First Step
The Colours
of
the Palette
White,
red, blue, violet, flesh tint, green, yellow and black are the basic colours of the palette for painting human bodies.
BRUNO VAN TYSCH
Treatise on Hyperdramatic Art
How nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking Glass House.
LEWIS CARROLL
Through the Looking Class
Clara had been painted titanium white for more than two hours when a woman came down to see her. Gertrude was with her. Out of the corner of her eye Clara could see a pair of sunglasses, a small flowery hat, a pearl-grey suit. She looked like an important client. While she was assessing Clara, she went on talking to Gertrude.
'Did you know Roni and I bought a Bassan a couple of years ago?' She spoke with a strong Argentine accent. 'It was called
Girl Holding up the Sun.
Roni liked the way her shoulders and stomach shone. But I told him: 'Good heavens Roni, we have so many paintings, where are we going to put it?' And he said: 'We don't have that many. And besides, the house is full of your little knick-knacks, and I don't complain.' Laughter. 'Well, guess what we did with the painting in the end? We gave it to Anne.'
'Good idea.'
The woman took her glasses off and bent over Clara. 'Where's the signature?
...
Ah yes, on the thigh .
..
it's beautiful
...
What was I saying?'
That you gave the painting to Anne.'
'Oh, yes. They loved it - Anne and Louis, you've met them. Anne wanted to know if the rental was expensive. So I told her: "Don't worry, we'll pay. It's a gift from us to you." Then I asked the painting if she had any problem about going to Paris with my daughter. She said she didn't have.'
'A painting that's been bought should have no problem following the purchaser wherever it may be,' Gertrude asserted.
'But I like to show them I care
...
This is a wonderful painting, of course.' The 'w' boomed out like a distant foghorn. 'What did you say it was called?'
'Girl in Front of a Looking Glass'.
'Wonderful, wonderful
...
If you don't mind, Gertrude, I'll take a catalogue.'
'Take as many as you like.'
Clara was still immobile when they left. Wonderful, wonderful, but you won't buy me. That's obvious from a mile off. She knew it was not good to let her mind wander while she was in the trance-like state of quiescence, but could not help it. She was worried no one would buy her.
What was wrong with
Girl in Front of a Looking Glass?
The canvas was nothing extraordinary, but she had been bought as worse things. She was standing completely naked, her right hand covering her pubis and the left one out to the side, legs slightly apart, painted from head to toe in different shades of white. Her hair was a dense mass of deep whites, her body gleamed with brilliant glossy tones. In front of her stood a looking glass almost two metres tall, inserted directly into the floor without a frame. That was all. She cost two thousand five hundred euros, with a monthly rent of another three hundred euros - not exactly expensive even for a second-rate collector. Alex Bassan had assured her she would be sold at once, but she had been on show for almost a month now at Gertrude Stein's gallery in Madrid's Calle Velazquez, and as yet no one had made any firm offer. It was Wednesday 21 June, 2006, and the agreement between the painters and GS expired in a week. If nothing had happened by then, Bassan would withdraw her, and Clara would have to wait until another artist wanted to use her to paint an original. And in the meantime, what would she live off?
Without the paint, Clara Reyes had slightly wavy, platinum blonde hair that reached down to her shoulders, blue eyes, high cheek bones, a look that lay somewhere between innocent and mischievous, and a slender frame that gave her a delicate appearance which was belied by her surprising strength. And to keep it that way, she needed money. She had bought a white-walled attic in Augusto Figueroa, and in the living room had set up a small gym with a Japanese tatami mat surrounded by mirrors and apparatus.
