D'Art of Harkness
by Philip Hartigan
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Marseille
A FORK IN THE ROAD by Philip Hartigan CHAPTER TWO The
Russian Brothers
So it’s a lovely evening and the springtime of yellow Mimosa and an icy blue sky. It’s drinkies chez le Russians. The
Roucas Blancas
They play hard and bad, ‘mechant’, they ruin women. They are white and they think black. Up close the two villas are very stylish - Palm trees and ornamental tiles probably from Lisbon. Manuel styled blue. The usual Mercedes and BMW shiny and the colors of money. Makes my guts heave. Then it dries me out, sobers up the intoxication with the day that all artists have. The boulevard is empty. We are early. It’s parked by two security people who will assure. The keys are taken and that’s how it is in Killerland. My approximations about them cannot help but come true. I am feeling like the Tramp in the freezer. I start scratching my beard and talking to the security guys. “What you doing here?” They ask me. “Selling my arse.” I reply. They get laughing. That ok. I am feeling better we are from the same part of town. They are blacks and think like whites. I haven’t seen any women yet so I hope my joke was not some sort of half baked involuntary prophecy. Yves has put my work on a website with the details of my illustrious career, as if it means anything. He put up the two exhibitions on the site with photos of the opening nights. The sturgeon has bitten. Russian caviar eaten from the spermfilled hand of the gay mafia. Do I want any of this? Have I ever wanted any of this? Art is there to hide the artist. I am the tramp in the freezer dead from exposure to too much pain and stupidity. The two drawings /watercolors are packed in brown paper. Yves is asking two thousand euros for each. There is to be no problem. What did you say these people do for a living Yves? They make lots of money, he smiles. Who are we meeting? Sergei and his brother. I don’t know the other brother’s name. Is it mafia Russe? I ask like a blockhead. Yves turns to me and says flatly “Listen you child of nature. These guys like your stuff and they have money so let’s not be too fussy .” The reproduction values of the environment that these people live and work in are astoundingly tacky. One sees this sort of creepy neoclassical furniture all over the south. The bars are all like bleached marble ruins of greek temples the white coated hirelings and the chef is supervising. We are greeted and asked to put the pictures ln an ante room and come upstairs to meet the two brothers. More neo classical armchairs in white leather and the animal skins. James Bond is obviously around here today cos the place is just a film set with drinks. Good champagne, so let’s get on with it then. Still no women about so the eye candy is just for the chaps. Yves is alright with this, the army brings in its testosterone chumminess. The two men that we are talking to are not yet the two brothers, maybe they are clones. Ian Fleming would like that, test tube super criminals. “Let’ s go to the gallery to see the recent acquisitions.” The collections are next door. It doesn’t pay to be nervous so I keep drinking, looking for a girl to arrive, hoping that this band of insurance agents doesn’t win thereby relegating all women to the rank of sex-object. Or punching ball. What can be the merit of selling my work to these invisible people who are buying from everybody cash? On the nail! They have also bought Cesar on the nail and Arman. The grinning pumpkins of Jean Helion. The triumph of french painting. I am so pleased that they didn’t buy any of Ben’s crap. I am to be in turgid but illustrious company. Yves carries off the agent role as if he were born in the floozie salons of the ‘fin du siecle’. They must have seen my sculpture made from the objects, super glued, found and discarded. The comparisons with Picasso are nerve racking. The two brothers are on the terrace conservatory flanked by avocado trees and what looks like a fig tree. The koi carp are the first touch of class that I have seen. Handshake and hand on the shoulder. Not before long I say to the totalitarian aftershaved air that I am breathing in. There must be a woman around. They want to talk about the days when I worked at the Roundhouse. Implosion and Living Theater. “The Doors are my poetic opening, you know that we used to listen to records and learn English.” They reminisce. In Leningrad now once more St Petersburg. The two brothers are mid forties and both dirty blondes. Fit men not like the moslems at Bellevue. they are interested in me. The Doors. Counter Culture. Bob Dylan. Football. Keeping fit. “I have videos of their concerts from the archive library of Bill Graham.” “I’d love to see them.” My innocence is fundamental to my survival. “Why don’t you come around some evening and we can enjoy ourselves. You have a place here in Marseille?” I don’t answer that one. Somehow the octopus has his tentacled arm outstretched I think that I have twigged the Monastic Monopoly game. Where’s the Ladies Yves? “Why do you want to go for a piss?” Hilarious. |
Yves has brought the two pictures from the antechamber. They are propped on two chairs. I love them both. These antiques from the days of yore. Never do I love my work so much than when it’s getting sold off. They are like children taken from house to nursery accompanied and carefully nurtured in their capacity to be something to someone someday. The two brothers are Sergei and Ivan. They will want to marry my two aquarelle daughters from the sixties in tie-died lassitude. They look at the pictures and make gestures that I’ve seen at football matches the fist smacked into the palm of the hand -the clenched hand. Masculine approval. Yves takes the money in an envelope and they ask him to put the pictures back into the ante chamber. They are to be reframed and photographed. Then they take their place in the gallery. In due course I will be invite back for an evening with the two brothers and we can watch movies from Bill Graham’s video collection. Still no women not even a dolly pomone. We sit at a wrought iron table and sip champagne like out of work actors. “Give me some of