NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Bel and Steve left Lambert at home because dogs are not allowed in the National Gallery. They want to look at some paintings in relation to Artie Bliemitch’s work before we go on to her studio. Steve is embarrassed to find the works he is looking for, Rembrandt’s portraits of Jacob Trip and that of his wife Margretha Geer, are in London’s National Gallery not here in Washington. “Sorry about this Fred, I felt sure they were here!” He strides past the museum guard in the doorway who seems to be looking past us, unmoving like a statue, and then reappears from the next room. “No more Rembrandts in there.”
“Here’s Lucretia, Steve, about to commit suicide. Look at that dagger. Can you tell where the point is?” Bel has also pointed out to me the big faceted jewel standing out from its setting in heavy impasto.
“She was raped you know Fred. A most consequential rape too.”
“So that’s the point, is it?”
“Oh Steve!”
“It was Sextus Tarquinias, Steve.
“So the story goes Bel.”
“Who was she Steve, beyond being Rembrandt’s subject?”
“Don’t forget, Fred, that rape and suicide led to the over throw of the Roman monarchy.”
“I can’t forget poor Lucretia. Rape seems more important to me.”
“But Bel, Steve is talking about a basic political change in Roman life.”
“Yes Fred, and men have gone on raping women ever since. We don’t find that historical lesson if we only look at the political fall out.”
“This argument could go on and on Bel. Rembrandt is provoking us. What is it about the Trips Steve?”
“For one thing the old man is sitting with his night cap, dressing gown and walking stick, which strikes me as surprisingly informal, because Trip was a very wealthy weapons merchant. I would have expected something formal”
“Sounds like he ran the ‘Interarms’ of the 17th Century.”
“Yeah! Too bad Sam Cummings didn’t have the big “R” to immortalize him.”
“And who may I ask, Steve, is Sam?”
“Bel, you must remember he operated Interarms here in Alexandria for years. One of the biggest weapons dealers around.”
“Oh Steve, how could it have slipped my mind?”
“Okay Bel.”
“Steve your interest in those warehouses on South Union Street has always worried me honey,”
“And to reassure you Bel, I keep telling you, it was strictly professional.”
Bel points to her leg. “Pull the other one big guy!”
“What else Steve, why did you want to show me the Trip portrait?”
“It’s the texture Fred. He used an unusual mixture of yellow and red lake pigment bulked out with smalt which left dark translucent ridges of impasto.”
“Smalt, did you say smalt?
“Smalt is the oldest form of cobalt blue pigment. He sometimes used it as an additive to speed the drying time of the paint.”
“You remember Artie’s ‘Van Rijn’s Express’ Fred?”
“Yes vividly Bel, that swooping stroke bellying across the bottom with those exaggerated ridges of translucent impasto.”
“So guys, shall we get away from Mr. Trip and his wife, as the relevant dismal brown oily residues are all hanging on the other side of the Atlantic?”
“Bel, I take it you’re not into Rembrandt.”
“Not to the extent Steve is, Fred. I prefer the bright lights of impressionism and much that followed.” We move on to the East Wing where Bel points out a work in front of Steve. “What do you make of that Fred?”
“It hangs like no other!”
“And we are out of candle light and into day light!”
“We are Bel, but it is just a grid with bits filled in, some in color some in gray.”
“Up, down, and across, along with the primary colors. Those are the basics here Fred.”
“I see Steve, but what am I supposed to be looking at?”
“You might consider the balance of masses and the proportions of the grid.”
“It is the only painting around here that hangs as if it were diamond shaped, with two corners pointing up and down and the other two pointing left and right.”
“It’s Piet Mondrian’s Lozenge Composition. Artie found it inspirational.” We stand silently regarding the proportions and masses held within black lines of the grid. Some lines are heavier than others. The lightest most luminous gray shape is also the only true rectangle. Its upper right corner touches the edge of the canvas where two of the black lines describing its sides run off the edge. All the colored the shapes look like triangles and the others rectangles until you notice one corner snipped off in each, making more than four angles. Bel leans too close and the voice of the guard calls out. She draws back, undistracted.
“You can’t see much of brush work. See his signature down here?”
‘Where, I don’t see anything written there, Bel.”
There’s a faint ‘P.M.’ hidden in the black down at the bottom, see?”
“You notice the colored shapes are off center on the sides Steve?”
