Manual of Painting and Calligraphy (3 page)

That is how it turned out. The first picture was a complete failure and I could not give up. If S. eluded me, or I failed to capture him and he realized it, then the only solution would be a second portrait painted in his absence. I tried this. The sitter became the first portrait and the invisible one I was pursuing. I could never be satisfied with a mere likeness, nor even with the psychological probing within the grasp of any apprentice, based on precepts as banal as those which give form to the most naturalistic and superficial of portraits. The moment S. entered my studio I realized I had to know everything if I wanted to dissect that self-assurance, that impassiveness, that smug expression of being handsome and healthy, that insolence cultivated day by day so that it might strike where it hurt most. I demanded a higher fee than usual and he agreed, paying me a deposit there and then. But I should have put my brush aside at the very first sitting, when I found myself humiliated without quite knowing why, without so much as a word having been spoken. One glance was enough and I found myself asking, “Who is this man?” This is precisely the question no painter should ask himself, yet there I was doing just that. As risky as asking a psychoanalyst to take his interest in a patient just a little bit further, which could lead him to the edge of the precipice and his inevitable downfall. Every painting should be executed on this side of the precipice, and in my opinion the same is true of psychoanalysis. And it was precisely in order to keep myself on this side that I began the second portrait. This double game was my salvation, I had a trump card which allowed me to hover over the abyss while to all intents and purposes appearing to founder, suffering the humiliation of someone who has tried and failed in his own eyes as well as in the eyes of others. But the game became complicated and now I am a painter who has erred twice, who persists in error because he cannot escape and turns to writing without knowing its secrets. However inappropriate or apt the comparison, I am about to try to decipher an enigma with a code unknown to me.

This very day I decided to attempt a definitive portrait of S. in words. I do not believe that at any time during the last two months (it was exactly two months yesterday that I began the first portrait) the idea would have occurred to me. Yet, strange to relate, it came naturally, without taking me by surprise, without my questioning it in the name of my literary ineptitude, and the first action it provoked was the purchase of this paper, as naturally as if I were buying tubes of paint or a set of new brushes. I was out for the rest of the day (having made no appointments for any sittings). I drove out of the city with a ream of paper on the seat beside me, as if parading my latest conquest, the kind of conquest for which the seat of a car is as good as a couch. I dined alone. And when I returned home I made straight for the studio, uncovered the portrait, applied several brushstrokes at random, and once more covered the canvas. Then I went into the spare room where I keep my suitcases and old paintings; I added the same brushstrokes to the second portrait with the automatic concentration of someone performing his thousandth exorcism and then seated myself here in this tiny room of mine, part library, part refuge, where women have never felt at their ease.

What do I want? First, not to be defeated. Then, if possible, to succeed. And no matter where these two portraits lead me, to succeed will be to discover the truth about S. without arousing his suspicion, since his presence and images bear witness to my proven inability to give satisfaction while satisfying myself. I cannot say what steps I shall take, what kind of truth I am pursuing. All I can say is that I have found it intolerable not to know. I am almost fifty and have reached the age when wrinkles no longer accentuate one’s features but give expression to the next phase, that of encroaching old age, and suddenly, I repeat, I have found it intolerable to lose, not to know, to go on making gestures in the dark, to be a robot which dreams night after night of escaping from the punched tape of its program, from the tapeworm existence between the circuits and transistors. Were you to ask me whether I would take the same decision even if S. were not to appear, I would be at a loss for an answer. I think I would but cannot swear to it. Meanwhile, now that I have started to write, I feel as if I had never done anything else and that I was actually born to write.

I observe myself writing as I have never observed myself painting, and discover what is fascinating about this craft. There always comes a moment in painting when the picture cannot take another brushstroke (bad or good, it can only make the picture worse), while these lines can go on forever, aligning the numbers of a sum that will never be achieved but whose alignment is already something perfect, a definitive achievement because known. I find the idea of infinite prolongation particularly fascinating. I shall be able to go on writing for the rest of my life, whereas pictures are locked into themselves and repel. Tyrannical and aloof, they are trapped inside their own skin.

I
ASK MYSELF
why I wrote that S. is handsome. Neither of the two portraits shows him to be so, and the first one should try to present him in a favorable light, or at least give a real likeness with all the flattering ingredients of a portrait that will be well rewarded. To be frank, S. is not handsome. But he has that self-assurance I have always envied, a face with regular features in the right proportions which confers that solid look which men who are physically as weak as I am cannot help but envy. He moves at his ease, sits in a chair without so much as looking at it and is comfortably seated at once, without any need for further adjustments which betray embarrassment and timidity. One might think he had been born with all his battles won or that he has others to do his fighting for him, invisible warriors who quietly perish without fanfare or speech, preparing the way as if they were simply the bristles of a broom. I do not believe S. is a millionaire by current standards, but he is not short of money. This is something one can tell just from the way in which he lights a cigarette or looks around him. The rich man never sees or notices, he simply looks and lights a cigarette with the air of someone expecting it to arrive already lit. The rich man lights the offended cigarette, that is to say, the rich man is offended as he lights the cigarette because there is no one there to do it for him. I am sure S. would have found it perfectly natural if I had rushed forward or showed signs of doing so. But I do not smoke and I have always kept a sharp eye for a chance to deflate and subvert this affected gesture—from the moment a flame is released from a lighter and then extinguished, the opening and closing of a circular movement, according to circumstances, can be a sign of adulation, of subservience, of complicity, a subtle or crude invitation to go to bed. S. would have liked me to acknowledge the wealth and power I perceive there. Artists, however, traditionally enjoy some privileges which, even when they do not exploit them, or only exploit them as a last resort, maintain a romantic aura of irreverence, which confirms the client in his (provisional) state of subordination and in his individual superiority. In this somewhat farcical relationship, the artist and the client each plays his respective role. Deep down, S. would have despised me if I had attempted to light his cigarette, but worse still, he would have achieved what he wanted had I done so. There were no surprises on either side and everything passed off as expected.

