The Portraitist

Each January thousands of portfolios arrive at our doors. Applicants draw themselves as themselves, also as Van Gogh and Edvard Munch, some portray their families, friends, construct mash ups, collages inclusive of photos, ephemera, text, both written and audio. Of these thousands, less than one hundred are accepted. Our job is not an easy one. The untalented are eliminated early on. Our students study not only the planes of the face, the geometry of the relationship between eyes and nose, mouth and ears, but they are also schooled in cosmeto-ethics, considering questions of similitude altered, i.e. is it acceptable to make subjects look younger, thinner, stronger, more hair? Should these decisions be fee-based and/or based on the power and desires of the subject? Is it acceptable to work from photographs, if a real-life setting is too hazardous, i.e. the portraitist would work in conditions in which mortal danger would be continuous? Again, should recompense for such risks enter the calculus? In halls smelling of turpentine and linseed oil, one could hear these questions debated.

Risk taking is no small matter for our select group of artists, trained like race horses. It happens. A phone call from an embassy, a bunker, a personal emissary from an unknown potentate knocks on the door one morning. There are occasions when the desire for a likeness seems to increase in proportion to impending mortality, as well as to an inflated sense of self. One of my favorite students left school before graduation, commissioned to paint a series of portraits of Saddam Hussein. He was flown to Baghdad, but the President of Iraq was rarely available for sittings. A cadre of doubles were assigned to pose in which Hussein would appear in a variety of costumes: full military regalia, the traditional dress of his native Tikrit (which he had, in fact, banned, but my student refrained from pointing this out) plus leather jacket, formal tuxedo, and wrestling costume. The problem for the painter was the inconsistency of the doubles. They weren’t all that exact, but it wasn’t his place to disagree. He finished the four portraits, survived an assassination attempt, and returned home feeling something was missing from the suite of images, despite high client satisfaction and payment in full. During the American invasion, we heard the paintings were used to patch holes in the palace ceiling. It was a temporary measure for the ceiling, but a permanent one for the canvases.

Discretion is coached. Classes are offered in how to be evasive, how to refuse to answer questions from both the press and employers. Besides classes in copyright law, the legal rights of artist and sitter (A Leg To Stand On, LEGAL211), we hire retired police and NASCAR drivers to teach how to leave false trails if followed by reporters in both vehicular and pedestrian situations. The contracts class is very popular, and of course, often but not always, the contracts which accompany a commission contain a secrecy clause. One would think to have one’s portrait painted means one’s face is available to the world, but many of our clients want their portraits for home use only. Since a portraitist often becomes an integral part of a family, company, governmental office, institution, or compound for the duration of a commission, and has access to personal information, the height of discretion comes with the territory. Though many commissions are public and celebrated, students need to be prepared for the other end of the spectrum. These kinds of jobs are usually far better compensated.

Why the desire for grand oil portraiture in the age of the digitally mastered photograph? The gravitas of the oil painting, the time required to produce a portrait only adds to its aura of authenticity. It says: the sitter is someone. Drive a stake in the road, re-draw your maps to include his or her co-ordinates. The portraitist, once an archaic figure, has been transformed into a romantic, and we are much in demand. Indeed, during my years at the academy, numerous stories circulated about private sessions replete with happy endings: painter, subject, and security detail all mating like a string of horseshoe crabs, one on top of another. One of our elder alumna used to begin his class with the story of how he ended up living with Natalie Wood for a year. He abandoned this anecdote when too many students put down their brushes and pulled out their phones in order to look up who she was.

Intimacy can take many forms and contain a variety of rewards. One of our number benefitted when an embittered financier left her his fortune. There was no romance between them, but the magnate of industry or hedge funds or junk bonds or whatever it was, felt she was the only one who truly appreciated him. The family sued, but the will stood.

