The Blue Bath (11 page)

The article, which had appeared more than a year ago, prompted by a photograph of Jonathan having dinner with executives from the Chinese company, had been a vitriolic nationalistic tirade. Citing the usual long list of venerable British institutions that had been recently sold off to foreign interests—the Savoy Hotel, Fortnum & Mason, Harrods, Cadbury—the reporter had cast Jonathan as the latest in a long line of money-hungry CEOs, cashing out after bleeding Britain dry of talent and resources. The piece had served as a nasty surprise to Jonathan, who was accustomed to a rather different sort of coverage.

A photo of the columnist, Alistair Warre, had appeared beside the article. A small black-and-white rendering of a hirsute, slack-jawed man peering through large horn-rimmed glasses. Since then, Kat had seen him at events occasionally and even on the street once or twice. He had a distinctive, scurrying gait that suited a person much younger. A kind of eager, halting pace that gave the impression he was about to break into a run. Come to think of it, she might have seen him just a few days ago on Holland Park Avenue.

There was silence on the line.

“So, I met with Sir Charles…” she began brightly.

“I don’t know why. If this deal goes through, we may never even live in the house.”

She stopped short, holding the phone to her ear in the darkness of the cab. “What? Why?”

“Turns out they want me to stay on as CEO.”

“Right. In London. The company is in London.”

“But management would be in Hong Kong.”

She was silent.

“I assumed you knew this was a possibility…”

“You never said anything about moving to China.”

“Look, this gives me a chance to take care of our people. Make sure they’re integrated into the new organization. They’ve been loyal to us. They helped build the company. It’s the right thing to do.”

*   *   *

A
FTER THE CALL,
she sat stunned in the back of the cab. Hong Kong? Had that possibility been lost in the shuffle that had been their lives over the past several months? Mistakenly packed away? Mislabeled? Or had she simply not been paying attention? What other possibilities had been misplaced or overlooked?

For years, they had lived an unsettled life. And she had learned to enjoy it. She had come to find that uncertainty had a certain charm. But since buying the house, she had believed that had changed. The size of the house, the financial commitment, the scope of the renovation—all of these things had led her to allow herself to believe that they were putting down roots. After all, wasn’t this what they had worked toward? Wasn’t this the dream?

She became aware of the regular thump of the speed bumps as they moved onto the residential streets off the High Street. She switched on the overhead light to find her house keys in her bag. In the dim glare she caught sight of her reflection in the smooth black window of the cab. The deepening wrinkles around the edges of her eyes and mouth, the softening jawline. A far different face from the one that had looked back at her from the walls of the gallery. Kat let out a sudden laugh, startling the cabdriver, who turned round to look at her. Perhaps she needn’t have worried that anyone would recognize her.

chapter six

What the Artist Kept to Himself

Thomas Lowry

A bright new light in figurative painting is shining from a wholly unexpected place. In an unprecedented move, Mayfair’s stalwartly modern Penfield Gallery has thrown the full weight of its considerable influence behind a fairly unknown realist and his series of portraits.

Although this show is the first major exhibition for the artist, his work already hangs in the homes of many of New York’s finest collectors, disguised in that most easily dismissed of forms—portraiture. Daniel Blake has long been the portraitist of choice amongst New York’s elite. And I must admit that while I have been exposed to his work in this capacity on several occasions, this is the first time I have been aware of his talent.

Over a span of twenty years, unbeknownst to his many patrons and purportedly even to his own agent, Blake has created a series of works that serve as an intensive study of one unidentified model. This series, in addition to representing a notable augmentation of his catalogue raisonné—both in terms of breadth and depth—provides a rare view of the stylistic and emotional evolution of the artist.

The works in this show are, first and foremost, compelling portraits of a young woman, gracefully realized and technically adroit. Indeed, one could devote an entire article solely to the artist’s renditions of red hair. Not since Titian has there been an artist more enamoured of the redhead.

But, there is more to his story. The obvious mystery here is that the young woman herself neither ages nor changes during the course of the series. This anomaly has captured the imagination of the art world, sparking a debate over whether his model is real or is simply a product of the artist’s imagination.

The exhibition is divided in two distinct parts. In the initial stage Blake’s talent is on full display in his mastery of the subtle textures of flesh and plaster and cloth. It is these early works that belie the depth of the artist’s connection to the subject and it is this emotional intensity that distinguishes his work. The delicate, varied brushstrokes, the intimate scale—these are moments stolen out of time. In the later works, the paintings themselves are the moments—attempts to recall time past.

The early works have a voyeuristic quality. In “September Morning” the subject, seen in profile before an open window, is both observed and observer. While the artist’s vision extends only as far as the borders of the canvas, the girl’s vision knows no such boundaries. It is her expression much more than the artist’s smudged, ruddy brushstrokes that convinces us of the world beyond the confines of the small room. And yet, there is a sense of timelessness in these portraits. It seems his subject could have just as easily existed a century ago as today.

While the washed-out palette is familiar, the later work sees a sharp departure from the earlier portraits. Here Blake moves closer to his subject. His paintings from this period, numbered rather than titled, are broken down into highly detailed elements. What we see is a freckled shoulder, the detail of the corner of a pink mouth, the curve of a waist, the myriad colours within a single plait of hair.

The irony is that the closer Blake moves to the girl, the more distant she becomes. In recalling the detail, the whole is lost. The extraordinary tenderness of the earlier works is also missing, replaced with an almost scientific approach. What starts as an exploration of the whole person becomes an obsessive exhumation of pieces of the whole.

