An Object of Beauty: A Novel Read Online Free
Lacey: a deep brunette whose trademark was efficiency. This last quality made her perfect for dealing with serious clients who expected no nonsense. Certain dour customers asked for her by name, which gave Tanya a splendid position as an up-and-comer in the company.
Lacey had a keen eye for rivals, and at one of our lunches only a week after the elevator promotion, she pronounced Tanya an “up-talking Canadian. She touts Art History 101 like it’s a PhD, but she also knows that cleavage works.” I checkmarked this comment, since Lacey was capable of an equally manipulative display of cleavage at the right time, for the right person, for the right ends.
“Maybe you have to get to know her,” I mistakenly said.
“There’s nothing there to know,” she rasped, and held up her fist as if to punch me. “They brought up a Picasso the other day, and I sawher look at the label on the back to find out who painted it.
She had to look at the label.
Plus she’s financed. I think her last name is Wham-o or something. Tanya Wham-o. When someone less capable is ahead of me, I am
not pleased
. It makes me insane.”
“Makes you insane? You already are,” I said. Then, “What if someone more capable is ahead of you?”
“That’s even worse,” she said.
This being a cool spring, Lacey’s clothes were less revealing than in the torrid summer, and she relied on fashion quirks to make up for the lost power. She buttoned up her blouse neck high, over which she had donned a child’s sweater, a size large but still too small, which clung to her and rode up three inches above her waist. The food came.
“I’m thinking of getting a dog,” she said.
“What kind?” I asked.
“One that’s near death.”
“Why?”
“Less of a commitment,” she answered.
This was Saturday. Lacey would return to work and process a few midrange pictures that were being delivered. She liked the Saturday deliveries because they were special arrangements always brought in by clients, since the art handlers only worked weekdays. Sotheby’s wasn’t a pawnshop, so the sellers usually weren’t desperate; they were just sellers. They might be a New Jersey couple who had heard about a successful sale of an artist they owned, or people with inherited pictures, or a young man helping his elderly relatives through the hoops of a Sotheby’s contract. Pictures from Connecticut were generally overframed decorator concoctions surrounding dubiously attributed horse paintings. But pictures from New Jersey were usually the genuine article, purchased years ago from galleries or even from the artists themselves. The pictures typically bore ugly frames created by local framers who used goldpaint rather than gold leaf or slathered them in a dull green or off-white substance reminiscent of caulk. One elderly couple hobbled in carting a small but sensational Milton Avery in a frame so ghastly that Cherry Finch looked at the painting with her fingers squared so as to screen it out. When Cherry told the couple the picture would be estimated at sixty to eighty thousand, the gentleman’s phantom suspenders almost popped. They had paid three hundred dollars for it in 1946, the year it was painted, and the price was still stuck to the back.
Nude Bathers,
Milton Avery, 1946
25.5 × 35.5 in.
Milton Avery was an isolated figure in American painting, not falling neatly into any category. He would reduce figures and landscapes to a few broad patches of color: a big swath of black would be the sea, a big swath of yellow would be the sand, a big swath of blue would be the sky, and that would be it. His pictures were always polite, but they were polite in the way that a man with a gun might be polite: there was plenty to back up his request for attention. Though his style changed only slightly during his career, he was not formulaic, indicated by theexistence of as many paintings that worked as ones that didn’t. The painting that Cherry was looking at was one that
Lacey had a keen eye for rivals, and at one of our lunches only a week after the elevator promotion, she pronounced Tanya an “up-talking Canadian. She touts Art History 101 like it’s a PhD, but she also knows that cleavage works.” I checkmarked this comment, since Lacey was capable of an equally manipulative display of cleavage at the right time, for the right person, for the right ends.
“Maybe you have to get to know her,” I mistakenly said.
“There’s nothing there to know,” she rasped, and held up her fist as if to punch me. “They brought up a Picasso the other day, and I sawher look at the label on the back to find out who painted it.
She had to look at the label.
Plus she’s financed. I think her last name is Wham-o or something. Tanya Wham-o. When someone less capable is ahead of me, I am
not pleased
. It makes me insane.”
“Makes you insane? You already are,” I said. Then, “What if someone more capable is ahead of you?”
“That’s even worse,” she said.
This being a cool spring, Lacey’s clothes were less revealing than in the torrid summer, and she relied on fashion quirks to make up for the lost power. She buttoned up her blouse neck high, over which she had donned a child’s sweater, a size large but still too small, which clung to her and rode up three inches above her waist. The food came.
“I’m thinking of getting a dog,” she said.
“What kind?” I asked.
“One that’s near death.”
“Why?”
“Less of a commitment,” she answered.
This was Saturday. Lacey would return to work and process a few midrange pictures that were being delivered. She liked the Saturday deliveries because they were special arrangements always brought in by clients, since the art handlers only worked weekdays. Sotheby’s wasn’t a pawnshop, so the sellers usually weren’t desperate; they were just sellers. They might be a New Jersey couple who had heard about a successful sale of an artist they owned, or people with inherited pictures, or a young man helping his elderly relatives through the hoops of a Sotheby’s contract. Pictures from Connecticut were generally overframed decorator concoctions surrounding dubiously attributed horse paintings. But pictures from New Jersey were usually the genuine article, purchased years ago from galleries or even from the artists themselves. The pictures typically bore ugly frames created by local framers who used goldpaint rather than gold leaf or slathered them in a dull green or off-white substance reminiscent of caulk. One elderly couple hobbled in carting a small but sensational Milton Avery in a frame so ghastly that Cherry Finch looked at the painting with her fingers squared so as to screen it out. When Cherry told the couple the picture would be estimated at sixty to eighty thousand, the gentleman’s phantom suspenders almost popped. They had paid three hundred dollars for it in 1946, the year it was painted, and the price was still stuck to the back.
Nude Bathers,
Milton Avery, 1946
25.5 × 35.5 in.
Milton Avery was an isolated figure in American painting, not falling neatly into any category. He would reduce figures and landscapes to a few broad patches of color: a big swath of black would be the sea, a big swath of yellow would be the sand, a big swath of blue would be the sky, and that would be it. His pictures were always polite, but they were polite in the way that a man with a gun might be polite: there was plenty to back up his request for attention. Though his style changed only slightly during his career, he was not formulaic, indicated by theexistence of as many paintings that worked as ones that didn’t. The painting that Cherry was looking at was one that
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