***

One of the most talented portraitists of the post-war era arrived late one summer when a chill was just beginning to be felt in the morning. Isaac Benveniste was a guest artist contracted to teach Advanced Portraiture, and Independent Study Projects I and II. Though I’d seen his work, I’d never met Benveniste, and expected an attractive, self-assured fellow. He entered the faculty lounge quietly, no one turned around until he was introduced by Eric Wadleigh, the dean who happened to be wandering by; it was that informal. Eric clapped Izz, as he was known, on the back, and listed his accomplishments in a loud, booming voice. Wadleigh made it clear we were highly honored to have Benveniste in our midst. Sitting in an overstuffed chair, looking into the coffee cup he swirled as if it contained some kind of prophecy, Izz appeared embarrassed by Dean Wadleigh’s introduction. Benveniste had artificially blackened, thinning hair pulled into a snaky braid. He had ears like semaphore flags, but the most disarming feature were his slightly buggy eyes that spoke of a thyroid problem. They were surrounded by the lines and circles of an insomniac who liked to paint in sunlight.

Though Benveniste’s reputation as a portraitist of presidents, royalty, and pop stars was staggering, his reserve in the first weeks engendered many cruel jokes. No one imagined there were horseshoe crab-like orgies at his sessions, no matter how seductive the sitter.

The walls of his studio classroom, like all of ours, were covered by arrays of color charts, paint spattered walls and floors, photographs of prime ministers, dictators, sultans, and movie stars. Benveniste stood in the middle of a ring of easels like a matador. Unlike the rest of us who fraternized and indulged in a pleasant camaraderie with students, Izz clearly believed in a separation of church and state. Benveniste treated them like dumb vassals unfamiliar with basic cutlery who needed to be trained. He was strict about smoking and cell phone usage, and locked the door once class had begun. Latecomers were left out in the cold, grade reduced. Izz ate lunch alone in his studio, reportedly favoring sardine sandwiches and cheap beer.

Out of curiosity I attended one of his lectures, and was so entranced that when my schedule allowed, Benveniste was gracious enough to allow me to observe whenever I happened to stroll past. He had lived in Rome for many years, and his lectures, though they floated from one tangent to another, circled back to his experiences and observations of that city. A description of a nazzoni in Trastevere that depicted books and a deer’s head led to Benveniste’s visit to the Villa Medici where Galileo was imprisoned, the statues of Niobe where some unsuspecting woman photographed her daughter, the claustrophobic climb to the top of San Pietro, during which he felt waves of panic as if he might become interred in the dome itself and no one would ever know, Bernini’s oppressive statues of long forgotten popes, a book of fencing instruction displayed in the Castel Sant’Angelo, the sight of Romans who made a living dressed as gladiators, tourists had their pictures taken with them. He chuckled when he saw these men walking to lunch near the Coliseum, smoking a cigarette, tattoos of Christ on the cross poking out from behind their armor. Archeologists have found all that remained of the spectators: peach pits, sewing needles, weapons, hairpins. He asked the class hypothetically what detritus they thought they would leave behind that would establish their identity? Embarrassed, no one answered.

Beneveniste rarely used live models, he preferred working from photographs, at least in the classroom, and most of his subjects, for legal reasons, were deceased. He pointed to a picture of Michael Jackson in contrapposto. Look at the position your subject’s body, how is the weight distributed? How do the muscles react? Don’t neglect the background. He pointed to the Ferris wheel visible behind Jackson in his Wonderland ranch. He talked about Titian, Giotto, Raphael, Rembrandt, Vermeer, the drawings in Leonardo’s notebooks. Portraiture = fate. To emphasize his point he stabbed a reproduction of a Caravaggio-like picture with the pointed end of a brush. For some of their subjects all we know about them exists on a very thin plane of paint and nothing more. Take for example Georges de la Tour’s A Woman Searching for Fleas; we know nothing about her but her face, illuminated by a single candle.

“We wouldn’t anyway. Who was she? A nobody,” one whippersnapper said. “Now you can learn all kinds of crap about people in an instant. Portraitists are only lowly adjuncts to vast storehouses of information.”

Izz countered with the example of Goya’s Portrait of the Marquesa de Pontejos. We know she has a pug dog, carries a carnation, symbol of love, maybe, but unless you’re prepared to dig, that’s about it. She looks like a fashion victim with overblown hair, too many ruffles and ribbons, too narrow waist; her whole body is out of proportion: big head, skinny arms as if photoshopped. But that’s all we know, this sum of sartorial clues. Did her mother say to the Marquesa, you’re going to pose in that? You look like Marie Antoinette when she tried to dress like a shepherdess.