This change in approach is reflected in a change in technique and tools. Blake abandons the nuanced brushstrokes of the earlier paintings for a flat, stripped-down look. His use of palette knives on the dead spaces of the canvas serves to actively separate the girl from what surrounds her. In many of these later works, it is the dead spaces themselves that seem most alive. In “Fourteen,” the bed—stripped of covers and alive in cold light—seems to serve as a canvas within the canvas. The artist seems to be painting absence itself.

The later works are much larger and possess a deliberately talismanic quality. Their scale seems a desperate attempt to magnify their memory, to fix them in time. Unlike the earlier pieces, which seem effortless, here is where you see the effort. They are constructed with resolute, painstaking discipline. You feel each scrape of the blade across the canvas.

This part of the series seems compulsive—a conscious turning away from truth to beauty. It is the fast moment, slowed down, halted and stretched across the canvas to be examined close-up. These efforts to render the moment so clearly convey the power and the sadness of his yearning to hold on to it. These canvases haunt you. The artist provides just enough pieces to suggest the whole and you cannot stop yourself from trying to fit them together.

Blake came by his skills through a combination of classic training and osmosis. He studied at the Slade in London and then briefly at the
École Nationale in Paris. His mother, Mary Blake was a popular landscape painter until her death two years ago.

Kat read the last sentence over again.

Some critics have called the show provincial. And indeed, there is nothing in the subject matter that particularly distinguishes Blake’s work from countless others. It is about a girl, as it so often is. And so why Blake? Why not Castillo with his resin spheres or Xiaolin with his lurid murals? Why not any number of other artists? Greater talent? Not necessarily. Better craft—perhaps. Timing? Ah, warmer.… Story? Warmer still.

There are those who say that the true masterpiece here is in the story. After all, Blake has been around for a while. Within a short space of time, the mystery surrounding his choice to paint this one subject over the course of so many years has done more for his fame than his considerable talent was able to achieve in his career to date. Indeed, it threatens to eclipse even the work itself.

And so what of the girl? Who is she and what is she to the artist? Blake himself has thus far refused to comment and his agent, Martin Whittaker, is cagey, saying only that whatever else their relationship was, it was certainly productive.

This writer, for one, hopes that she is not real. Because if Blake invented her, he can invent another. But if she is real, he will have to wait for lightning to strike again, something that may never happen. But while that is my hope, it is not my belief. The level of detail and the consistency with which she is rendered would be unlikely without a real subject from which to draw. But even more than this, there is a sense of purity or even piety about these portraits. A sense of urgency, a compulsion, to make us see his truth. And inherent in this is the acknowledgement of the ephemeral nature of the subject. Why bother to capture on canvas that which is going to last forever?

Sadly, what I believe most likely is that the girl in the portraits is dead. This would explain both the lack of aging, and the fact that in later works she becomes hardened, more defined; and his approach to her becomes almost clinical.

It is telling that much of this article and much of what is being discussed about this show is about the story, not about the paintings themselves. We are so susceptible to context. To provenance, to criticism, to popular opinion and packaging—all that surrounds and attends. A truth that the artist, or at the very least, his agent, seems to understand well. The viewers will do well to remind themselves that it is the pictures themselves that matter. Look into the face of the young woman in the Penfield Gallery and decide for yourself what is true.

*   *   *

K
AT’S EYES MOVED
down to the reproductions of the paintings at the bottom of the page. She breathed a sigh of gratitude that the ones the
Time
s had selected did not show her face, or indeed any of her, full on. In one she was sitting on the edge of the bed, her face half turned away. The thin spine of a book visible in her hand. She felt a rush as she recognized the faded red cover. It was Rimbaud, but she could not remember which one. She bent closer to the photo. She had found it in a shop on the rue Mayet in Montparnasse. The margins had been filled with small, scrawled notes from a previous owner. Messages from a stranger. She had read them as she read the book, so that the stranger’s voice and opinions had become intertwined with those of the author. To this day, she could not be certain how much of what she knew of Rimbaud was really his thoughts and how much was the opinions of her fellow reader. She examined her face in profile. Although she was entirely familiar to herself, she doubted that anyone would be likely to identify her from this particular image.

Her eyes moved down to another, unfamiliar image reprinted at the end of the article. One of the later paintings, it was a close-up of the back of her head. Her hair was gathered loosely from the nape of her neck, held fast between the teeth of a large jade-green comb in the shape of a serpent. She looked at it closely. Although she could not remember ever having owned a comb like it, a faint sense of familiarity dogged her as she examined its intricate curves. Had she forgotten?

The review was also accompanied by a photo of Daniel, leaning forward and gazing impatiently at the camera. His hands, resting on his knees in the foreground of the photo, appeared unnaturally large. Kat examined his face, its hard planes more prominent rendered in the stark grays of the newsprint.

She was still studying it when the phone rang, startling her. Even with the volume turned all the way down, the sound reverberated off the bare walls. While her eyes lingered on the newspaper in front of her, Kat reached behind her and felt along the counter for the handset.

“Hello?”

There was a brief pause. When it came, the voice on the other end of the line was flat.

“Did you think you could run away from me again?”

She recognized the voice before the sentence was completed. Staring into his eyes in the newspaper before her, she caught her breath.

And then he laughed. Suddenly, graciously, convincingly.

After a moment she laughed, too. Eagerly, gratefully, not entirely convinced.

“Daniel.”

“Hello, Kat.”

Again there was silence. It was her turn to speak. “I’m sorry … I shouldn’t have just come to the gallery last night.”

“Yes, maybe not the best time or place for a reunion.” His voice was smooth, betraying no trace of emotion.

“No, I suppose not. I’m sorry … we didn’t get a chance to talk. Congratulations on the show.…” While she spoke, her eyes strayed to the window, following the guard across the street as he approached a dark blue sedan in the diplomatic parking space in front of the embassy. She watched him stop short as it pulled away suddenly from the curb.