S. is of medium height, robust, in good physical shape (as far as I can tell) for a man who appears to be in his forties. He has enough gray hairs at the temples to add a touch of distinction, and he would be the perfect model for advertising luxury products associated with country life, such as briar pipes, hunting rifles, Scottish tweeds, powerful cars, holidays in the Alps or in the Camargue. In short, the kind of face most men desire because promoted by the American cinema and associated with a certain type of woman with long hair, but probably not worth keeping (I mean the face, not the woman) for any longer than it takes to photograph; in real life men are more commonplace, sallow, unshaven, have bad breath and often suffer from body odor. Perhaps S.’s face—his eyes, mouth, chin, nose, hair roots and hair, eyebrows, skin tone, wrinkles, expression—perhaps all this is to blame for the untidy mess I have transferred onto the canvas and which is no clearer even in the second portrait. Not that it bears no likeness or that the first portrait is not the faithful image I charitably set out to achieve, not that the second portrait could not pass for an exercise in psychological analysis expressed through painting. In both cases, I alone know that both canvases remain white, virginal, if you prefer that word, ruined, if truth be told. Yet I come back to asking myself why (since the S. I have described is so loathsome) I feel this obsessive need to understand and get to know him better, when much more interesting men and women whom I have portrayed during all these years of mediocre painting have passed through my eyes and hands. I can find no explanation other than being middle-aged, the humiliation of suddenly discovering that I do not match up to expectations and this other and more burning humiliation of being looked down on, of not being able to respond to S.’s contempt with indifference or sarcasm. I tried to destroy this man when I painted him, only to discover that I am incapable of destruction. Writing is not another attempt to destroy but rather an attempt to reconstruct everything from within, measuring and weighing all the friction gears, the cogwheels, checking the axles millimeter by millimeter, examining the silent oscillation of the springs and the rhythmic vibration of the molecules inside the metal parts. Besides, I cannot prevent myself from hating S. for that cold glance he cast over my studio the first time he came here, for that disdainful sniff, for the disagreeable manner in which he thrust his hand into mine. I know very well who I am, an artist of no importance who knows his craft but lacks genius, even talent, who has nothing more to offer than a nurtured skill and who is forever treading the same paths or stopping at the same door, an ox drawing a cart on its daily rounds, yet before, when I approached this window, I used to enjoy watching the sky and the river as Giotto, Rembrandt or Cézanne might have done. For me differences were unimportant. When a cloud slowly passed, there was no difference, and when I later held my brush to the unfinished canvas anything could have happened, even the discovery of a genius entirely my own. My peace of mind was assured; all that could happen now was more peace or, who knows, the excitement of a masterpiece. Not this gentle but determined rancor, not this burrowing inside a statue, not this sharp and persistent gnawing, like a dog biting its leash while looking anxiously around, fearful that whoever tied it up may suddenly reappear.

It would be pointless to gather more details about S.’s general appearance. The two portraits are there and they reveal as much as is necessary for what matters least of all. In other words, they do not tell me enough but satisfy those who care only about appearances. My task is now something else: to discover everything I can about S.’s life and put it in writing, to differentiate between inner truth and outer skin, between substance and shell, between the manicured nail and the clippings from the same nail, between the pale blue pupil and the dry matter which that glance in the mirror each morning reveals in the corner of my eye. To separate, divide, confront and understand. To perceive. Precisely what I could never attain while painting.

I
F REVEALING A
man’s profession tells us something we ought to know about him, and if running a business empire is a job in addition to all the advantages such a role implies, then I hereby affirm that S. is managing director of the Senatus Populusque Romanus. What is the Senatus Populusque Romanus? As used here, it is a disguise and another example of my penchant for anachronisms (the best history of mankind would be the one which gathers up all the ears of grain from the ground in one fell swoop and then raises the different phases of time to the heavens or to our eyes, ripe grains all of them, yet still far from being bread). I am not, however, disguising everything, because
SPQR
are the actual initials of the firm where S. is in control. I am associating the Senate and the Roman people with capitalism and confirm that, at heart, there is only one senate and few differences in the people. I have another reason, a somewhat muddled reason, perhaps simply a tortuous expedient for not writing out the names in full: in my profession (which is that of painting) we start by applying the colors just as they come in the tubes and which bear names that appear to have been established forever and ever. But once mixed on the palette or canvas, the slightest overlapping modifies them, or the light, and a color is still what it was as well as being the color next to it and a combination of the two, and any new color or colors that result enter into the permanently unstable spectrum in order to repeat the process, at once multiplier and multiplying.