“That era is so over,” the dissident (there’s one in every class) would not give up, and spoke while fitting cross-bar into stretcher with a satisfying snap, as if he couldn’t really be bothered with this debate. Benveniste glared at him, and you could hear the fellow’s grade dropping. Izz, like all of us, basked in an epoch of past glory we anachronistically clung too, as if time travel were possible. It’s a cloak we drape around ourselves every time we pick up a sable .00 brush.

Despite his chilly and what seemed to me unprepossessing manner, one of Benveniste’s students, Tiffany Alvaro, developed an infatuation with him, which as far as I know, went entirely unreturned, and not even acknowledged by Izz. Perhaps he was only being professional, keeping his distance from his adoring pupil, whose talent for capturing the slightest shift in the position of a mouth or focus of eyes was formidable, who came to his class in ever shorter, tighter skirts, black tights with ladder runs, even as it got colder, wearing barely there tops sent from Italy. Tiffany was on the butterball side, but had a keen eye and moved with the resolve of a jackhammer. Wadleigh, mean dean, snickered that Tiffany had fat girl confidence, but I think this an unfair description of a young woman who was capable and determined, that’s all. Though Izz was oblivious to the way she sought him out for private critiques of her work, he should have counted himself lucky to be on the receiving end of her attentions.

Over winter vacation, Benveniste received a commission for a portrait that needed to be done quickly, so as not to interfere with his teaching responsibilities, and in the utmost secrecy. Izz requested and received permission to cut his spring term teaching to half time. He would be on campus only Monday and Tuesday. Though we have branches in Rome, Paris, Berlin, Helsinki, and elsewhere, in the post-war years, our academy has reigned supreme and prided itself on attracting and retaining first-rate practitioners such as Benveniste. We were so happy to have him, he could practically write his own ticket, so of course the director was keen to grant his every wish. Was there grumbling on the part of less stellar and less well compensated teachers? Of course.

Who was the subject of this secret portrait? The faculty buzzed with gossip and conjecture. In truth, most in the academy were no longer practicing. It is a profession that loves youth, and our recent graduates and some not yet even in possession of a diploma, received the plum jobs. Sitters feel flattered by young painters, as if their youth is a magic wand that can tap them on the shoulder, too. Most of us were now too old to travel, especially to demanding climates, or to engage in high-risk situations. For the most part we were happy to bask in the glory of each new generation for which we felt gleefully, if mistakenly, responsible.

One Monday in March, Izz drove through the gates in a new vehicle. A copper-toned Bentley, I kid you not, had replaced his Audi. Students clustered around him, totally gaga. The purchase of a new car was followed by a stream of fancy electronics, canvases of rare Belgian linen, stretcher bars from tropical hardwoods, and expensive beer at lunch. Students began to follow and hound Benveniste as if he were some kind of guru of gesso who had all the answers. Tiffany wore fewer and fewer articles of clothing. She was determined to ride in the Bentley. Everyone’s curiosity, as to who was paying Benveniste a fortune, grew.

Alvaro, a skilled student in Evading the Press and Rules of Discretion, had taken to tailing him when he left the grounds, though her car was no match for the Bentley. She lost him in traffic, or got to a bridge or rail crossing, just as the barricade was lowered, only to see the Bentley’s taillights disappearing in the distance. Once she succeeded in following him to Dockery’s Playland, an amusement park north of town, near Crystal Lake. She parked undetected and tailed him as he ate caramel corn, shot at moving rows of tin penguins, visited the snake house and let the snake handler drape a fat yellow python around his neck. The last thing he did was board the Tilt-a-Whirl. Tiffany remained behind, partly out of fear of the ride, but also to be able to resume the tail as soon as he disembarked. The cars spun to the point of near invisibility. They moved so quickly, passengers looked like a blur, but then, slowly, the spinning wound down, stopped, then passengers got off, walking shakily, some looking pale and scared. All disembarked except Benveniste. Tiffany swears she saw him get on, yet he was not among the stream of people who swerved single-file through the gate exiting the ride, and each pod-like chair was visibly empty before the next round of passengers could get on. He had vanished, evaporated by the ride. This was on a Tuesday night. On Monday he was back in the studio, but neither Tiffany nor anyone else, dared ask him what had happened at Dockery’s.

