Jose Somoza - Art of Murder

How did she feel doing all this? What she was supposed to feel, what the painter wanted her to feel? When she was doing The White Queen it was claustrophobia, complete freedom, unease, then claustrophobia once more. 'It's an incredible profession’ he admitted. 'What do you do for a living?' she asked. I'm a radiologist, he told her. After that there were dates, evenings out, shared nights.

If anyone had asked him to define their relationship, he would have responded without hesitation: strange and exciting.

Everything about her fascinated him. The way she sometimes made up. The exotic essences she occasionally used as perfumes. The rich elegance of her wardrobe. Her complete indifference when it came to showing herself off naked. Her unabashed bisexuality. The scandalous exercises she had to do for some painters. And in spite of all this, her incredible naivete. Contradictions were the norm for her. He savoured her qualities until he was full of them, and then found himself wishing for a little bit of simplicity. After spying on her copulating bacteria, Beatriz became simple again. Why couldn't Clara be the same after she had wiped all the paint off? Why did he always have this terrible sense of fetishism, as if sleeping with her was like kissing a luxury shoe?

Recently he had been forcing her to argue with him – it was his way of trying to rediscover this simplicity. All couples argue. We do too. Conclusion: we are like all couples. The logic of this argument seemed to him watertight. Their last fight had been on her birthday, 16 April. They went out to eat in a new restaurant – candelabra, accordeons and dishes their tongues had to do yoga to pronounce – he had discovered. Jorge closes his eyes and can see her just as she was that night: a Lacroix leather dress and a choker with the designer's name on a silver ring. This and nothing more – no underwear, because in the morning she was appearing naked in a work by Jaume Oreste. Jorge kept glancing from the ring to the curve of her breasts pressed together by the dress. As she breathed, her breasts looked like two white whales, and the ring swung to and fro like a ship's porthole. He was excited of course (he always was when he went out with her), but he also felt a strange desire to destroy all this magnificent harmony. Like the temptation a child feels to smash the most expensive piece of crockery. He began stealthily, without revealing his real intentions.

'Did you know "Monsters" was the most popular exhibition the Haus der Kunst in Munich has ever had? Pedro told me so the other day.' 'I'm not surprised.'

'And in Bilbao they're wetting themselves trying to get "Flowers" to the Guggenheim, but Pedro says it'll cost them an arm and a leg. But that's nothing: everyone is saying that the new collection they're putting on this year, "Rembrandt" by Van Tysch, is going to top "Flowers" and "Monsters" both in visitors and in the price of the works. Some are even saying it's going to be the most important exhibition in history. In other words, your Maestro has succeeded in making hyperdramatic art one of the most lucrative businesses of the twenty-first century…'

A good line to throw, Captain Achab! The two symmetrical whales rise up as one. The silver ship trembles. 'And you, as always, reckon the world has gone mad.'

'No, the world always has been mad, it's not that. The fact is, I don't agree with the opinion most people have about Van Tysch.' 'Which is?' 'That he's a genius.' 'He is.'

'I'm sorry, Van Tysch is very smart, but it's not the same thing. My brother says that HD art was created by Tanagorsky, Kalima and Buncher at the start of the seventies. They were true artists, but they starved. Then along came Van Tysch, who as a young man had inherited a fortune from a distant relative in the United States. He invented a system for buying and selling the works, created a Foundation to manage his production, and he devoted himself to lining his pockets thanks to hyperdramatism. A brilliant business idea!' 'So what's wrong with that?'

As usual, Clara was imperturbable. She was accustomed to controlling all her impulses, and used this power to her advantage against him. It was hard for Jorge to make her lose her patience, because a canvas' patience is boundless.

'What's wrong is that it's a business, it's not art. Although wasn't it your beloved Van Tysch who once came out with the definition "art is money"?' 'And he was right.'

'He was right? Was Rembrandt a genius because today his paintings are worth millions?'

'No, but if Rembrandt's paintings weren't worth millions today, who would care whether he was a genius or not?'

Jorge was about to respond when a dollop of cream (from the dessert-rolled crepes stuffed with cream) fell on to his tie (plop! Captain Achab, a seagull just shat on you), which meant he had to busy himself with his napkin while she carried on.

'Van Tysch understood that to create a new kind of art all you need is for it to make money.' 'That line of argument only applies to business, darling.'

'Art is a business, Jorge’ she declared, unmoved, while the candle flame blinked, photocopied by her blue eyes.

'My God, listen to the opinion of a work of art! So according to you, a professional painting, art is a business?' 'Aha. Just like medicine.'

Aha. That dreadful habit of hers when she spoke. She opened her mouth and arched one of her false, painted eyebrows as she pronounced the symmetrical word: Aha.

'You charge for your X-ray plates just like a painter does for his paintings’ she went on. 'Aren't you tired of always saying that some colleague or other ought to realise that medicine is an art? There you go.' 'There I go what?'

'Medicine is an art, which means it's also a business. Today it's all the same: art and business. The real artists know there's no difference. At least there isn't nowadays.'

Tine, let's admit art is a business. So then hyperdramatic art is the business of buying and selling people, isn't it?'

'I can see where you're heading, but we models are not people when we are works of art: we're paintings.'

'Don't talk such nonsense. That rubbish is fine to pull the wool over the public's eyes. But people are not paintings.'

'Now you sound like those experts who at the end of the nineteenth century said that impressionist paintings weren't real paintings. But art history finally accepted impressionism, and then cubism, and now it is accepting hyperdramatism.'

'Because it's a profitable business?' She shrugged without saying anything. 'Look, Clara, I don't want to be an iconoclast, but hyperdramatic art consists of putting young women like you naked or semi-naked in "artistic" poses. Young men, too, of course. And a lot of adolescents, children even. But how many mature men or women do you see in HD works of art? Go on, tell me! Who would pay twenty million euros to take home a painted fat old man, and stand him there in a pose?'

'But the work that gave the title "Monsters" to Van Tysch's collection is of two hugely fat people. And it's worth far more than twenty million, Jorge.'

'What about the HD ornaments? Converting someone into an Ashtray or a Chair, what's that? Is that art too? And what about art-shocks? And "dirty" paintings?…'

'All that is completely illegal, and has nothing to do with legitimate hyperdramatism.'

'Let's drop it. I know it's a sin to take the name of God in vain.'

'Would you like another crepe, or is the one you're dripping down your front enough?' She pointed to her plate, where the rolled-up crepes lay untouched. This was another consequence of her work: she kept a tight rein over her calorie intake, and controlled her weight with portable electronic gadgets – the latest fad. She often dined only on high-vitamin juices, but never seemed to be hungry.