Art Brut
With a flourish, she swung open the doors of her balconette, reveling in the aura of solidarity. A still night, no romance in sight, but a tempered, sinister air. The intense glow of the red moon flooded her apartment, illuminating a scarlet couch, a stack of bills, and an amulet. She clutched the stone as she danced, eyes closed, in the red. Graced by moon beams, the amulet twinkled in cold, wrinkly, white fingers, slipping gracefully between her skin. A few more days. It was nearly time.
October 29th
Archie adjusted the rearview mirror, flicking rough fingertips through what was left of his yarny moss. It was Fred’s studio night, a long-awaited show – the first in months – and Archie sported what had become a bit of a late 30s fall uniform: thrifted gray wool pants stained with yellow paint, fraying olive Oxford, simple, black chore coat, and vintage Soviet watch with a scratched, red face. Archie took the old Jaguar XJ6 he bought in ‘96 for $8k, the leather seats worn and fragrant from pheromones and cigarettes aplenty. Too many listless nights to count. He turned the wheel right, tires crunching on gravel, toward a familiar road. With one hand tapping on the wheel in 3/4, he inhaled a drag with the other, ash building in gray chunks until it teetered and fell, scattering peacefully on the floor. A few more blocks, trees disappearing behind, the Jaguar bolted into the black.
Archie stoically hummed to himself – mind you, he hadn’t had a free night in weeks – then rolled down the window to embrace a familiar waft of calmness, letting it drift through his mouth, down his esophagus, inflating his wiry frame. It was a full moon tonight, white like a virgin’s sclera, air crisp like a Pink Lady. Archie left Penelope at home. Penelope was resting her eyelids. She’d had a long week after all. A few more blocks, trees disappearing behind, the Jaguar sputtered ahead.
Archie felt the tethers of stress slacken in the cool, autumn air. A few more blocks, the Jaguar stopped, tires screeching, next to a modest residence on a hill. *Click* The car door closed. Another puff of smoke exhaled. Showtime.
“Fred, it’s been too long. Your place hasn’t changed a lick.”
They grasped each other for a momentary hug, and Fred handed him a pair of tinted glasses.
“Wear these. It is Halloween weekend, after all?”
Archie slid on the frames. He moseyed around the room, making himself known, nudging a few familiar faces, taking in the simple, stripped-down décor, before sinking himself into one of Fred’s prints: bucolic splashes of blues and greens and browns that left Archie feeling a sense of longing tranquility, a fresco of Days of Heaven backdrops. The tinted glasses were hand-made, yellow, textured, basking each image in warm light. A meadowy, afternoon delight.
After a few moments of pastoral introspection, Archie hit the “bar,” a side table with two bottles of wine and a box of saltines. A classic Fred evening. He must’ve been spinning his usual Lucinda Williams record amid the murmur.
Fred, a well-spirited fellow, stood at the front of his living room, pausing the ambience.
“Friends, colleagues, enemies, thank you for making it out to my new showing. I think you’ll all be remiss to view these recent prints with one, rather than two, sets of eyes. They’re best felt within these lenses, but I promise you, they’ll look even better in the confines of your living room. [scattered laughs] For this showing, I was inspired by my recent meditative journey to the backwoods of Montana. I encourage you all to make the trip. Escape the confines of the concrete jungle you continue to call home!”
Archie clapped and nodded along with the rest of the dozen or so who’d made the journey to Fred’s, a forty-minute drive from the city. Fred had maintained an air of naturalism, in his lifestyle, taste, even his art. He rarely broke into the depths of the abstract. Archie, on the other hand – a painter himself – had little patience for organic recreation, mind you. Instead, he sought to descend into the mangled web of his subconscious, a fierce smog engulfing a nucleus of gooey happiness. Quite so, and in his words, was his exercise presented, often to the dismay of armchair enthusiasts who furrowed caterpillar brows at the thought of drawing outside the lines.
He scanned the room and paused, eyes fixed on a tress of brunette familiar to him. Penelope. How could it be? Archie walked over, a buzz sizzling his every step.
