The Modigliani Scandal - Ken Follett [16]
″Bad question,″ Mitch replied. ″It invites me to pour out a load of bullshit about movement, brush-work, design, and emotion. Better to ask whether I would hang it on my wall.″
″Would you hang it on your wall?″
″No. It would clash with the three-piece suite.″
Peter laughed. ″Are you going to open that bottle of scotch you brought with you?″
″Sure. Let′s have a wake.″
″Anne told you?″
″She did. You′ve discovered for yourself what I warned you of years ago. Still, there′s nothing like finding out on your own account.″
″I′ll say.″ Peter fetched two grubby glasses from a shelf, and Mitch poured whisky. They put on a Hendrix record, and listened to the fireworks from the guitar in silence for a while. Anne brought cheese sandwiches, and the three of them proceeded to get drunk.
″The worst of it,″ Mitch was saying, ″the kernel, as it were, of the shit, as it is—″
Peter and Anne laughed at the mixed metaphor. ″Go on,″ Peter said.
″The fundamental piece of godawful bollocks, is the uniqueness of a work. Very few paintings are unique in any meaningful sense. Unless there′s something very tricky about it—like the Mona Lisa smile, to take the outstanding example—then it can be repeated.″
″Not exactly,″ Peter put in.
″Exactly where it matters. A few millimeters of space, a difference in color which is only just noticeable—these things don′t matter with your average fifty-thousand-pound painting. My God, Manet didn′t paint an exact replica of an ideal picture in his head—he just put the paint roughly where he thought it ought to go. He just mixed the color until it seemed about right.
″Take the Virgin of the Rocks. There′s one in the Louvre, one in the National Gallery. Everybody agrees that one of them is a fake—but which? The Louvre′s, say the London experts. The National Gallery′s, say the French. We′ll never know—but who cares? You just have to look at them to see their greatness. Yet if somebody found out for certain that one was a fake, nobody would go to see it anymore. Bullshit.″
He drank from his glass, and poured more whisky. Anne said: ″I don′t believe you. It would take almost as much genius to copy a great painting, and get it right, as it would to paint it in the first place.″
″Rubbish!″ Mitch exploded. Iʹll prove it. Gimme a canvas, and I′ll paint you a van Gogh in twenty minutes.″
″He′s right,″ Peter said. ″I could do it, too.″
″But not as fast as me,″ said Mitch.
″Faster.″
″Right,″ said Mitch. He got to his feet. ʺWeʹll have a Masterpiece Race.″
Peter jumped up. ″You′re on. Now—two sheets of paper-we can′t waste canvas.″
Anne laughed. ″You′re both mad.″
Mitch pinned the two bits of paper on the wall while Peter got two palettes out.
Mitch said: ″Name a painter, Anne.″
″All right—van Gogh.″
″Give us a name for the picture.″
″Umm—The Gravedigger.″
″Now say ready, steady, go.″
″Ready, steady, go.″
The two began painting furiously. Peter outlined a man leaning on a shovel, dabbed in some grass at his feet, and started to give the man overalls. Mitch began with a face: the lined, weary face of an old peasant. Anne watched with amazement as the two pictures took shape.
They both took longer than twenty minutes. They became absorbed in their work, and at one point Peter walked to the bookshelf and opened a book at a color plate.
Mitch′s gravedigger was exerting himself, pressing the shovel into the hard earth with his foot, his bulky, graceless body bent over. He spent several minutes looking at the paper, adding touches, and looking again.
Peter began to paint something small in black at the bottom of his sheet. Suddenly Mitch yelled: ″Finished!″
Peter looked at Mitch′s work. ″Swine,″ he said. Then he looked again. ″No, you haven′t—no signature. Ha-hah!″
″Balls!″ Mitch bent over the picture and started to sign it. Peter finished his signature. Anne laughed at the pair of them.
They both stepped back at once. ″I won!″ they shouted in unison, and both burst out laughing.
Anne clapped her hands. ″Well,″ she said. ″If we ever hit the breadline, that′s one way you