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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781619026551 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Catapult |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 325 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
CONNECTICUT
It was a gray, overcast late Sunday in September. The windows were open in his third-floor study and a light breeze rustled the papers on his desk. He looked at the tray next to him with his pens and his water glass and the two or three books and catalogues he referred to every now and then. Each word and sentence he'd put to paper he worried over. Chosen to present at the international fair in Berlin, he was reviewing the talk he'd written about the work of Agnes Murray and several other lesser known contemporary artists. He reflected that four years had passed since he'd first met Agnes in her dusty studio in Bushwick. A lot had happened to both of them since then.
"New Movements in American Art: A Desire for Authenticity." Christ. He hoped he didn't come across as high-minded. An unsettling cry from outside disturbed him. Probably a lost cat or dog from the neighborhood. He looked at his watch to discover two hours had passed. He went back to the talk. A new vanguard emerged in New York after 9/11.. . That cry again; it now sounded like a baby's whimper. He remembered how Annabel used to cry in her crib sometimes in the middle of the night. He and Holly hadn't the constitution to let her cry herself back to sleep. He'd get up, go to her, and bring her into their bed, and she'd fall asleep between the two of them, sandwiched by their warmth. The summer was over and another school year had begun. Annabel was almost sixteen. It seemed incredible.
He heard the sound again. He crossed the room to look out the front window facing the street. By the side of the road lay a dead deer, stiff, with its legs tucked back, middle gutted with dried blood. The cry was coming from the other side of the house near the woods. From the back window, he saw Holly in a plaid flannel shirt and high rubber boots rush out the kitchen door and his daughter Annabel behind her. The door slammed shut. He climbed down the three flights of stairs from his study and followed them. A spotted baby fawn lay camouflaged in a patch of leaves and thistle just at the outskirts of their garden. The fawn stretched its neck and unsuccessfully attempted to lift itself. Fear was in its eyes and the fawn was shaking. Holly peered over the fawn. She volunteered at an animal refuge, was sometimes called out in the middle of dinner or early in the morning to help rescue a fledgling or a jackrabbit or a stray dog. The fawn couldn't move.
"Maybe she's waiting for her mother?" Annabel wondered.
"If a doe hears her fawn in distress she'll come. She won't forage far. I bet the doe's been hurt too," Holly said.
"Killed," Edward added, making the connection. He mentioned the dead deer he saw from his study window on the other side of the house.
"Poor orphaned baby," Holly said. The fawn cried out again, thrusting her head in another attempt to get up. Holly asked Annabel to go into the trunk of her car where she kept a pair of gardening gloves, blanket, and injection kit. She explained that she'd sedate the fawn and take her to the refuge. The fawn trembled. "It's scared," Holly said, and stepped away to give the fawn room. An excited look was in her eyes. Holly read about animals and birds and had shelves full of journals and guides in their library. She owned copies of Animal Behavior Desk Reference and Sibley's and Peterson's guidebooks about birds. She subscribed to National Geographic and obscure animal and horse journals. She was interested in animal and bird anatomy and sixth sense, as she called it. She remarked once when she'd been called to rescue a pigeon with a torn wing that pigeons have an ability to detect the earth's magnetic field, a sense they use like a compass to navigate distance. She said a horse can pick up a rider's fear in its heart rate. She'd read her books and journals at night or in the breakfast nook, glasses perched at the end of her nose. He liked to watch her this way when she didn't know he was watching. She was a woman who knew a great deal but often said little. God only knows why she had a temple inside her where she alone could rest and restore when others of us did not. You have your art, and I have this, she said once when he caught her looking at the Journal of Animal Science.
Annabel returned with the items Holly had requested. Holly put on her gloves and draped the blanket over the fawn's head to calm her. Edward looked on with admiration. He'd never before witnessed his wife at work. Underneath the blanket the fawn curled her head and quieted. Holly filled the injection needle and pressed it into the fawn's side. She lifted the fawn in her arms as if she were cradling a hurt child and brought it toward her SUV. Annabel and Edward trailed behind. He opened the back hatch and laid out another wool blanket for the fawn to lie on.