“Oh, hello Archie, I didn’t see you come in,” she said flatly without turning around.
“You’ve met Margaret, I presume?” Margaret was Penelope’s old college friend, a bubbly, congenial lurker.
“Uh, I don’t believe I have…hello darling. Hello Margaret, nice to meet you.”
“It’s a pleasure,” said Margaret. “Penelope tells me you’re doing a joint show on Halloween! Oooh, so exciting and spooky! I am just thrilled to stop by and support artists. You know, I’ve always been an advocate for independent artists and artistes. It’s my little thing,” she said with a wink.
“Yes, well, thank you. It was actually her mother’s idea, combining my painting with her photography, decorations, lore, magazine editors, all of that stuff…it’s quite overwhelming, but I just do my thing and let the chips fall,” Archie said, swaying from one foot to the other. He was still wearing his glasses, eyes agazed, watching as Margaret transformed into a Van Gogh sunflower.
“Yes, Archie’s a bit of a gambler,” Penelope said, cutting in, “always letting the game come to him. I’m the tenacious one… as much as a photographer can be. I guess I get it from my mother. She’s impelled us to push the ante. I was in the print shop all week, flyers, sepia, the works.” Her words darted like a venomous serpent.
“Oh what a splendid little duo you two make! Never mix business and pleasure, my ass!” Margaret exclaimed.
Their conversation continued, similarly, until enough time had passed when it was appropriate to leave.
Two puffs of smoke exhaled. They swirled above in pairs then diverged in a vanish, carried away by a brisk breeze. Car doors opened. Archie turned the keys, and the Jaguar roared again.
Archie and Penelope were close, or else they used to be. They had lived together for years, dated even longer. A passionate consummation, their romance began in an introductory art class: a splatter of concentrated brown mixed with a smear of aloof blue, an intense, silvery blend that dried to form stiff gray. As their cohabitation increased, so too did their disdain for one another; angry quips often littered a shared evening. Penelope, a purveyor of black and white film photography, and Archie, a champion of abstract acrylic, once reveled in their divergent embrace of their mediums. Had their professional lives not become so intertwined, they may have parted, yet a sliver of hope remained for their once fierce love.
Penelope, feeling restless, hitched a ride with Margaret to Fred’s show. She hoped to escape the confining walls of stress and broach the more pressing elements of their joint Halloween endeavor. Erect, motionless, a passenger in the sweaty Jaguar, she began lamenting her overbearing mother.
“I needed to get out tonight, get away from all of it for a bit…. She’s back on my ass this week.”
Penelope’s mother, Arianna, was a bit of a known figure in the art auction world. She had pushed Penelope to expand her scope, and even manage her portfolio. “Photography has been dead for two generations, dear,” she would often say, sipping her tea with a graceful slurp.
“Movie posters, magazine ads, it never ends with her,” Penelope said sternly. “She just wants it her way, a slave to the art market.”
Penelope’s father died many years prior, and on her 26th birthday, Penelope faced financial troubles so dire that she was forced to take up her mother’s wishes, trusting her blood to promote and sell her own work. She had no intention of relinquishing her artistic freedom to her mother, but their battles grew fiercer. Arianna soon pressured Archie to do the same with his paintings, which had become but a meager form of financial sustenance. Arianna was the puppeteer behind their upcoming revelation.
“Is she coming to the Halloween show? Have you told her yet that we’re not doing the thing in Florence?” Archie asked, distractedly.
“No, she’s still in France. I can’t think about Florence right now.”
“Well, hopefully this editor isn’t as ghastly as the last one. I can’t take stiffs.”
The Jaguar grumbled as Archie turned the last corner to their apartment. It sputtered and stalled as if to signal its final, tired exhaust of the evening.
*Click of the lock*
Back home, Archie sprinkled the keys on the counter and plopped in his usual reading chair for a spell. Penelope tossed her leather jacket on a chair and prepped tomorrow’s coffee, grinding dark beans that smelled like raspberries and chestnuts. She checked her messages and sifted through a stack of mail.