“Bel, most of the painting is gray, like the sky outside.”
“It is Steve, and those subtleties seldom show up in reproductions.”
Steve is anxious to move on and get over the Artie’s studio. He apologizes again for his memory lapse and leads us quickly out of the Gallery to the car for the forty minute drive out of the District and over the Potomac to Northern Virginia. As we look left down the river we can see a gleeming silvery building in the distance. “What an irony. That’s the DIA building.”
“Where’s the irony in that Steve?”
“The irony is that DIA stands for Defense Intellegence Agency and it is a secret intelegence organization.”
“Some secret! … shiney as a mirror.”
“Yeah, they reflect the world in ways we shall never know.”
When we get to Artie’s above the Pie Shop on Maxwell Avenue, Bel and I sit down on the old couch and Steve walks over to examine the work on her bench.
There are ten wooden boxes lying on their sides across her workbench, all about three feet long but well under a foot in width and height. They all look triangular, most are painted, in subtly different shades of gray, and there’s one in each primary color, red, blue, yellow.
Her cat sleeps cradled in a warped piece of mat black cardboard. Its fur shines next to the aloe plant at the end of the bench. Artie wears an old white damask tablecloth cut into the shape of a lab coat and sewn with bright purple stitching. It is splashed with the primary colors she uses in her latest work. The left side is torn showing her black jeans. Bounder has the edge in his mouth trying to tear it further, but she stops him with her hand around his long graying nose and pulls him away from her side.
“Down Bounder, Down!” The old golden retriever pants when she lets go. His tail swishes across the floor like a soft brush, and when raised becomes a blond banner waving through the sunbeams. After looking up at her panting, he sinks down to the floor with a squeak and a few grunts. He has trouble getting his tail comfortable as he settles at his designated place on the shredded remains of a blue Kilim by the wall. It has turned cold today after so much spring-like warmth in February. We smell baking dough from the ovens below, when the heat comes on, blowing warm air out of a vent near the dog. Bounder gets up again and presses his nose to the vent. He runs his paw across it as if to remove the obstruction to his interest, but Artie steps over and settles him down again. Sfumato is roused for a moment, stretches and looks across the room at us blinking with feline composure as she relaxes again by the aloe plant.
“Congratulations on the show at Gentileschi’s Artie.”
“Thanks Bel, I made enough to last the rest of the year.”
“We have been worried about you.”
“You were, Steve? What’s to worry?”
“In a word Artie, Tassi.”
“Augustino, that jerk! Steve I don’t care if he is in or out of jail. I don’t know why Daisy got so wound up about it.”
“After what happened to you we thought …”
“Steve there was nothing between me and him. I got mugged in the alley behind Donna Tuzia’s. Donna spread it around that he raped me or something.”
“Why?”
“Because she hated his guts. She had a friend on the police force and thought she could get him arrested or at least embarrassed.”
“Why didn’t you explain when we saw you in the street that horrible day back in Florence?”
“I couldn’t explain anything at that time. I was having personal problems and then been mugged. I mean it was all too much at once.”
“So Artie now we know it was nothing to do with Augustino.”
“Bel it is none of Daisy’s business any way. I told her to shut up about it.”
“ ‘nuff said Artie.”
Artie has picked up a black not quite triangular box and looks it over before waving it at us. “This one is called “’Box of Lozenges” and here’s a lozenge.
“So Steve do you recognize anything?”
“Yup, I remember. Did you put Piet’s initials on there Artie?”
“Oh Artie you have moved him into three dimensions!”
“No Fred, I put my own initials on there. Moved from the ‘Neo Plastic’ to the plastic. Like pulling out a drawer Fred!”
“What do you mean Artie?”
“Fred, imagine you are standing in front of that painting. Now imagine that each shape has a handle on it that you can pull on. If you could pull it out you’d get a shape like this box.”
“Or I’d be apprehended for pulling down the masterpiece!”
“That’s why I said ‘imagine’ Fred.”
Artie has put the box into a framework like a chest of drawers with an opening to receive each of the boxes on the table. It sits on a couple of sawhorses cut down to half height. “Okay Steve, you want to give me a hand here?” She places the black triangular box in the bottom opening, and it is a perfect fit. They keep loading in the drawer-like pieces until every opening is filled reproducing the colors and shapes and proportions of Mondrian’s Tableau No. IV on the rectangular face of their chest-like container.