"I'll go with you, Mom," Annabel offered, caught up in the drama. Edward asked if Holly wanted him to come too.
"No, stay home and finish your talk," she said, closing the hatch.
"The talk," he said, dread filling him.
"What's wrong? It will be brilliant," Holly said. "You'll be brilliant."
"Doubtful," he remarked. She had no idea what it was like to put himself out there in front of everyone who mattered in his world. It was a part of him she could never understand. Nothing frightened her.
"Look at Dad," Annabel said, laughing. "Daddy, it's just a hurt fawn." Annabel sprang onto her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. "I don't know what you'd do if something happened to me." Annabel was right. The thought of his wife and daughter hurt or upset caused him to stir with agitation. It would be like a tree coming up from its roots. If Holly went before him he'd be one of those lost men who padded around the house still talking to her.
Holly started to laugh and then looked at her husband and stopped. "Edward, you look peaked. Annabel, stop making fun of your father." She touched his arm. "The fawn will be okay. It's probably broken one of its back legs."
"It's not that," Edward said.
"Then what is it?"
"It's you. You're amazing." He watched his wife and daughter get into the car, and suddenly he didn't want them to leave. The light shifted and shadows fell into the grass, and silence entered him, cool and severe. He thought about getting up in the morning and traveling across the ocean to Berlin to speak in front of hundreds and the thought of it and separating from his wife and daughter filled him for a moment with panic. An owl screeched. He lifted his head to the purple sky careening into the sudden fall of evening.
CHAPTER 2BERLIN
Edward watched out of the corner of his eye as Julia Rosenthal, an American sculptor, chatted with Charlotte Moss while they waited for cabs outside the hotel. Julia's latest work was an installation set in a darkened room with hay strewn on the floor and barbed wire lining the walls, with photographs of crematoria behind the wire. He'd seen it at the Jewish Museum.
He stood apart from the group. Though he kept to himself, he was not unfriendly. He'd spent much of his boyhood alone, an only child of a complicated marriage, and though he'd been in the business for years, he'd never acquired the talent for superficial conversation. He preferred to read art books or an absorbing biography or work of history at home with his family, rather than to dine out on chatter. But here he was at the fair in Berlin, along with a group of Americans. It wasn't as though he could skip the lecture and go back to his hotel room — though part of him wanted to. He looked at Charlotte Moss hovering over Julia. Charlotte was an up-and-comer at Matthew Marks. He wondered what they were talking about.
He thought about Holly at home. She was different from his art colleagues. Unpretentious. Earthy. Self-contained. He did not know why when he was tense it was this image he conjured up, but it was always in the garden that he pictured his wife, kneeling over her flowering plants, hair in front of her face, trowel in her gloved hand, intent, pulling out weeds or planting. She could spend all of Saturday morning running between the garden and the kitchen where she went for a glass of cold water and then out again, sometimes stopping to give him a quick kiss, the whip and heat of her hair against his neck. There was something in Holly's face, in her smile, in the way she looked at him and fussed over him, the promise of her and him together, and the children they would have that from the moment he met her had made him feel as if the first half of his life was only preparation for the bliss that would come.
Julia Rosenthal lifted her head away from Charlotte and they exchanged a quick glance. He studied her face. She wore large black-framed professor glasses that overtook her small features. From a distance she looked studious and prim but up close the look was softer. Tiny worry lines fanned from the outskirts of her eyes. She gestured with her hands as she spoke, glancing up at him with brightness in her face. He remembered meeting her twenty years ago at a reception after she won the Rome Prize, and being drawn to her then, too. Funny how one person could strike you as someone you'd like to know, and years later you felt the same tug. He watched as she tucked herself into a cab with Charlotte. So much had happened since then. For a second he thought about scooting into the seat next to her but waited for another cab with the others. Once he'd checked into his hotel and called home, the anxiety of separating from his family dissipated. In the cab, the warm breeze against his face, anticipating the morning ahead, he felt as if he'd suddenly come alive.
