The Art Forger (27 page)

I drop my head to my hands. He’s lying to me. I’m lying to him. Our fates are inextricably entwined. And being together doubles our vulnerability.

“I don’t know,” I whisper, staring through my fingers at the uneaten sandwich swimming in its own juices. The cheese has hardened, and oil glistens darkly where bread meets plate.

The frown lines in Aiden’s face deepen as I raise my eyes to meet his. “Don’t know what?” he asks.

I look back down at the soggy sandwich. A split basil leaf protrudes from the slabs of toast like the tongue of a snake.

Thirty-two

THREE YEARS EARLIER

After Karen Sinsheimer said good-bye and hung up, I continued to stare at the phone in my hand. The tendons holding my knees in place turned to mush, and I slid to the floor. It was as if I’d been told a friend died unexpectedly. Half of my mind raced ahead, taking in the message and its meaning, while the other half remained frozen in denial. Although I’d been worried for weeks about this exact outcome, I clearly hadn’t believed it would happen.

For how could it? I’d painted
4D,
I’d painted the second one, and I’d given Karen three of my paintings for comparison. The museum had access to many of Isaac’s paintings, and they must have evaluated them against mine. How could the experts have gotten it so wrong? Didn’t they have all those fancy high-tech techniques? Didn’t they have PhDs and decades of experience? My eyes flew around the studio, searching for something, anything, to throw.

This was bullshit. An injustice had been done. To me, certainly, but also to Isaac, and not to get too hyperbolic, to all artists and art lovers. What does it mean when a top museum acknowledges the wrong artist of one of its own paintings? What does it say about all museums and all the great works of art? Isaac had to appreciate this, had to know how wrong it was. He was, after all, an artist before all else.

I e-mailed, texted, and called him, leaving message after message to contact me, that it was important. No response. I changed tacks and went for the guilt. “How can you do this to all the people who love and appreciate your work?” “How does it feel to have one of my paintings as part of your legacy?” No response. “How can you look at yourself in the mirror?” He changed his e-mail address and cell number.

“Way to go, girl,” Beatrice Cormier had said, surprising me with both her youthful cliché and her intimation that she believed I’d painted
4D.
Of course, she’d never said anything of the sort, but Karen had told me that Beatrice was an art historian and a major collector, and I wondered what she thought of all this.

I reached her at the John and Beatrice Cormier Foundation, and she took my call immediately. “Claire,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

My hand holding the phone shook. “Because of what happened?”

A long pause. “And because of what didn’t.”

“Did you agree with the decision?”

Another long pause. “Can we meet somewhere?”

“I can come to New York any day but Tuesday.”

The next Monday, we sat at a back table in a crowded deli on a side street in the Lower East Side. An odd choice, I thought, when she’d suggested it. But not so odd if she didn’t want us to be seen together.

“I can’t tell you anything definitive,” Beatrice said, after we’d both ordered matzo-ball soup and a salad. “I wasn’t a voting member of the committee. I was just there to give my report.”

I waited.

“I told them that you’d painted the second painting, that I’d watched your every brushstroke, and although it wasn’t my job to say, I added that after spending that much time with you, and more than a few hours with
4D,
it was my opinion that you were responsible for both.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. “But no one agreed with you?”

She looked at me with both compassion and sadness. “I wasn’t there, but I heard later that there were others.”

“But, but then, how . . . ?”

“The decision didn’t have to be unanimous.”

I poked at a matzo ball with my spoon. “I’ve tried to reach Isaac, to get him to come clean, but he won’t.”

“And MoMA probably won’t either.”

“What does that mean?”

“Isaac isn’t the only one with a reputation at stake,” Beatrice said. “Or a lot of money.”

I put down my spoon. “So they did this to protect their own asses?” I was immediately sorry for speaking so crudely, but Beatrice didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, to care.

“Did you ever hear of cognitive dissonance?” she asked.

“No.”

“Basically, it’s a theory that people subconsciously reinterpret their motives and actions in a way that makes them feel better about themselves afterward. And then they start to believe that the basis of the reinterpretation is also true.”

Sounded just like Isaac.

“So,” I said slowly, “you’re telling me that even though they know I painted
4D,
they’ve convinced themselves that they don’t believe it because it’s in the best interests of the museum?”

“Some of them, maybe.”

“Then I’ll just have to force them to see the truth. To tell the truth. I’ll go to the higher-ups in the museum. The media.”

Beatrice placed her papery hand over mine. “I don’t think you want to do that. You’ve got a great talent, a great future ahead of you. Now’s not the time to look back. Leave it be, Claire. Move on.”

So I went home and tried to do what she advised.

Thirty-three

I scuttle into my building like a cockroach running from light. I never should have gone to Aiden’s. I should have come straight home from Clery’s, back to my windows, away from my fears and Aiden’s pat answers. I think about the Faustian bargain Aiden mentioned the first time we discussed the forgery. He quickly reconsidered and decided the better analogy was to pawns on a chessboard. But he should have stuck with his original assessment. A deal with the devil is exactly right.

Now that I’m inside, out of view of the millions of people who could care less about the absence or presence of my soul, I feel somewhat better. I make myself a pot of coffee and put
Bay Village
and
Apple
on the easels. The drawings look at me patiently, reminding me of Aiden’s tranquil expression, of his unruffled practicality in the face of Patel’s potential betrayal. I pick up my palette and a brush. I hate it when these suspicions rear their nasty little heads, yet I’m afraid to ignore them. I can’t allow my feelings for Aiden to cloud my common sense.