In truth, from this point onwards, Izz wasn’t looking so great. His skin had a grey, parched look. Studio wags believed he was on some kind of drug, whether prescribed or otherwise, an unknown substance that sometimes made Benveniste euphoric, but then, just as quickly, he plummeted into dark depressions. Tiffany said his bones were like glass. His long fingers, like spider’s legs, a wonder of osteo-mechanics, clearly pained him, yet he soldiered on in the studio, delivering searing critiques, while his students painted ever more exact likenesses, if you could imagine such a thing, those lucky enough to study with Izz might well have gone into mirror manufacture.

Nasty rumors circulated that Izz’s client was a drug kingpin who’d given Izzie a taste of sugar, so as to keep the portraitist in his thrall. Or perhaps the top secret client was a Russian émigré, now in hiding, who had been behind a spectacular pyramid scheme based on the credulity of such clients as Credit Suisse, Banco da Brazil, a Nobel Laureate, the United Fund, and a few basketball and golf giants. To reveal his name would be to sign your death warrant.

“Who does he think he is?” Eric Wadleigh commented while pouring his umpteenth cup of coffee. No longer practicing, he could afford the jitters caused by the academy’s cheap house roast. “Is he painting the unpaintable? God, maybe? Is it all a hoax to increase the capital of an aging portrait painter when we’ve all had to face our lowered currency?”

One morning in April, Benveniste’s Advanced Seminar met in their Annex A studio. Though senior students, they’d been painting one another for the final project, so Annex A, if you happened by as I did, looked like fifteen sets of twins. They waited five, ten, twenty minutes, but there was no sign of Izz. The students milled around, commented on one another’s work.

Cool, that you had her holding a camera.

Really love that chimp in the background, like you’re quoting Rousseau or something.

And so on.

At about half past the hour, Tiffany Alvaro rushed in holding a newspaper. Benveniste had been arrested. Because of whom or what he had been painting, governmental agents had descended on his house, confiscating all the canvases they could find. Citing a national security risks, little substantive information was revealed about his apprehension. The accused claimed he’d only painted what he’d been asked to and was doing nothing more than fulfilling the terms of his contract. He knew nothing about anything that compromised national security, he was only doing a job. When asked to reveal the identity of his client, Benveniste responded only, “I prefer not to.”

“They’ll waterboard it out of him.” If you didn’t pay attention, it appeared one of the portraits was speaking, but it was a goateed fellow who looked like a television version of a beat.

Tiffany collapsed into a chair in despair, though not weeping, she covered her face with her hands. Her classmates’ reactions ranged from stunned to bemused, but one by one, when conjecture ran its course, they gathered up their things and left the room until only Tiffany and I remained.

I fiddled with a wooden jointed mannequin on which someone had painted little more than a smiley face. In a sea of exactitude, it was a masterstroke of abbreviation. Drawing a moustache on a photograph of a male Bollywood star, I tried to reassure her by making light of his arrest. It must be some mistake, and he’ll surely be released soon. Caravaggio spent time in prison; he got into fights, threw rocks at Roman Guards, killed a man over a tennis game, fled Rome to Naples, then Malta where he was imprisoned again, but he managed to escape. Portraits can be a risky business, but we survive

“He can always paint inmates.” Tiffany sighed as she blew her nose, rolled the newspaper under her arm, and began to look through things Izz had left in the room, searching for a souvenir of the man she would probably never see again. Throwing squashed tubes of paint, dead soldiers, on the floor, she remembered how Izz used to hold up brand new tubes of raw sienna, burnt umber, alizarin crimson, cerulean, and talk about pure color, the potential sealed up in it, potential doomed most of the time, life was better inside.