He entered the gallery space and found an aisle seat in one of the uncomfortable folding chairs arranged in rows. In New York there were contracts to review and budgets to approve and clients to keep in touch with. He loved what he did but as of late it was beginning to feel stale. He wanted to discover someone new whose work would excite him again and make an indelible mark. More of his work was about profits and making margins and less about the inventiveness of art and putting his stamp on it, but here he was, far away from all that.
He'd been chosen to speak in Berlin at one of the fair's select events based on the gallery's recent flurry of successful shows, including Agnes Murray's, but he wasn't sure he should have accepted the invitation. He looked down at the schedule in his lap. The seven days ahead were filled with trips to prominent museums and galleries, lectures, luncheons, and dinners. Thinking about it was exhausting.
He watched as Julia wandered in, wearing a cranberry dress and a silk scarf with a Matisse-like pattern draped around her neck. It occurred to him, watching her, that another man might find her to be ordinary, but there was something about the way she held herself that to him was sexy. She looked for an empty seat and found one in his row. Her hips brushed against him when he stood to let her scoot past. She wasn't exactly beautiful — you had to feel it to be beautiful — but there was a freshness to her look that he found compelling.
Gerhardt Strauss of Strauss and Keipen stood before the podium and everyone quieted. Thinking of his own presentation later in the week, he wondered how Strauss would command an audience.
Tall, with a crop of spiky white hair, Strauss began an informal overview of contemporary German art in the overheated gallery space. Edward's BlackBerry vibrated in his pocket; he missed another call from Holly. When their daughter was little, Holly packed her days while Annabel was at preschool with her volunteer work at the animal refuge and weekends riding at the barn. She was involved in numerous committees for animal rights. She hadn't minded his traveling. Or maybe it was that he hadn't traveled quite so much then.
His BlackBerry buzzed again. It was Georgia, his assistant at the gallery. He turned it off. Lately, when he woke in the middle of the night, his hand went for his BlackBerry. He told himself to enjoy Berlin, to take in the art and the city, to try to relax. Holly and Annabel were fine.
When he came out of his thoughts, he'd lost the flow of the lecture. "Exactly a century after the first stirrings of German Expressionism, Germany's young artists are gaining traction and creating some of the most assured art to be found anywhere. Outstanding artists abound in all areas, but it is the boldness of current German painting that is generating waves of excitement in the art world." Strauss mentioned the American painter Nate Fisher, by way of comparing his work with that of Strauss and Keipen's renowned artist Edgar Schlinder.
Alex Savan interrupted to ask a question. "Is Schlinder as popular as Nate Fisher? In America Fisher revitalized the art world after 9/11. He's become a trailblazer for other artists."
In New York, Savan was at every significant function and opening. He wore slick loafers with silly tassels without socks, pink shirts and gold cufflinks, and walked briskly into a room, gravitating to the power circle, with an air of self-importance. His wavy blond hair — a color so unnaturally yellow and shiny it looked dyed — was pushed back from his large forehead. With a dimpled, thick chin and sallow eyes, he was unpleasant to look at. Edward shook his head and sighed. Poor Savan. After he'd come to know him, he learned that Savan's parents were from a small, impoverished town in West Virginia. He'd gotten a scholarship at Princeton — he never let you forget it — and was an art handler at Christie's before he landed his entry-level position at Reinstein and climbed through the ranks. All his grandiosity was a cover. It made Edward have a soft spot for him, but he feared that Savan's compulsive need to make himself known was going to ruin Berlin. He gazed at Julia, totally engaged by Strauss's lecture, occasionally making a note in the little black Moleskine book she carried in her bag, and she gave him a knowing nod. Her fingers were slim and petite, fingernails clean and manicured with a sheer polish. His eye caught hers — he saw dark sapphires through her glasses — and she smiled at him, a half smile that freed her face of its seriousness. He wondered if she remembered that time at the Academy. It was twenty years ago. He returned her smile.
