.
“I can get you another one, a very similar one,” Drewe said.
The comment puzzled McAlister, but he let it pass.
A month later the ICA auction at Sotheby’s was a big success, raising about £1 million for the institute. Drewe’s contributions brought in nearly £50,000. When McAlister called to thank him, Drewe brought up the archives project. He said he wanted to familiarize himself with the scope and condition of the archives to prepare for a meeting with his computer software engineer, Terrence Carroll.
The archives had been moved to a small, seldom-used room with a separate entrance. McAlister asked his secretary to find the keys and have them ready for Professor Drewe.
“He’s free to come and go as he pleases,” McAlister told her. “Make him feel at home.”
8
AT THE EASEL
Myatt put Amy and Sam in their pajamas, tucked them in, and read them their bedtime stories. When they had drifted off to sleep, he went down to the living room and cleared off the table. Closing the curtains, he turned on the lamp and returned to the Giacometti he’d been working on for the past few days.
He had become extremely cautious, even paranoid, about being seen at work. He painted only at night. After he’d pocketed Drewe’s money for the Gleizes he could no longer deny that what he was doing was illegal. In the back of his mind, he was always afraid of being caught. A neighbor might drop in unannounced, put two and two together, and turn him in. Or the children might innocently tell the babysitter that Dad was painting all the time, and then she’d go to the police and inform them that she suspected her employer was engaged in forgery.
It was all quite irrational, of course, but Myatt’s livelihood now depended entirely on Drewe, and he couldn’t take any chances. With a little luck Drewe would sell one or two more pieces, and then Myatt would get out of the game. He’d be able to cover the rent for a few more months while he looked for a legitimate source of income.
He returned to the canvas, dabbed the brush into a pot of gray, and made several bold strokes around the figure in the center.
It had occurred to him, once he consciously acknowledged that he was in the business of making fakes, that a good forger had to go beyond technique to avoid detection, so he’d been around to the galleries and museums to stand as close to Giacometti’s paintings as he could without attracting the attention of the security guards. The Swiss artist was famous for his elongated, ethereal bronze sculptures, but his paintings were equally masterful, with a distinctive palette of blacks, whites, and grays, and a few strokes of primary color. To paint a decent Giacometti, Myatt would have to adopt the artistic vision of the man whose creative expression he had chosen to appropriate. He would have to set aside his own preconceptions about what could be achieved in a work of art and see the work through its “creator’s” eyes. He would have to become Giacometti.
Myatt had found some good biographical material on Giacometti and had read up on his techniques, looking for telltale quirks that would convince the experts that what they were seeing was the master’s handiwork. He’d read about Giacometti’s marriage and his numerous