I mix a few batches of middle-range tones and begin painting. If I’m losing my soul for this show, I’d damn well better get the work done on time. It feels good to work. In a few hours,
Bay Village
is in the oven, and I’m mixing up some pale blues for the reflections.

When the oven chimes, I pull
Bay Village
out and replace it with
Apple.
I’m exhausted, more than ready for my first nap of the night, but I can’t sleep until
Apple’
s finished baking. So I brew up another, stronger, pot of coffee and pour myself a bowl of cold cereal. As I eat, I check the Internet for news on Patel. There isn’t any, but this does little to allay my fears. If Patel knows more than Aiden believes, it could easily lead to Aiden’s arrest. And while it may not be against the law to copy a painting, conspiracy to commit a crime—knowing my copy was to be sold as an original—could lead to my own. As could possession of stolen property. And then there’s the whole stolen masterpiece thing.

I chew at a cuticle. If I found the original painting, could that help us? I scan the studio as if the clues are hidden here. My eyes light on Degas’ sketchbooks, and it occurs to me that maybe I could work backward. Maybe finding the forger might lead me to the original.

It’s a long shot, I know, but the desperate can’t be choosy. I begin scribbling on a piece of paper. Everything I’ve learned points to the conclusion that the
Bath
Aiden brought me, the first forgery, was installed at the Gardner Museum when it opened in 1903. Assuming Degas painted his original
After the Bath
in 1897, then
Bath
was created sometime in those six intervening years. Given the difficulty of travel in those days, it must have been painted by someone living in either Paris or Boston. Ergo, my forger lived in France or the United States and, figuring that he painted between the ages of twenty and eighty, he was born between 1820 and 1880.

I Google “forgery between 1880 and 1903,” but it’s not cut that finely, and the best I can do is “known art forgers.” There are roughly fifty on the list, all men. Who knows, perhaps I’m the first female to join their illustrious ranks. Great. I’ve always wanted to be a gender-busting role model.

Laboriously, I exclude the artists one by one. Most don’t fit my timeframe: Giovanni Bastianini died in 1868, while Tony Tetro and my buddy Han were all born too late. Many of those who remain don’t fit geographically: William Blundell lived in Australia, Zhang Daqian in China, and Elmyr de Hory in Hungary. Others specialized in sculpture or medieval miniatures. At the end, I’m left with four possibilities and a couple of revelatory tales that might reflect on my own.

The first story is about Alceo Dossena, an Italian stonemason and struggling artist who copied classical Greek and Roman sculptures, which, unbeknownst to him, his agent sold as originals to collectors and museums, including Boston’s MFA. When, according to Dossena, he stumbled on some of his work in museum collections of ancient art, he realized his agent had been reaping far more than the $200 he’d paid Dossena. He sued his agent, claiming that he hadn’t known his work was being sold fraudulently. He won at trial and received thousands of dollars in restitution. This appears to be a good omen for me, but I’m unsettled by the fact that when he had a one-man show at the Met following his acquittal, it was a complete failure.

Then there’s David Stein, a French painter who created pastiches of his favorite masters and made millions of dollars selling fake Chagalls, Klees, Mirós, and Picassos. When one of his forgeries was discovered in a New York gallery, he was arrested. But his prosecution proved difficult: Art dealers refused to cooperate because they feared publicity questioning their expertise, and collectors wouldn’t give up Stein’s paintings, claiming they filled important holes in their collections. Unfortunately for Stein, and for me, he was found guilty anyway and sent to prison for art forgery and grand larceny.

Ambition, talent, antiestablishment vengeance, greed, and hubris run rampant through all fifty stories, and I see myself everywhere. Plus, they all share the same outcome: the ultimate exposure of the forger as the charlatan he is.

“W
HY ARE YOU
doing this to yourself?” Aiden says when I tell him about the forgers. He showed up around nine to make sure I was all right after I left his condo right after dinner last night.

“Curiosity?” I offer.

“Masochism.”

“The forgers, they all had the same baggage. Most with the same motivations as me.”

He throws his hands in the air. “All medical students want to help people.”

“Almost every one wanted revenge of some sort. Usually on the art world. For not appreciating their work.”

Aiden’s eyes soften. “You’ve got true talent, Claire.” He waves at the completed window paintings lined up against the wall. “And your grievance comes from a very different—” He squats in front of
Nighttime T,
stares at it, then turns back to me. “This is great. Very compelling. The depth of the color . . .” He reaches a finger toward the canvas, then stops himself. “Maybe your best. I’m thinking front window. Major frame.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“Don’t give me that crap.” He comes back to sit with me on the couch. “I can tell by the expression on your face that you think it’s good, too.”

“Is larceny the same as theft?”

“You didn’t steal anything.”

“I possessed stolen property.”

“You don’t anymore. And you had no idea it was stolen when you did.”

It strikes me how easily Aiden appears to believe his own lies. “But, what if—”

“You know where this is going to get us, don’t you? All the ruminating? The Internet scavenging? Driving yourself crazy with what-ifs? This is how people get caught. They do something stupid, put themselves in the wrong place, look nervous, and wham. Someone gets suspicious, and it’s over.”

“Like the—”

“You’ve got to promise me you’re going to quit this,” he says. “You’ve got to focus on your painting, on your show. And get your emotions in check.”

I know he’s right, so I promise him I will. But, of course, he doesn’t have the complete picture, so to speak. And although part of me would love to share the secret, I find his ease with his own lies and his composure in the face of real jeopardy too troubling to take that step.