Picture This

Alfie took a photograph and showed it Susie while she held her pose.

‘Good. Shoot 20 from each of the angles I showed you earlier, then it’s a wrap,’ Susie told them.

Alfie rushed back to take his position behind the camera as Susie settled herself into position and character.

‘Okay, folks, don’t breathe, don’t move, don’t exist. For the next three minutes you are your fictional characters! When you’re ready, Alfie… ’

*

After the other extras had gone and the set was being dismantled, Susie sat at the worktop examining the printouts of the photographs taken, all the while conscious of Latisha, who was still changing out of her costume at the back of the studio. As soon as she stepped out from behind the screen dressed in her street clothes, Susie called her over.

‘So what do you think?’ Susie asked innocently, indicating the test sheet of images now lying next to an image of the original Klimt painting.

Latisha peered down. The original composition of the painting was still apparent, but it was disturbing how all the recognisable icons in Susie Thomas’s work provoked an entirely different response.

What she found most disturbing was the silhouette of the Twin Towers depicted in the open grin of King Kong.

‘You are going to upset people,’ Latisha told the artist, pointing them out with her finger. ‘They’re going to think King Kong is somehow connected to 9/11.’

‘In my version he represents dread and fear, maybe even the massive presence of the US in the world – it’s an oblique reference to Klimt’s depiction of his god of storm and wind, Typhoeus. Klimt’s original painting is a depiction of humanity navigating the trials and tribulations of a challenging and maybe amoral world. In my depiction of this modern world we navigate I have added celebrity, politics, race, hierarchy, sex… It’s an allegory.’

‘I understand. But tell me, Miss Thomas, why does all contemporary art have to have a story behind it, a narrative that is often so obscure you need a piece of paper to read in the gallery to really appreciate it? Why can’t it just mean something personal and special when you look at it?’

‘Great art should do many things at once: make you remember an emotion, conjure up an emotion, tell you the story the artist wanted to tell and perhaps inspire the viewer to make up his or her own story. In my opinion, there is no right or wrong way of viewing art, but it should never just be entertaining, or soothing, it should always disturb and be thought-provoking. Which is exactly what you are, Latisha.’

Latisha stared across at her.

Susie continued, ‘I found you in Maxine’s catalogue – for the group show at Baum’s. It was you, wasn’t it, who left those slippers in my bedroom, who sent me those blank sheets of paper… ’

For a moment Latisha contemplated running for the exit, then she remembered she was the oldest and slowest person in the room. ‘You don’t seem to realise Felix Baum is not to be trusted,’ she told Susie in an undertone. ‘So why should I trust you with what I know about Maxine?’

‘Because I loved her.’

‘You want me to talk to you here, in front of the others?’

Susie looked across the studio. Muriel was busy unpinning fabric from the backdrop of the set and Alfie was at the other end of the studio on the phone, organising the other photographic shoots.

She had the place cleared in three minutes.

*

Once the studio was emptied, Susie turned back to Latisha.

‘I went to visit you, did you know that? You weren’t there.’

‘What exactly do you want to know?’

‘You sat for her in those last weeks. You must have had some inkling as to what was going through her head, her emotional state?’

‘Maxine didn’t kill herself, I know that much. The day before she died she told me she’d found something and was researching it and that it might prove dangerous. She was also involved with Felix Baum – like you are.’

Susie stared at her. ‘That’s not possible. Maxine didn’t like men.’

‘She liked this one.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I think I might have been the only person she ever talked to about Felix. He was careful to keep the affair private. But they were lovers – at least, that’s what Maxine thought. I’m not sure Mr Baum has any facility for emotion, except maybe greed.’