"Nate Fisher is huge in New York. His work is brilliant." Alex held court among a group of German collectors at the reception afterward. Charlotte leaned in to listen, not one to miss out on gossip. Julia and Gerhardt, and a few others, trailed over and joined the conversation.
"I met Nate when I invited him to give a talk at Princeton," Savan boasted, never forgetting to pepper his Princeton pedigree into the conversation. The brilliant and masterful artists on his roster were, in his words, utterly devoted to him; he crowed about famous dinners he had attended and the luminaries who also had been invited; he alluded to how much money he secured for a painting, believing the higher the amount, the better the work of art. With Savan, it was impossible to tell what was true and what was fiction. Unlike Savan, Edward didn't prize money above all else, as long as his artists were happy, the gallery turned a profit, and he was able to take care of his family. And, on occasion, able to purchase an object or piece of art that lit him, on which he could gaze and dream and be transported — that was the real luxury, to be carried away.
"Nate is revolutionizing American art. No one else comes close to his self-awareness, his sense of the performative nature of it all. Don't you agree he's extraordinary, Edward?"
"Reproductions about banality. I'm not so sure." The last person he wanted to talk about in Berlin was Fisher. Since Agnes married him four years ago, the same year Edward had taken her on, she couldn't drink a cup of coffee without his approval. Having come to the party late and making up for lost time, Fisher was known as much for his work's provocation as for his partying. Once the fashionable work took off, he was quoted in the Observer as saying that all he could remember of the excitement was "drinking the minibar dry." In press photographs there was always an entourage of pretty women by his side. Though there was something about Nate's confidence and swagger that intrigued him, maybe even made him jealous, Edward wasn't impressed. The work was derivative and empty. Irony works only if there is genuine pain underneath it, and he didn't feel it.
Savan looked rattled, but soldiered on. "Whether you buy into it or not, Fisher is at Koons's level. And Agnes Murray — her work is totally different, but she's neck and neck with him, in terms of visibility. She's everywhere. She deserves to be; her work is totally brilliant. Edward represents her."
"Agnes Murray is good," Edward agreed, hoping his clipped answer would cut Savan off. He didn't want to encourage Savan. There was an untrustworthy air about him that made Edward not
want to get too close. The last time they had drinks in the austere lobby of the Gansevoort Hotel, Savan had ordered a dirty martini, Edward was convinced, because of its sexy connotations. He smiled after he said it, stroked his chin, and salaciously popped the olive in his mouth. Edward wondered if Savan was coming on to him. Savan usually had an attractive woman on his arm, an affair that lasted for about fifteen minutes before a new girl was on the horizon, but Edward thought his heterosexuality was questionable. It wasn't that, though. Edward believed that Savan wanted to use him to gain the approval of others. At the end of the day, he knew that Savan had only his own interests at heart. Edward had to tread carefully. The art world was too insular and small for enemies.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Prize"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Jill Bialosky.
Excerpted by permission of Counterpoint.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE,
PART ONE,
1. CONNECTICUT,
2. BERLIN,
3. BERLIN,
4. NEW YORK,
5. HAMBURG,
6. HAMBURG,
7. NEW YORK,
8. CONNECTICUT,
9. NEW YORK,
10. NEW YORK,
11. NEW YORK,
12. CONNECTICUT,
13. NEW YORK,
14. NEW YORK,
15. CONNECTICUT,
16. NEW YORK,
17. CONNECTICUT,
18. CONNECTICUT,
19. NEW YORK,
20. CONNECTICUT,
PART TWO,
1. LONDON,
2. CONNECTICUT,
3. NEW YORK,
4. CONNECTICUT,
5. CONNECTICUT,
6. CONNECTICUT,
7. CONNECTICUT,
8. NEW YORK,
9. NEW YORK,
10. CONNECTICUT,
11. NEW YORK,
12. NEW YORK,
13. CONNECTICUT,
14. NEW YORK,
15. CONNECTICUT,
16. CONNECTICUT,
17. NEW YORK,
18. NEW YORK,
19. CONNECTICUT,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,