Junk, junk, college looking for money. She paused. A box and note from her mother? She opened the envelope.
“Penelope, dear, don’t forget to connect with Leo, the editor. He’s very interested in seeing the spectacle you’ll put together. I’ll be in France until November. I’m taking some time to myself, enjoying my tea on the still nights as I do. Please enjoy the lemon bars, I baked them myself – I quite like this batch. Wishing you and Archibald the best of luck. Love, Arianna.”
“My mother sent some lemon bars!” Penelope yelled from the kitchen. “With almonds! Greetings from France!”
“Oh, splendid. There she goes again, always the baker.” Archie said, astir from his little snooze.
At long last, in bed, Penelope let her tensions melt away and her mind drift. Thoughts swirled in and out from her subconscious. She thought of happier times, how they used to go dancing and go out to eat, laughing about the absurdity of their existence. How innocent they were, how she was, ignoring the dramatic irony of romance; their love cascaded violently like the tides, a wave of emotions ready to crash, inevitably. She thought then, of the manner in which they used to fuck, how manly he felt, his smell, his hair, how her body would convulse as he’d take her again and again…. Her mind settled happily, then drifted to a morbid prism. She envisioned how she’d kill him, if given the chance. Smolder his face with the pillow? Perhaps a gun? She didn’t have one. A broken shard of glass from the very cup of wine he was drinking?
The next morning, Penelope left early to head to the print shop. She got dressed in a haste – leather jacket, black shades, silver pendant chain, pack of Marlboros – sipped her raspberry chestnut coffee, and ate a bite of a leftover scone to feel something in her stomach. Penelope double-checked her purse – keys, hair ties, mints, film rolls, Swiss army knife – then exited in a flash.
An hour later, Archie slowly stirred awake. He shuffled to the bathroom, staring at the aged man in the mirror, then stationed himself in front of a finished piece. Just as he started to adhere wire to the back of a freeform collage, his eyes darted to a new magazine on the counter, “Modernism in Postwar Poland,” which consumed his attention until lunch.
Penelope returned to the apartment just after dark, a huge stack of framed photographs in her hands. Archie was listening to jazz and fiddling with a canvas, his fingers darting to the melody of the keyboard soloist. Penelope took to the kitchen to steal a bite from a sandwich as a whiny trumpet pierced what remained of the tonal environment.
For the next few hours, Archie and Penelope reviewed Arianna’s “visionary guidelines,” steps that she left to “refine, highlight, and engage the viewer.” Penelope sketched a mock of the showcase space, erasing and redrawing markers as she quipped angrily with Archie.
“The Blue Man, it has to be right at the entrance. It perfectly encapsulates the vibe of contemplation, setting the viewer up for a journey to melancholy, passion, whatever the hell they may prefer,” Archie explained, exasperatedly.
“Archie, I’ve told you before, we cannot establish color as the entry point to this exhibit. It’ll make every photo an afterthought.”
“It’s Halloween! It’s all about color and vivid imagination!”
“It certainly is, if you’re a spoiled child. The gothic undertones of the holiday are what give it horror, a necessary austerity.”
Penelope and Archie continued to argue over minutiae until they became weary, each ceding their respective viewpoints to reach a bittersweet compromise.
“It’s late, I’m going to try my mother. She should be up by now. Ugh, let’s see if she has anything else to say.”
*Ring Ring Ring*
“She didn’t answer.”
Archie and Penelope, exhausted, brushed their teeth before collapsing in bed, their preparation for the show complete. It happened as so: they walked quietly, single file, to the bathroom, each facing their own his and hers sink. Penelope stared at her reflection, her mouth full of toothpaste, wondering which thread of sanity would be her last. Her wrinkles became more pronounced, her hair frazzled and dark; a mad scientist stared back. Archie saw himself, a bewildered, exhausted fellow, his wrinkles tracing lines up to weary, solemn eyes. They spit, then staggered to bed.