Whenever the galleries were closed and she had no chores to do, she went swimming. Once a month she went to a beauty clinic. She used three kinds of cream each day to keep her skin as firm and gentle as canvases should be. She had got rid of two small moles from her body, and had had a scar removed from her left knee. Her menstruation had stopped as if by magic thanks to a special treatment, and she used pills to control her bodily needs. She had removed all her body hair completely and permanently, including her eyebrows; all that was left was her hair. Eyebrows and pubic hair are easy to paint if the artist so wishes, but they take a long time to grow. None of this was a whim - it was her job. Being a canvas cost a lot of money, and she could only make a lot of money by being a canvas. A strange paradox that made her think that Van Tysch, the greatest of them all, was right when he said that art was nothing more than money.
Yet this had not been a bad year for her. A Catalan businesswoman had bought her for Christmas as
The Strawberry
by Vicky Lledo - but then Vicky had a very faithful following, and sold all her works at a good price. In that painting, she had been with Yoli Ribo. The two of them were seated on a pedestal painted in skin tones, arms and legs intertwined, a plastic strawberry painted in quinacridone red held in their mouths. It was an easy position to hold, although they had to use an aerosol every day to reduce the saliva they produced ('Just i
magine a painting that dribbles’
Vicky had said. 'Can you think of anything less aesthetic?') When you got used to it, having to put up with a plastic strawberry in your mouth for six hours a day seemed like the simplest thing in the world. And thanks to hyperdramatism, the exchange with Yoli had been ideal: they shared the strawberry, their breath, looks and touch like real lovers. Vicky had signed them on their deltoids with a horizontal V and L in red. They spent a month in the businesswoman's house before they were replaced. And then Clara had to find more work. In March she had taken over from a French model in an open-air piece in Marbella by the Portuguese artist Gamaio, and in April had replaced Queti Cabildos in
Liquid Element II
by Jaume Oreste, another open-air work, this time in La Moraleja, but she did not earn as much as when she was the original.
Then in May, good news. She got a call from Alex Bassan. He wanted to paint an original with her. 'Alex, you're an angel,' she thought. He was someone who didn't apply himself to his work, but sold well. He had already painted Clara in two originals a few years back, and she was used to his way of working. Quick as a flash she accepted.
She came to Barcelona at the start of May and installed herself in the split-level apartment on the avenida Diagonal where Bassan lived and worked. Bassan and his wife lived on the upper floor of the apartment, while Clara slept on one of the three fold-up beds kept in the atelier. The other two beds were inhabited by a young Bulgarian (or was she Romanian?) girl who must have been about eleven or twelve, and who Bassan used as a sketch from time to time, and another sketch called Gabriel, nicknamed
Misfortune
by the painter because the first time he had used him had been for a work with that title.
Misfortune
was skinny and submissive.
While Clara was at work, the young girl wandered round the atelier like a ghost, clutching one of those Japanese toys that you have to push buttons to feed, rai
se and educate. During the fort
night Clara spent at Bassan's, this was the only thing she ever saw her with: it was as if the girl had come without any possessions or clothes. And all
Misfortune
did was come and go all the time. Clara guessed he must be working with several artists in Barcelona at the same time.
Bassan had made several studies before Clara arrived. He had used a North American sketch called Carrie. He showed her the photos: Carrie standing, Carrie on tiptoe, Carrie kneeling -
always in front of a looking glass placed at varying distances from her. But the results had not satisfied the artist. For the first few days, he used Clara without a glass. He painted her black and white with trial aerosols, and tested her against strong lights on a dark background. He sprayed her hair and had her stand on one leg for several hours.
'What is it you're trying to achieve, Alex?' she asked him.
Bassan was a huge, strong man built like a woodcutter. The hairs of his chest protruded above his artist's overall. He painted the same way he talked: in great bursts. His thick fingers sometimes grazed Clara's skin when he was outlining a delicate area.
'What am I trying to achieve? That's some question, Clara my love. How the fuck should I know. I have a looking glass. I have you. I want to do something simple, with simple colours, perhaps a range of brilliant whites. And I want you to express
...
I'm not sure
...
I want you to be sincere, open, with no barriers
...
Sincerity, that's the word. To discover what we are, to pass through the looking glass, see what it's like to live in a looking-glass world . . .'
