past lives were so enchanting, so replete with fascinating details, no one could doubt them.
She was the charming and eloquent queen. Though they were merely pawns, she made them feel like bishops.
Chapter 11
Les Trésors de Babette
Friday, May 10, 2013
Friday’s one-woman show at Les Trésors de Babette on Massachusetts Avenue in Indianapolis was mobbed from 6 pm when it opened to 9 pm when it closed. The exhibit, billed as Madeleine’s Ode à la Mort , had been heavily advertised and drew the curious and the morbid, clutches of students eager to mock art that people would actually buy, and throngs of sophisticated urban dwellers trolling for cheap prints and free wine. A dozen serious buyers and two free-lance reporters were also in attendance. Unfortunately, The Indianapolis Star did not send anyone; it had not had an art critic on staff in years. But one art critic from an influential magazine showed up.
Madeleine circulated enthusiastically. She ignored the grungy art students as best she could, focusing instead on the serious buyers with money and taste. She had no interest in discussing her techniques, her artistic philosophy, or her subject matter with students suffering from delusions of creativity.
Though she coveted the kind of publicity that guaranteed sales, she avoided the reporters because they knew almost nothing about art. They were there because of her peculiar relationship with one painting, that of Nicole Whitehead, a subject that could be sensationalized.
So the real focus of the artist’s mingling was the serious buyer, and there were, as always, very few of them. Only the comfortably rich could afford fifteen thousand a pop and only the loft-dwellers and mansion-owners had walls big enough to display the pictures as they should be displayed. Furthermore, only the most world-weary could bear to have one of her haunting subjects looking down upon them over dinner.
Madeleine’s subjects, at least to ordinary people, were very strange indeed. They were always people who were dead and they had names, real names. Some were famous personages who had died hundreds, even thousands, of years ago. Some, not famous at all, were people she once knew. When asked why she never painted living people, she said she didn’t want to steal their souls. Primitive people understood that, refusing to be photographed or painted. She respected the primitive sensibility. She did not work purely from imagination either. Real people provided all the inspiration she needed.
Madeleine’s unframed canvases were huge. Her style was called painterly, meaning her use of brushes and knives to manipulate the oil paint was obvious rather than concealed. The backgrounds were rendered in impasto swirls, blobs, and swipes of drab brown or gray or lavender, suggesting a fog or mist so palpable it seemed like a living thing. From the heavily textured fog or mist a smoothly painted human figure emerged like Lazarus coming back to life. Though haunted, most looked only slightly soiled by death. Their clothes were diaphanous drapes or shrouds. Their facial expressions, painted in a style reminiscent of Paul Cézanne’s, varied from faint bewilderment to surprise. Some looked resigned to their fate. No pet dog or homely object relieved the solitariness of the subject. Though the paintings were enough alike in theme and technique to be obviously the work of one artist, each included some distinctive element peculiar to the subject.
Sensitive viewers asked themselves, where had those haunted people been and where were they going now? What had they seen? Were the paintings about life or death? Was the viewer seeing the true character of the dead or not?
One of the visitors that night was a man dressed like the captain of a yacht, mysteriously appearing when she reached the painting called Nicole, Girl at the Dunes. The haunting picture was worthy of admiration, but the stranger seemed to be studying it as if seeing something no
She was the charming and eloquent queen. Though they were merely pawns, she made them feel like bishops.
Chapter 11
Les Trésors de Babette
Friday, May 10, 2013
Friday’s one-woman show at Les Trésors de Babette on Massachusetts Avenue in Indianapolis was mobbed from 6 pm when it opened to 9 pm when it closed. The exhibit, billed as Madeleine’s Ode à la Mort , had been heavily advertised and drew the curious and the morbid, clutches of students eager to mock art that people would actually buy, and throngs of sophisticated urban dwellers trolling for cheap prints and free wine. A dozen serious buyers and two free-lance reporters were also in attendance. Unfortunately, The Indianapolis Star did not send anyone; it had not had an art critic on staff in years. But one art critic from an influential magazine showed up.
Madeleine circulated enthusiastically. She ignored the grungy art students as best she could, focusing instead on the serious buyers with money and taste. She had no interest in discussing her techniques, her artistic philosophy, or her subject matter with students suffering from delusions of creativity.
Though she coveted the kind of publicity that guaranteed sales, she avoided the reporters because they knew almost nothing about art. They were there because of her peculiar relationship with one painting, that of Nicole Whitehead, a subject that could be sensationalized.
So the real focus of the artist’s mingling was the serious buyer, and there were, as always, very few of them. Only the comfortably rich could afford fifteen thousand a pop and only the loft-dwellers and mansion-owners had walls big enough to display the pictures as they should be displayed. Furthermore, only the most world-weary could bear to have one of her haunting subjects looking down upon them over dinner.
Madeleine’s subjects, at least to ordinary people, were very strange indeed. They were always people who were dead and they had names, real names. Some were famous personages who had died hundreds, even thousands, of years ago. Some, not famous at all, were people she once knew. When asked why she never painted living people, she said she didn’t want to steal their souls. Primitive people understood that, refusing to be photographed or painted. She respected the primitive sensibility. She did not work purely from imagination either. Real people provided all the inspiration she needed.
Madeleine’s unframed canvases were huge. Her style was called painterly, meaning her use of brushes and knives to manipulate the oil paint was obvious rather than concealed. The backgrounds were rendered in impasto swirls, blobs, and swipes of drab brown or gray or lavender, suggesting a fog or mist so palpable it seemed like a living thing. From the heavily textured fog or mist a smoothly painted human figure emerged like Lazarus coming back to life. Though haunted, most looked only slightly soiled by death. Their clothes were diaphanous drapes or shrouds. Their facial expressions, painted in a style reminiscent of Paul Cézanne’s, varied from faint bewilderment to surprise. Some looked resigned to their fate. No pet dog or homely object relieved the solitariness of the subject. Though the paintings were enough alike in theme and technique to be obviously the work of one artist, each included some distinctive element peculiar to the subject.
Sensitive viewers asked themselves, where had those haunted people been and where were they going now? What had they seen? Were the paintings about life or death? Was the viewer seeing the true character of the dead or not?
One of the visitors that night was a man dressed like the captain of a yacht, mysteriously appearing when she reached the painting called Nicole, Girl at the Dunes. The haunting picture was worthy of admiration, but the stranger seemed to be studying it as if seeing something no
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