the money and you can have what’s left for your commission and expenses.” Yves is a laugh he gives me a thousand euros and I say nothing. “No need to thank me,” he says “you must be very sad loosing such lovely pieces of work. Did you notice two pieces of typewritten paper on the backs?” I stuck two quotations from Jim Morrison’s poetry on the backs of the pictures. Just let me take a look, I go back to the small cloakroom ante chamber. and look at the backs of the pictures. The first is The new Creatures. Fall down. Strange Gods arrive in fast enemy poses their shirts are soft marrying cloth and hair together. All along their arms ornaments conceal veins bluer than blood pretending welcome. Soft lizard eyes connect. Their soft drained insect cries erect new fear, where fears reign. The rustling of sew against their skin. The wind withdraws all sound. Stamp your witness on the punished ground. and the other from The Lords notes on Vision. Cinema is the most totalitarian of the arts. All energy and sensation is sucked up into the skull, a cerebral erection, skull bloated with blood. Caligula wished a single neck for all his subjects that he could behead a kingdom with one blow. Cinema is this transforming agent. The body exists for the sake of the eyes; it becomes a dry stalk to support these two, soft insatiable jewels. The quotations were not part of the deal and they felt to me like a springboard out of this time frame . I tried to take the paper of the back of the pictures quite shamelessly. The glue was thoroughly applied and I didn’t have any knife so I thought that the best thing was simply to take them back home and do the right thing in the right place. Well back in the car they went and I thought that it would take only an hour or two and everything will be hunky dory. I went back into drinkie land to find Yves discussing business and the life of another artist who had just died (the best kind. )Introductions are anathema to me. I couldn’t even be bothered to tell Yves about putting the pictures back in the boot of the car. Let’s leave it as a surprise, when we land at the apartment block that I call home. FERRARIS ARE PARKED EVERYWHERE LIKE THE TOYS FOR THE CRIMINAL CLASSES. EACH ONE IS A SPACE RIDE FOR A MILLIONAIRE AND A MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS Yves is hurt when I tell him about the pictures that are back in the boot. They will fry us alive if they find out. He’s a tough old cookie and has a violent background but since his new wife and her children have come along he’s a different guy. I am fucking dogfood you know that? He is mystified by my nonchalance (isn’t everyone?) “Why couldn’t you be generous like artists are supposed to be?” “I like to live dangerously.” His portable phone didn’t work in the elevator. He had to wait for those few crucial life turning minutes till he could get to the balcony and telephone the Russian brothers. The answer phone was on duty as the night fell and he returned to the Roucas Blancas with the portholes cut into the cardboard of the pictures backing. He said that I was a fucking imbecile who was out to cause real trouble for him. “I didn’t sell them the poetry on the back I sold them the pictures on the front.” I am sure they understand that. They who buy and sell everything and everyone. He had to pick up his daughter from her piano lesson in town. Let me know if they are unhappy. I’ll give them a call when they are available... I never heard from Yves again. Which put me into a dreadful sadness. He was a kind of friend who wanted to be a different personality than he was destined to be. He took a lot of percentage and disappeared with no habeas corpus. His wife said that he never arrived to pick up his daughter. No trace of his car no, trace of the troublesome pictures. The police would like to see me, they will contact me soon. I met his wife and told her that we had a drink and talked about the exhibitions and made no mention of the Russian brothers. I liked his wife she was a strong, sometimes a bit too much makeup, but a lovely sense of humor and not at all edgy. Consumer orientated but she had once been a hairdresser and so whilst business minded she had a human quality that could be interpreted as hornyness. So she would give me a call when I went back to the mountains and we could think more about what Yves was up to. that of course if he was capable of being up to anything ever again. The Commissariat of Police got the same story, Yves left my place to pick up his daughter from her piano lesson. The portable telephone is a useful instrument the police can track down every call from every number. I don’t use one. Someone gave me one onetime and I walked into a lamppost. Internet too can be monitored. Yves was or I hope still is a computer boffin creating money from sites and e-business. The police however had no idea where his presence was to be found. Neither did I. No reply from the Roucas Blancas. So I decide to go up there to see what happened. The probabilities are that he is dead. It’s a week since he disappeared and well I really don’t know. It would be a crappy story to tell if it were so cut and dried. I ring the bell and the security guys tell me that I should wait for verification. I am invited in and one of the russian brothers comes to meet me at the door. It’s Sergei, who embraces me and arm on the shoulder, invites me into his private quarters. Wall hangings and a photo of his brother and a poster of Baryshnikov and plants and caucasian rugs. On the wall the two pictures. He sits on the sofa. He can’t wait to pay me a homage “I voyage into these pictures my mind’s eye opens and it’s like I’m tripping out of my mind I don’t need to know how you did them it’s not my business but I Sergei Lentov know that you are a great man you have a great gift and I thank you. How is Yves, your companion of fortune? I like him he’s a rock.” I tell him quickly “He’s disappeared, He left me the same night that we first met to pick up his daughter from her piano lesson and nobody has seen him since.” “Bizarre,” yes, it’s very strange, isn’t it?
Philip Hartigan February Marseille 2003
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