The Italian Teacher(63)



“Oh,” Pinch says, sitting up, “sure. That’s a name from the past. She mentioned me for some reason?”

“Just that she dated Bear Bavinsky’s son at college, and actually had an opportunity to meet your father once.”

“Yes, that’s all true. But look,” Pinch says, “what exactly do you need? Does this have to do with Mallard?”

“With what? I’m just looking for background on your father’s career.”

“To what end?”

“A profile. We want to say how unjustly overlooked your father is,” Connor explains meekly. “That’s all.”

“Bear is overlooked again? Isn’t the consensus that my father is just another minor postwar painter?”

“Not in our books.”

“You haven’t spoken to him, you said?”

“I tried; no answer.”

“Going through me is best. You did the right thing.” Pinch is calming down. This kid is no threat. “Shall we get a proper drink?” He raises his arm for a waiter. “Normally, I don’t like to say much about my father. But if it’s just fact-checking, and for a student of Cilla Barrows, I’m willing to help. But not on the record.”

“Oh, yes, I totally get that,” Connor says, evidently delighted. “So basically, my interest is Bavinsky’s recent works. All I’ve been able to dig up so far relates to his old stuff. I know about the early Life-Stills that he sold. And I know about the later Life-Stills that he kept off the market. Then there’s all the rumors about his recent work, which nobody seems to have actually seen. That, for me, would be the mother lode. I’d love to get images of any recent paintings. I talked to his representation at the Petros Gallery, and they said maybe you’d help?”

“They told you that?” he responds, incredulous. “I’ll tell you now: Nobody is getting images of Bear’s new art.” Pinch has studied all the Life-Stills at the studio in France, but has himself never viewed Dad’s ongoing work; Bear has kept it strictly secret for years. Eva certainly has no clue. She doesn’t even represent Bear. Perhaps she’s hoping to tweeze out info herself, using this boy reporter as her proxy. “Let’s stick to your background questions.”

“Right, sure. So, like, my approach is how Bear Bavinsky is this lost modernist classic. The point I want to make, basically, is that Bavinsky is this proto-iconoclast following his own vision.” He stops. “Why are you rolling your eyes?”

“Didn’t realize I had. But I’m a bit wary of art journalism. Most of the time you guys reduce everything to jargon or to sales figures. Neither, in the case of my father, explains anything. If you want to make him look important in your article, you certainly shouldn’t mention past sales, which’ll be worse than any flash-in-the-pan star advertised on every other page of your magazine.”

“Actually, the fact that Bear Bavinsky is not finance driven is what I plan to celebrate. Especially with everything going on.”

“What’s going on?”

“Money, everywhere. But honestly? The magazine is not market driven. If anything, the market follows us. Which isn’t meant as an incentive. Which I know it wouldn’t be.”

Pinch chuckles: This journalist, pitching a tribute to the noble artist who is aloof to worldly rewards—while trying to lure the artist’s son by hinting at higher sale prices! “I don’t doubt your magazine’s high ethics. But galleries do buy all your ads, right? Rather a coincidence that the articles end up reading like their wall text.”

“Have you had a chance to look at us lately?” Connor asks delicately. “We’re not like that.”

“Let’s hear your questions.”

“Okay, so I know your father works mainly in Key Biscayne now, but he summers in France, right? Which is where you and professor Barrows went that time, correct? Now, where exactly?”

“The south of France. You can leave it at that.”

“Cool. And, um, his new works? When will we see those? And are they Life-Stills? Or are they something new and different?”

To remain the gatekeeper, Pinch must assert an air of authority, as if he were his father’s spokesman. “When I visit his cottage in France, the art studio is a separate building, and it’s locked, and I respect that. That’s as much as I’m comfortable saying.”

Despite this scant assistance, Connor and the editors at Artforum piece together a story months later. The cover art is a 1962 classic (Throat and Shoulder XVI). As for the article, there’s no mention of Mallard. It’s fluff about Bear standing apart from other contemporary artists, escaping the post-Pop hangover and conceptualist dogma, exactly as he once defied Abstract Expressionist dogma and the color-field purists. The magazine extols his cult status among those returning to figurative art, speaks of the enduring mystery around his ongoing work these past decades, and concludes by calling him an “artist’s artist”—that term of fatal praise, meaning no normal person knows of Bear Bavinsky anymore.

But Eva Petros is not a normal person.





53


“Heavens to Betsy!” she says. “I am so relieved to get you.” Prompted by the Artforum article, Eva is planning an exhibition of Bavinskys from private collections. She hopes to gather about half of the Life-Stills that Bear sold early in his career.

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