Clara did not understand a word of this, but then she never understood any of the painters. That didn't worry her: she was the painting, not an art critic; her job was to allow the painter to use her to express what was in his head, not to understand what that was. Besides, she had a blind faith in Bassan. With him, everything was unexpected: he found what he was looking for by chance, all at once, and when that happened it touched your soul.
One day midway through the second week, Bassan put a looking glass on the studio floor and told her to crouch on it naked and look at herself. Several hours went by. Hunched up on the mirror, Clara could only see rings of condensation from her breath.
'Do you enjoy looking at yourself?' the painter asked her all of a sudden. 'Yes.' 'Why?'
'I think I'm attractive.'
'Tell me the first thing that comes into your head. Come on, don't think about it, just tell me.' 'Navel,' said Clara. 'Someone's navel?' 'Not someone's.
My
navel.' 'You were thinking about your navel?'
'Aha. Right at this moment, yes. Because that's what I'm looking at.'
'And what were you thinking about your navel? That it was pretty? Ugly?'
'I was thinking how extraordinary it is. The idea of having a hole in your belly. Isn't that strange?'
Bassan stood still (his way of thinking) and almost immediately slapped his thigh (his way of announcing he had discovered something).
'Navel, navel
...
hole
...
the beginning of the world and of life
...
I've got it! Stand up. You're to cover your sex with your right hand, but raise your thumb a bit. Let's see
...
like that
...
No, a little higher
...
That's right, pointing up towards your navel
...'
In the end, the work was very simple. Bassan had placed her standing up, arms and legs slightly apart, right hand on her sex and thumb raised rather less than he had at first thought. He mixed a lot of zinc white and covered her completely, including the 'natural stains' (facial features, aureolas and nipples, navel, her genitals and the crack between her buttocks). He used white lead to cover the brightest parts, then painted over them with titanium white. He sprayed and moulded her hair in a compact white mass that stuck close to her scalp. He used a small sable brush to paint some simple traits on her face: eyebrows, lashes and lips in a Naples brown diluted with white. He stuck a full-length mirror into the floor a short distance from her and put three halogen spots on two parallel strips to highlight her body. The powerful lights made the oil paint gleam. On 22 May he tattooed his signature on her left thigh: a capital B and two small esses. 'Bss'. It sounded like a soft whistle, she thought, or the buzz of a wasp.
'I think it'd be best to try Madrid,' Bassan said. 'I've had an interesting offer from the GS gallery.'
Bassan himself prepared the catalogue. He claimed exhibition catalogues were more important than the works themselves. 'Nowadays, we painters don't create paintings, we create catalogues,' he said mockingly. As soon as he received the first proofs from the printer, he sent Clara a copy. It was beautiful: a large white satin card with a photo of Clara's painted face on the front. Opening the card, the text in gold letters read: 'The painter Alex Bassan and the GS gallery have the pleasure of . . .' Bassan described it perfectly with one of his impulsive phrases: 'It looks like the invitation to an elf's first communion.' The opening was at eight on the evening of Thursday 1 June at the GS gallery in
Madrid, an event like many others. Gertrude Stein shared the cost of the drinks. People got drunk in the foyer, then went down into the basement to look at Clara, who was positioned in the centre of a tiny room. Opposite her stood the looking glass, with no frame or base, as if it had appeared by magic. Behind her on the white wall was an inscription: 'Alex Bassan.
Girl in Front of a Looking Glass.
Oils on a twenty-four-year-old girl with full-length mirror and lights. 195x35x88cm.' Under the title was a shelf with a pile of catalogues. There was no podium or any kind of security rope: she was simply standing on the bare white floor that shone as brightly as the looking glass and her body did. The room was really cramped, and as it filled up, Clara was worried someone might step on her foot. A white fire extinguisher hung from the wall in a corner. 'At least I won't go up in flames if there's a fire,' she thought.