In jail, Benveniste remained silent. Some took his side, protested on his behalf, especially the students who organized petition drives and candle light vigils. They marched with signs bearing his portrait that read Free Benveniste or We Are All Izz, and in my opinion they were right. All Benveniste did, all any of us tried to do was to show people themselves. Others, like Dean Wadleigh, made no secret of the fact that they had suspected for some time that Izz was too secretive and must have been up to something. The government didn’t indiscriminately pick up random citizens. They must have had their reasons. He had no doubt Benveniste was guilty, though of what exactly, we weren’t certain. Deep down, I believed any one of us could have accepted this job, as we had so many others, any of us could have been tarred with this particular brush.

Izz remained held without bail. Among his possessions not confiscated by the police, his class notes were located and final grades apportioned according to what were believed to be his assessments.

The academy’s board of directors was now in a difficult position. On the one hand, discretion is and has always been our credo, and one of our selling points, but on the other hand, it was the government who had incarcerated our colleague. Our ancient academy has trained portraitists to capture the likeness of the human face from the era of Mary Queen of Scots to Lady Gaga, and we hope to continue to do so for generations to come. We considered asking Benveniste to resign, but after some debate, he was expelled.

During the summer Izz was moved to an undisclosed location and held without trial as had come to be the custom for highly sensitive cases.

The following year, Tiffany wore black at graduation, though this wasn’t particularly unusual, she often wore black. Still, the symbolism of her gesture wasn’t lost on the faculty.

Over the years, all but a few forgot about Benveniste, and he seemed to have disappeared into the penal system where it was reported that he refused to ever paint or draw again. Given this representational black out, it was conjectured that Benveniste’s last portrait might surface somewhere. Since most of his work was known, attributable, and valuable; should any of his paintings or even half-finished paintings dated just before his sentencing, appear on the art market, we could hazard a guess as to the identity of his last sitter. However, no new portraits attributable to Benveniste were located. Every once in awhile a painting would surface in an art gallery or an auction, but these were quickly ascertained to be works of other individuals whose personal history wasn’t filed under Classified.

Early one spring a painting turned up at a garage sale that was believed to be Benveniste’s truly last work. Its discovery caused a great deal of excitement. The deceased owner of the house in question had had an affair with Izz of some long standing. Neither her husband (also deceased) nor her children knew anything about the liaison while the trysts were taking place. Izz had apparently given the painting to her for safekeeping. The children, however, couldn’t care less about Benveniste, and were now anxious to sell the house, unload its contents full of painful memories, and return to their lives in other cities. To them, when the painting was discovered wrapped in bubble wrap stored under the couch, it was one more reminder of a part of their mother’s life of which, it turned, out they knew little. As they sorted clothing, unused shampoo bottles, a fragrance called Sweet Spot, neither said to the other, we never knew her as normal children know their parents, but I’m guessing that’s what they felt. They made it clear to any who made inquiries they would just as soon the Benveniste episode was buried with her, an embarrassment that needed to be kept out of sight. They put the canvas out on the lawn along with a new ironing board, unused picnic coolers that none of them needed, their childhood videos of Peter Pan and The Jungle Book. Actually, it was the former student who had given Izz such a hard time about why bother with portraiture in the first place, who discovered the picture lying on the grass. He was driving by, stopped, intrigued by the sale of odds and ends as some people are; he now had three children, not much income, and was looking for second hand toys. The fellow thought he recognized the style of the picture as well as the signature. If the painting were a genuine Izz, it would have been extremely valuable. Though he was honest about the potential value of the painting, and offered more, the children wanted it out of their sight and were happy to take five dollars for it, only. If it were not an original, then who painted it, and why was it in this woman’s possession? It had to be the last painting. He pleaded with them to take more money, but they shook their heads, replaced the bubble wrap, bundled it into his car and waved him away.

The discovery sent shock waves through the academy. Television crews arrived at our doors. Wadleigh and others gave interviews in what had been Izz’s studio, but their euphoria was short-lived. A quick review by Tiffany Alvaro, now an expert in such matters, revealed it only to be one of Benveniste’s imitators, of which there had come to be many.