William Gaddis - The Recognitions

Valentine shrugged. — I know, of course, he said. — But I doubt that Brown will. It will cut the price down badly.

— The price! What's that to do with. .

— Good heavens, I don't care about it. But your employer is rather sensitive about those things, you know. After another pause, without taking his eyes from the painting, Valentine stepped back, and the figure behind him moved as quickly as his own shadow in the glare of the bare light above them. -It's magnificent, isn't it, Valentine said quietly. He stood entirely absorbed in it, and when he spoke murmured as he might have talking to himself. — The simplicity. . it's the way I would paint…

There was no sound after his voice, and nothing moved to move him; until his eyes lowered to the shadow streaking the floor beside him: at that Basil Valentine turned abruptly and cleared his throat. — Yes, a splendid sense of death there isn't there, he went on in the tone usual to him, more forceful and more casual at once. — Death before it became vulgar, he went on, walking down the room away from the painting, — when a certain few died with dignity. And the others, the people who went to earth quietly like dung. Eh? he added, turning. He threw his cigarette into the fireplace, lit another without offering one, and blew the thin smoke out compulsively in a steady stream. — Yes, there is what you wanted there, isn't there, in this painting? — Almost…

— Almost? Valentine repeated. He brought up the rold brilliance of his own eyes, to drive the feverish stare fixed upon him down to the floor between them. — Almost what?

— The. . strength, the delicacy, the tenderness without. . — Weakness, yes. Valentine kicked a book on the floor at his feet. — Pliny? what, for his discourse on colors? Yes thanks, I wouldn't mind a little of that myself, cognac is it? He held out the unwashed glass he was given while the bottle-neck clinked against it, but still looking at the damaged painting. — You do work fast, don't you. Yes, van der Goes was a fast painter himself, but one, the Portinari triptych I think it was, took him a good three years. But after all this is rather different isn't it, you know where you're going all the time. None of that feeling of, what was Valéry's line, that one can never finish a work of art? one only abandons it? But here there's none of that problem, is there. Eh? What's the matter.

— If one minute, first you say, or people say It's beautiful! and then if, when they find out it isn't what they were told, if it's a painting when they find out it was done by, or rather when they find out it wasn't done by who they thought. .

— No, no, not this evening, or not today is it? No, really, we won't settle that here now. It's not. . not the point, is it. Drawn by his eyes, Valentine faltered for the first time. — Or if it is the point? the whole point? And he looked away, to the damaged painting.

— What you said, about signing a picture? About that, that being all they care about, the law. .

— Modern forgeries, forgeries of modern painters, Valentine dismissed him quickly, but looking about the room found only the man and the damaged painting to draw his eyes. — And be careful, he said, forcing the ease in his voice. — If Brown should decide that there's as much money in modern painters as there is in his old masters, no, it's not funny, he's already threatened you with van Gogh. . He had commenced to pace the room, and paused to draw to him, with a toe of a black shoe, a detailed drawing which he picked up and studied. He held it up between them and said, — A remarkable likeness.

— A study, from the… last work.

— Yes, I see. And reversed, the mirrors? Backwards, like a contact print. Exactly like, and yet a perfect lie. The thing dropped from his fingers and he laughed. — You? the, what was it you said, the shambles of your work? What a pitifully selfish career! being lived, as you said? by something that uses you and then sheds you like a husk when its own ends are accomplished?

— Yes, but if the gods themselves…

— Is it worth. .

— If they cannot recall their. . gifts, to… redeem them, working them out, do you understand? living them through. .?

And Valentine turned quickly from those eyes back to the damaged painting leaned against the door, to murmur, — On second thought I believe I would have put another figure or two there in the lower left, the sense of ascendance in the upper part of the composition would gain a good deal…

— You?

— and the blue is rather light isn't it. I think if I'd done it myself I would have used a more. .

— But you didn't.

Basil Valentine turned on him slowly, and studied him for a few moments before he spoke. — My dear fellow, he brought out finally. — If you are this sensitive to any sort of criticism, I didn't come down here to…

— Why did you come down here?

— I came down to ask a favor of you. But if you are so painfully sensitive to criticism, such a self-conscious artist that. .

— No I, it's just, listen, criticism? It's the most important art now, it's the one we need most now. Criticism is the art we need most today. But not, don't you see? not the "if I'd done it myself. ." Yes, a, a disciplined nostalgia, disciplined recognitions but not, no, listen, what is the favor? Why did you come here?

Basil Valentine had dropped a cigarette on the stained floor; and stooping to get it, a suspender button at the back of his trousers came off, and he straightened up feeling half his trouser-seat hanging and the other half binding high. — That Patinir? he said. — The painting that Brown has just inside the door, hung opposite that idiotic portrait. I wanted to ask you if you'd mind making a copy of it for me. He put his hands in his pockets, to hitch his trousers up square, and spoke rapidly. — It wouldn't even have to be a perfect copy, you know, since the original doesn't exist. You didn't know? Brown had the painting heavily insured, and it was destroyed in a fire. At least he had the evidence that it was when the insurance company's experts came. He'd sawed off one end of it and he showed them that, pretty badly charred but not so much that it couldn't be identified as all that was left of the original, which he's waiting now to dispose of again, "in secret" of course. Yes, what's the matter? what's funny?

— These. I've done the same thing with these.

— What do you mean, the same thing? sawed the ends off and. .

— Kept them.

— What? What for?

— Proof.

— Proof? Basil Valentine stepped aside quickly as he passed, and watched him pull canvases away from the wall.

— This! he said holding one up. — Do you see? It was going to be a study, it was a study for this. . this new work, this van Eyck.

— But what? The Annunciation? Valentine hitched up the sagging side of his trousers. — And it's not turning out what you wanted? But it's an old thing. On linen? What is it? and this, these, earrings? Who is she? These old Byzantine-looking hoops, what is it? Who is she? This? a study for a van Eyck?

— No, but for what I want.

— What are you talking about? And this, what is it? It's exquisite, this face, the reproach, like the faces, the Virgin in other things you've done, the reproach in this face. Your work, it's old isn't it, but a little always shows through, yes something, semper aliquid haeret? something always remains, something of you. But what are you talking about? Valentine found the feverish eyes fixed on him. — Here, this. . I've brought down these pictures, these photographic details of, here, if you're going to bring the critics back to believing in Hubert van Eyck? And the, why we may enshrine your arm in a casket right over the door here? in Horatio Street? like Hubert van Eyck's right arm over the portals of the church of Saint Bavon's in Ghent? But what is it? what's the matter? what are you talking about, this proof? to prove what? Valentine demanded.