Theft: A Love Story

50

New York Central Supplies on Third Avenue had a great back room, a sort of junkyard of artists' paint and brushes, and it was there that I stumbled onto a museum piece, that is, twenty-three sample boxes of thirty-five-year-old Magna paint. If you've heard of Magna it's because Morris Louis used it, Frankenthaler used it, Kenneth Noland too I think.

Magna was invented by Sam Golden, a great chemist, the partner of Leonard Bocour, a great proselytiser. From 1946, when Magna went into production, Bocour had sent these sample boxes out all over the world. Here, try it, Morris Louis.

Here try it, Picasso. Here try it, Leibovitz, Sidney Nolan. He threw in handfuls of greens or yellows, such an odd assortment of colours in each box. He didn't make it easy for me, but when I finally picked myself off the dusty floor at New York Central Supplies, I had chosen thirteen boxes which contained, in sum, the quantity and palette I required.

If you're a painter, you're already ahead of the story. You know Magna was a breakthrough, an acrylic you could mix with oil.

The finished result looked like oil, not Dulux.

If I used Magna on the Broussard the conservator, examining the finish, seeing the date, would confidently assume it was an oil. She would therefore use a solvent like white spirit, completely safe for oil. Ha-ha. Imagine. There is the little hamster—sniff, sniff, gently, gently—little Q-tip, smidgen of solvent, and lo and fucking behold: the pigments are coming off in floods.

A red flag, as they say.

This is not oil paint. Sniff, sniff.

Jesus Christ, Eloise, it's Magna! Another red flag. Magna not made till four years after the title.

By now we would have her attention. She knows Broussard is married to Leibovitz. If she thinks for just a second the title will not match the Broussard mud pie.

None of this is enough, but it's almost enough. If we can draw the creature a little closer, if I could just keep her applying that white spirit, she could remove all the Magna and reveal the gorgeous oil beneath. But she's a conservator. She won't do that.

Just the same, I returned to Mercer Street filled with optimism, my thirteen vintage packs of Magna in two huge plastic bags. On the worktable I revealed them to my lover. I was such a nicking genius, such a big bad criminal. I needed pliers to remove the caps, but the contents of every single tube was fresh as the day it was packed.

You would think this would be enough to make Marlene calm down about the droit moral, but no. Just the same: I have been divorced, it isn't easy. I thought, Her divorce would come and go as divorces finally do. When it was over she would probably still continue to vent about the droit moral. Likewise I would rage about alimony whores. But we would, meanwhile, have achieved a very satisfactory private victory in New York. No-one would know. We did not need them to.

It took exactly four hours to paint the Broussard, and even then I think I took more care than Dominique had done. Being Magna, it dried fast and I was soon able to spray it with a solution of sugar and water. I left it on the roof to pick up New York grime.

Did anyone say, Oh you clever bugger?

No, but it didn't matter. I had put the canvas on the rack above Hugh's spattering sausages and when they had added their contribution of grease I "cleaned" the surface roughly with a filthy sponge.

Hugh watched all this, of course, but he was mostly absorbed with a copy of The Magic Pudding Marlene had unburied in the Strand.

At night I propped the filthy canvas near the bed and lit four altar candles before it, happily observing the carbon deposits build above the grease. This would really need a damn good clean.

Lying on my side, with Marlene against my back, I sometimes thought of money. It was very sweet.

"Here's the Broussard, toots," Milton Hesse would say to Jane Threadwell. "I know it's crap, baby, but it has some historical value, and anyway, the family wants it cleaned." Something like that. "Don't go nuts about it," the mule would say. "This is not brain surgery they're asking for."

Jane Threadwell would not get to the canvas immediately, and then she would be too busy saving a cracking Mondrian or some Kiefer which had aged like a pig farm in a drought. She would give the Broussard to someone in her studio, a little chore, a sentimental favour for Milt Hesse. But then the lowliest assistant would start to clean it and then, dear Jesus, Marlene would get the call from Milt.

It was not just the anachronistic paint. When they removed the frame they had discovered, under the rabbet, that the frame had rubbed away a deal of the paint and there—how did that happen?—was what appeared to be an earlier oil painting. Given the marital history of the artist concerned, what did Marlene want to do?

Then Marlene would be duly hesitant and then Milt would call Threadwell and Threadwell would call her buddy Jacob at the Met and then they would go for the raking light, the infrared, the X-ray, and finally they would all have themselves in a huge bloody state. Le Golem electrique.

"Mrs. Leibovitz, we really think you should give Jane permission to go ahead."

Now it would be gently Bentley as they removed the Magna, sniff, sniff, sniff. Little white spirit. Oh, it would come away in floods.

, Call the Times, call the Times. Milton would have his moment. "I cried," he would say. "I cried like a baby when Jacques died."

And I suppose there's something nasty in my satisfaction, the vengeance of the hick, the man from Iron Bark against the city barber, a perfect, provincial rather Bacchus Marsh affair, not loud, not public, but deeply fucking satisfying to those who knew. Oh how lovely, Mr. Bones, how bloody lovely.

Congratulations to you and yours.