The Italian Teacher(12)
Pinch adds Caravaggio to his list of “the best artists,” composed entirely of those his father admires: Sickert and Elsheimer, Dürer and Rembrandt, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, Mantegna and Soutine. By the same token, Pinch reviles Correggio and abominates Renoir, his father’s second-worst painter, outmatched only by that clown Picasso.
At length, Pinch ponders the three paintings by Caravaggio. “The shadowy parts,” he attempts, having readied this comment for several minutes, “are like your paintings. Dad?” He turns to Bear, fearing that he erred.
“Good eye, Charlie!”
“But which of those men is Saint Matthew?”
“It’s all him. There. And there. And there.”
“He looks different.”
“He gets older in each painting.”
Pinch looks from Matthew to Matthew to Matthew, but cannot process three ages as the same man.
When they emerge into the roasting sun, “the best art store in Rome” has reopened. Colored chaos reigns within: paint sets for beginners and stacks of oil crayons; sable brushes—brights, flats, and rounds; and canvas rolls, down the walls like Doric columns. “This is where you come in handy, old man,” Bear tells Pinch and beckons for the clerk.
When father and son leave, laden with supplies procured by Pinch’s own words, the child is emboldened to ask: “One time, Dad, would you like to paint me? Starting with me right now, then me later when I’m bigger, and me when I’m old?”
“I’ll go one better. How’s about I show you to do it yourself?”
“To paint?”
Ever since they moved to the fancy Marinetti apartment, Pinch has been allowed to visit the art studio only by invitation, and he is forbidden to approach Dad’s supplies. This is a spectacular treat—and it was supposed to be for someone else. After a few minutes of walking, Pinch forces himself to ask: “Does it matter about Birdie?”
“What about her?”
“That she’s waiting?”
“You saw, kiddo. She didn’t want hide nor hair of me. Tell me if I’m wrong.”
Pinch stops, lips parting. But the boy must hasten along. Dad is striding away, and Bear Bavinsky does not slow his pace.
12
Birdie sits outside the art studio, chin on her knees, having rightly guessed that her father would end up here. She claims to want nothing to do with Bear and Pinch, yet follows them in, plonking herself on a spattered stool, unhappily fiddling with a plumb line.
“You joining or not?” Bear asks, stuffing tobacco into his pipe. “Pouting like that, you don’t hurt anybody but yourself.”
Pinch wants to intercede, to warn her that Dad won’t say sorry—just come over, please.
Instead, Bear is talking again, mouth to the boy’s ear, “We can’t make her, if she wants to be that way.” He places a charcoal pencil in Pinch’s hand, takes out a sketch pad, swishes to a virgin page. In full voice, he begins the lesson: “Charlie, I need you to extend your arm. Now, look at your hand from a distance. Okay, bring it close again. Same hand, but not the same object. Question is, kiddo, how to capture it, its essence. People talk about accuracy, but what’s that mean? There’s a gap always between what the object is and what the picture isn’t. And that gap, Charlie, that’s where the art is. Too hard?”
Pinch, uncomprehending, shakes his head.
“Good boy. Now, see that kettle? Close one eye and use your pencil to measure out its parts. Like so. The handle in relation to the underside now. Copy it in simple lines, concentrating on the dimensions. Once you’ve got the proportions, step back, then in. Remember: Look far, draw close.”
Birdie burps.
“I’m showing your brother something.”
“I’m the one who’s visiting.”
“You could’ve taken part, Bird. But you can’t disrupt. Those are the rules.”
Pinch glances up at their father, willing him to include her.
“Charlie, an artist doesn’t see as normal people do,” Bear resumes. “When normal people look, they see events: a bus stop, a pretty girl waiting, the rain. When an artist looks, he sees geometry. Everything is a shape. And within each shape, more shapes. We teach ourselves to overrule what the eyes tell us. Like Cézanne said, ‘Treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone.’ All right now, shut your eyes and describe the studio.”
“Right now?”
“Not yesterday.”
When the boy finishes, they check his recollected inventory, chuckling at all the oversights. “That bathtub, right there! Son of mine—I ought to disinherit you!” He kisses Pinch’s cheek, as if only the two of them were here.
Pinch says, “Can you try, Dad?”
Eyes closed, Bear describes for more than four minutes, adding dozens of items that Pinch hadn’t seen, excluding only one major object: Birdie herself. “The shears, kiddo. Where are my shears?” He cuts into a roll of preprimed canvas, slicing freehand but perfectly straight, a piece as large as Pinch’s mattress. With a carpenter’s speed, Bear hammers together stretchers and crossbars, tacks the canvas to the frame, mallets the corners into true, pulls the canvas taut with pliers, gently taps in wedges, and lifts it onto the easel, erecting a wall between them and her. He and Pinch pass minutes drizzling linseed oil onto pigments, swirling the muller in a figure eight to achieve the desired paste, adding drips of turpentine to thin it ever so slightly, Bear explaining that he seeks a roughness on the side of strokes, an uncooperativeness, a slowness.