One of the Japanese sits down next to me and presses little buttons on his camera. This subway line is not a scenic route, the only thing up ahead is the industrial zone on the edge of town. The tour group is on the wrong train. Someone ought to tell them. I close my eyes and say nothing.
So I was never going to rank as a painter. This much I now knew. I worked the same way I had before, but there was no longer any point. I painted houses, I painted meadows, I painted mountains, I painted portraits that didn’t look bad, they showed skill, but so what? I did abstract paintings that were harmoniously composed, with careful juxtapositions of color, but so what?
What does it mean to be average — suddenly the question became a constant one. How do you live with that, why do you keep on going? What kind of people bet everything on a single card, dedicate their lives to the creative act, undertake the risk of the one big bet, and then fail year after year to produce anything of significance?
Of course, it is part of the nature of a bet that you can lose it. But when it actually happens to you, do you lie to yourself, or can you honestly come to terms with it? How do you proudly put together your little exhibitions, collect your scattered little reviews, and take it as a given that there’s an entire realm of achievement way above you in which you will never take part? How do you deal with that?
“Write about being average.” It was Martin’s idea back then, in the monastery garden at Eisenbrunn. And he was right: I could always become an art historian with an unusual field of research. So I wrote a letter to Heinrich Eulenboeck. I didn’t lie, but I also didn’t mention the title of my dissertation: Mediocrity as an Aesthetic Phenomenon. All I did was describe how I had come upon his paintings by chance in an old catalog: Flemish farmhouses, soft hills, welcoming riverbanks, friendly bales of hay, really well painted, with power and a certain soul. That, I’d thought, was what would have become of me. The stubborn expertise, the self-contained perfection. That would have been me.
He sent a delighted reply, and off I went. I was exhausted, because I had just ended a brief affair with a French choreographer, full of passion, fights, screaming and yelling, alcohol, a breakup, a reconciliation, another breakup, and a trip could not have come at a better time. A long stretch by train, then a long stretch with another train, then a crossing on the ferry, then a long stretch on a bus, until finally I was standing facing him in his bright studio. The sea shimmered in the windows with a cool, northerly light.
He was in his early sixties back then, more imposing than I had expected, an elegant gentleman with a white mustache, impeccable clothes, and an ivory cane, witty, relaxed, and cultivated. I had planned to leave again the next day, but I stayed. And I stayed the next day and the day after that, and then the whole week and the whole year, and the year after that. I stayed until he died.
The lights in the subway shrink, become a single patch, then disappear. Beauty has no need of art, it has no need of us, either, it has no need of witnesses, quite the opposite. Gaping observers detract from it, it blazes most brightly where no one can see it: broad landscapes devoid of houses, the changing shapes of clouds in the early evening, the washed-out grayish red of old brick walls, bare trees in winter mists, cathedrals, the reflection of the sun in a puddle of oil, the mirrored skyscrapers of Manhattan, the view out an airplane window right after it’s climbed through the layer of clouds, old people’s hands, the sea at any time of day, and empty subway stations like this one — the yellow light, the haphazard pattern of cigarette butts on the ground, the peeling advertisements, still fluttering in the slipstream of the train, although the train itself has just disappeared.
The escalator carries me upward, the street organizes itself around me, the summer sky forms an arch high over my head. I look in all directions — not just out of caution, because this is a dangerous neighborhood, but because we’re put here on earth to see. The garbage cans are casting their short midday shadows, a child whips past on a skateboard, arms outstretched, simultaneously swaying and in perpetual risk of falling. The same beam of sunlight flashes high up in a window and down here in the rearview mirror of a parked car. The dark rectangle of a drain cover, all geometrical, and way above it, as if set against it deliberately, the vague trail of a vanishing cloud. I open a door quickly, go inside, and shut it behind me. An ancient elevator carries me jerkily from floor to floor up to the top. Only on the third floor is there a seldom-used warehouse; the rest of the building is empty. The elevator grinds noisily to a halt, I get out and unlock a steel door. I’m immediately surrounded by the smell of acrylic, wood, and lime, and the rich aroma of pigments. How good it is to be able to work. Sometimes I get the suspicion I’m actually a happy man.
No one knows about this studio, no one can connect me to it. It wasn’t me who bought it, but a firm that belongs to another firm that is based in the Cayman Islands and in turn belongs to me. If anyone were to inspect the land registers, they wouldn’t find my name. It would take a great deal of time and effort to keep digging until they found me. The property taxes, heating, water and electricity bills are handled automatically by a numbered account in Liechtenstein. Whistling to myself, I hang up my jacket, roll up my sleeves, and put on my overalls. A dozen paintings are leaning against the wall, covered by a cloth, and in front of them is one that’s almost finished on the easel.
Luckily I have no need of glasses; my eyesight is as sharp as it ever was. Born to see, appointed to look. So I stand in front of the picture and contemplate it. A village square in a little French town. In the center a gaudy sculpture, clearly by Niki de Saint Phalle: an outsized, brightly colored female figure holding her arms in the air. The sky is cloudless. At the edge of the square, children with bicycles are clustered around a small boy who is holding his head in his hands and crying. A woman is looking out a window. Her mouth is wide open — she’s calling someone. A man in a parked car is looking up at her threateningly. There’s a dark puddle at the edge of the square that may or may not be blood. A dachshund is drinking from it. Something terrible has happened and the people seem to be wanting to cover it up. If you were to look a little longer, hunt a little better for clues, you’d be able to figure it out, or at least you think so. But if you step back, the details disappear and all that remains is a colorful street scene: bright, cheerful, full of life. Large posters advertise beer, cheese spread, and various brands of cigarettes in the style of the early seventies.
I work in silence, sometimes aware of my own whistling. Only a few details are still missing. The quiet of the studio surrounds me like a solid substance. The noise of the city doesn’t penetrate up here, and even the heat is blocked. It can continue like that for long stretches. When I think back on the hours of work, I can barely remember them — it’s as if they had been extinguished by my concentration.
Up here a couple of points of light to add, and down there a shadow to blur the features of the child. The number plate needs a fleck of rust. People need to be able to see the brushstrokes, thick, in the style of the Old Masters! And then the last point of light, an accent made up of white, ocher, and orange. I step back, lift the palette, take a little bit of black, and with a quick stroke add the date and signature in the corner: Heinrich Eulenboeck, 1974.
When I was young, vain, and lacking all experience, I thought the art world was corrupt. Today I know that’s not true. The art world is full of lovable people, full of enthusiasts, full of longing and truth. It is art itself as a sacred principle that unfortunately doesn’t exist.