The following day, Archie and Penelope maintained a quiet morning before arriving early to hang their art and speak with the servers. The setup was glamorous by their standards, a space fashioned beautifully with lights, white walls, couches, and a full bar. The editor from Far Out Magazine came early. Archie loosened him up with his friendly charm, and Penelope closed with her focused bravado. The editor was quite pleased with their collection, but kept referring to Arianna, as if to say, “I’m only here because of her.”
“Boy, you two have put together quite the, shall I say, fierce collection,” said Fred, beaming while sporting his typical “lone ranger” costume. “Archie, I…I feel like you’re going mad, seeing some of these works. Penelope, you’re channeling this brooding tenacity in your photographs. Such intense contrast. And just perfect for Halloween! What a calculated mix of French noire ala ascenseur pour l'échafaud and unbridled late-life Pollock, bouncing at the seams!”
Fred expressed a mix of jealousy and astonishment at the crowd. “And just look at all these people, these paying customers!”
“Oh Fred, thank you. You always have a way with words,” Penelope said, her eyes darting around the room to peer at anyone who looked important.
“Fred, it’s been my spirit of late, just throw it all on the canvas, whatever I’m feeling,” Archie replied, the words oozing from his mouth. “And I don’t even know half these people.”
The night continued smoothly, as friends, colleagues, and art purveyors, some in costume, others not, came and went. Some bought art, a few hmmed and ahhed, and others furrowed their brows at the whole affair.
Margaret pranced over to Penelope and Archie holding two glasses of bright, violet liquid garnished with a cherry.
“Hey you two, drink up!” she said with a wink. “I asked the bartender for a special cocktail. It’s called Aviation. I hope you like gin!” Archie marveled at the color. Penelope looked a bit shocked but relieved.
“I added a bit of my little spark, hope that’s okay with y’all,” she whispered, eyes glistening wickedly, then skipped away.
“She’s an old college friend. I guess she’s up to her old tricks. She always used to sneak something fun in our drinks when we went out.” Penelope’s mind drifted, her sternness softening. She eyed the cherry, suspended heavenly above the purple pool below.
“Well, we talked to the editor, and just about every other maniac who’s here tonight. Fuck it, I have nothing to lose anymore,” said Archie.
A few minutes passed. Then a few more. Archie and Penelope said their goodbyes to the few straggling attendees, parents who had to get home to their kids, independent collectors who had to get home to their independence.
Slowly, like a gentle breeze, the tone of the evening changed, and Penelope could sense the drug warming her core. Archie felt a new waviness overcome his exterior, his body adopting a new exoskeleton.
“Thanks for coming!!” Penelope said with a smile. She couldn’t contain herself now. She felt devilish. She looked around the room for Archie, who had immersed himself in one of his paintings. Penelope sidled up next to him.
“It’s so vivid, all of the red is really roaring through the canvas. I don’t remember painting it like this, but I like it.”
Each brush stroke was beaming, forming a sense of congruent patterns to reveal a blissful face.
“It’s marvelous, the piece is glowing.” Penelope touched the canvas with a finger, which sent waves of reverberations across the paint.
“That is marvelous, isn’t it. And don’t forget about this one.” Archie motioned to one of Penelope’s photos which captured a small child overlooking a bridge at dusk. “Every pixel is so clear, P. It’s like I can see into his eyes, how he’s feeling. He must be so lonely in that barren landscape.”
“I’m so wavy, Arch. Oh, I should probably eat something. Ooh you know what would taste marvelous right now? That first bite of lemon bar. I brought it along just in case. Let’s snack.”
“Your mother really should’ve catered this. I’m starving.”
Archie and Penelope each took a bite of a lemon bar, their saliva moist and purple from the Aviation. Quickly, their evening blurred. Attendees and servers returned home, and their glee turned into malice.
“I don’t feel well at all.”
“That guy had a wicked smile on his face when he left, didn’t he?”
“I feel trapped, like I’m in prison.”
“I’m trying…I’m trying to free myself.”
Penelope and Archie collapsed on a couch in a tender, unexpected embrace, their guests and servers long gone. Their thoughts stopped, their breathing slowed, and soon ceased altogether. The show ended just like that.
