The Italian Teacher(91)
Pinch arranges an advance viewing for the Bavinsky children. At Bear’s memorial, several of them spoke with dejection about how Dad never invited them to a single show or allowed them to visit any of his studios. Eleven of Bear’s children make the trip to New York, and are herded together for brief remarks from their brother before entering. “Over a lifetime of painting, Dad produced two main series, just a few dozen major works in total. That’s all, from thousands of paintings that he started, nearly all of which he destroyed,” Pinch says. “For those outside our family who care about art, the Life-Stills mean the most. But the paintings in the next room, I think you’ll find, mean something specifically for us. To each of you.” He nods from person to person.
“If the show is for us,” a sibling quips, “I assume we get to keep the paintings, right?”
Eva breaks in, promising wine and canapés, leading the Bavinsky offspring into her new postindustrial Brooklyn gallery.
Once inside, the siblings stop short. Because, on the walls, it’s them. Not thighs and throats of unknown women but Bear’s family, each member depicted in a separate portrait, their faces from years before, looking out as if at the painter himself. Birdie, Age 15 is especially upsetting. If Pinch shuts his eyes, he can hear her weeping outside the Roman studio. Inscribed in each face is harm that Bear inflicted. The series is a late message from their father: He never forgot them, no matter how it seemed; he knew that he’d wounded them. The paintings are remorse made visible.
Pinch stands there, rigid with anxiety, stuffing himself with salted peanuts from his cupped palm, flung in bunches into his mouth, as when a boy at Mishmish Shapiro’s party. He’s avoiding the sight of the portraits. (It’s difficult with eyes staring from every canvas.) Instead he watches his siblings, all of whom stand before their own image. Pinch imagines others walking around this gallery: Natalie and his grandmother Ruth, Mom with her back to him, turning, raising her eyebrows at him, smiling. He smiles back, choking up, and looks for an exit. Outside, he looks at the brick frontage of Petros 2.0, emblazoned with Murakami-inspired graffiti mural. Someone taps his shoulder.
“That stuff is by our father?” Birdie says. “For real?”
Briefly, he is caught out—then realizes she means this as awe.
“When you see what he accomplished, what he left behind,” Birdie continues, “maybe he was right how he acted. Would it be better if he’d shown up for softball games, only to die without doing what he knew, knew, would be so great? It’s bigger than us. Bigger than us, Charlie.” Moved, she sniffs.
“Happy. Just am.” He hugs her, then steps back shyly. “A rare squeeze from your little brother.”
“More of those!” she commands, wiping under her lower lids, avoiding the eyeliner. “Oh, Daddy! The art was so much better than the man.”
74
Through the coming weeks, the culture pilgrims file into the Bavinsky show, reveling in the work of a painter who is both satisfyingly obscure to the masses and pleasingly wicked in character. Nobody wants a well-behaved artist.
In a press release, the Petros Gallery declares that attendance broke all previous records. It says this of all its shows, but the claim is almost true this time. Articles about the Bavinsky revival invariably cite Connor Thomas, “who is completing the official biography of the artist.” All the publicity prompts a bidding war for his manuscript, leading to a seven-house auction and a juicy advance. He has become the definitive voice of Bavinsky studies, and uses his role to lavish praise on “the Faces,” as the late series has become known.
When Connor phones with research questions, Pinch can’t resist: “I’m so glad you came around to these paintings.”
“Ohmigod, they were always amazing. I was only absorbing how radical they were. Given his facture. You know?”
Pinch doesn’t know. But he supposes that this is how culture works: The taste-makers call something important until it becomes so, making themselves important in the process.
“This bankers’ association in Frankfurt is paying me to talk about the peacemaking powers of art, whatever that means!” Connor boasts. “Eight thousand bucks for a half-hour gabfest. And they’re flying me business.”
Neither Pinch nor Connor delves into that awkward time at the cottage. The journalist behaves as if they’re old soldiers together, while Pinch dutifully provides any answers required: Bear’s views on other painters and aesthetics generally, where he lived when producing particular works, plus Pinch’s own reminiscences, insights, speculations. When Connor shows him a draft of the manuscript, Pinch finds his own words ventriloquized throughout. There’s also plenty that he never knew.
For example, how wealthy his father’s family was. Not simply “in the furniture business,” as Bear said, but owners of the largest such enterprise in the Midwest, including factories, warehouses, distribution centers, which he left behind to pursue the life of an artist. He inherited a small fortune when his father died in 1938, which explains why Bear never fretted about making a living. “Live as if money doesn’t exist, kiddo, only choices!” Somehow Pinch hadn’t questioned how his father afforded such an expensive motto.
Connor also unearthed that old story about Bear jumping from his schoolhouse window to see if he’d fly. It seems to be true, confirmed by medical records: both legs and four vertebrae fractured, a body cast from age seven to nine. Connor excerpts a 1978 interview with Der Spiegel, in which Bear mentions undergoing numerous surgeries in childhood, stating that he still suffers intense back pain at the easel and that the discomfort worsens with age; to paint has become excruciating. Regarding that childhood accident, Bear told the German magazine: