Work Text:
“So, will you do it?”
Lardo regards the blonde woman across the coffee table. Camilla is sitting with her ankles crossed, sipping her caramel macchiato and looking at Lardo expectantly. The chatter of the coffee shop around them seems to fall into a short lull, as though the entire Starbucks is waiting for Lardo’s answer, too.
Lardo wraps her hands around her tea, takes a breath, and nods.
“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I’m in.”
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In 2016, Lardo Duan graduated from university with a master’s in fine arts. She specialized in turn-of-the-century symbolist-style painting, and she got her work hung in every coffee shop she could, every local community gallery, every Saturday market art show—but there’s some truth behind the struggling artist cliché. Lardo simply can’t make enough from the pieces she sells to support herself. For the last year and a half, she’s been working as a receptionist at a local family dentistry. It could be worse, she tells herself. It could be worse, but every day she sits at that desk seems to eat away at her creativity. She hasn’t felt the motivation to paint in weeks.
A couple days ago, she got a call.
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Camilla Collins first finds Larissa Duan in a small hole-in-the-wall coffee shop on a rainy day in early February.
The rain in Seattle is like ocean spray: small, fine droplets that soak you to the bone within minutes of stepping outside.
Camilla still isn’t used to it. It’s been six months since she moved to the west coast, and she’d rather be back home in Massachusetts, but work is work. Art dealers don’t get days off—especially not illegal art dealers. She’s been liquidating a series of smuggled 19th century paintings from a supplier in southeast Asia, and it’s been the only thing on her mind for weeks.
The only thing on her mind when she steps into the tiny University District coffee shop is a hot cappuccino and a quick break from the weather. She almost doesn’t notice the wall of for-sale art hanging next to the register. They’re all student artwork, she guesses, or at least they look that way. She’s about to turn back to the menu overhead when a series of three paintings catches her eye off to the left, almost out of sight, and for an instant, she swears she’s back in Austria at the Klimt exhibition. In that moment, Camilla knows that she’s found gold.
“I’d like to purchase some of these paintings,” she says to the cashier when she reaches the front of the line. “And I’d like the artist’s contact information.”
“Sure—which artist?” the cashier asks.
Camilla glances at the labels next to the paintings. “Duan,” she says. “Larissa Duan.”
✿
Lardo always hoped she might get commissioned one day to do something incredible. Maybe she’d create a piece for a Hollywood mansion, or a mural in New York, or illustrations for a best-selling children’s book. She wanted to make something with lasting impact, something people would talk about.
She never expected she would get commissioned to paint a forgery.
✿
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Camilla says, watching her under the curtain of her false lashes. Lardo looks back up at the print in Camilla’s foyer, and, well—she can’t say she disagrees. She recognized the piece as soon as she walked in the door. The two women in the painting are standing close together, one nude and one clothed, both staring out at the viewer. They are surrounded by Japanese-inspired ornamental symbols and designs on a pink-red plane. The colors are bright and vibrant; it’s a high-quality print, as close a testament to the original as a print can be.
“The Girlfriends,” Lardo murmurs. “Oil on canvas. One of Klimt’s last commissioned paintings. It was set on fire in 1945 by Nazis.”
Camilla nods. “That’s the story the world knows,” she says, tracing her finger over the edge of the frame. “But... I’d like to tell them a different story.”
Camilla looks at her again out of the corner of her eye, a small, knowing smirk curving her cherry-red lips, and for a moment Lardo wonders how many things this woman has made people do with lips like those.
✿
Camilla stocks Lardo with all the supplies she can think of. She’s had historians help her pick paints that Klimt would have used, chemists to get the aging of the paper, consultants to teach her the verification process. But at the end of the day, Lardo is the real expert. Everything hinges on her ability to paint.
She visits Lardo’s studio at least a couple times a week to check in. Lardo always buzzes her into the building, her hair clipped back and her eyeliner sharp. She leads Camilla into the studio with bare feet and paint-splattered flannels and shows Camilla her progress. Lardo doesn’t talk much, but when she does she has Camilla laughing. Even a well-placed raised eyebrow or a one-word comment is enough to make Camilla smile, and she finds herself coming to visit a little more frequently than she needs to. Perhaps a little more frequently than she should.
There’s a part of her that keeps wanting to reach out and touch, to take Lardo’s wrist between her fingers and hold on tight, examine the planes of her palm. She wants to know how hands like these can make the feathered sketches that line the walls of the studio, how they can mix these colors and paint strokes this steady. Camilla catches herself staring at Lardo’s hands, at the lines of her slender fingers and the paint drying underneath her fingernails, and has to make herself look away.
If she let herself take Lardo’s hand, she’s not sure she’d be able to give it up again. She’s never been good at losing.
✿
“It’s our four-month anniversary,” Lardo says, her lips quirking upwards as she lets Camilla into the apartment. Camilla notices the unopened bottle of merlot Lardo is holding, her fingers wrapped around the neck, and she can’t help her own answering smile “Four months ago, I agreed to start working on this project with you, so I thought maybe we could... celebrate?”
“I’d love to,” Camilla says, and means it. Lardo leads them over to the sofa in the living room. “I wouldn’t have taken you to be a merlot kind of person,” Camilla says when they sit.
“I’m not, really,” Lardo admits. “I’m definitely more into mixed drinks. Or vodka. But... wine for special occasions, right?”
Lardo opens the bottle and starts pouring them each a glass. The wine is such a deep red that it looks almost black, matching the shade of Lardo’s lipstick, and she thinks about that coincidence, about how the color of her lipstick will look against the smooth curve of the wine glass. Camilla takes off her pumps, one by one, undoing the strap around her ankles and slipping her nylon-covered feet onto the hardwood. Lardo hands her a glass.
“It’s wonderful,” Camilla says, sipping delicately and letting the flavor swirl around on her tongue. “Where’s it from?”
“You really wanna know?” Lardo asks.
“Tell me.”
Lardo hides her smirk behind the lip of the glass. “I bought it for six bucks at the grocery store.”
“What—really? You’re serious?” When Lardo nods, Camilla can’t help but laugh. “Look at you! You really are a con artist now, aren’t you?”
“I guess I am.” Lardo runs her fingers through her hair and rests her hand at the back of her neck. “A price tag is just a way for the 1% to show off how much money they have.”
“I’ll drink to that,” says Camilla, taking another sip. “The Klimt they auctioned in London earlier this year sold for sixty million.”
Lardo makes an impressed noise. “Holy shit. How much do you think ours will auction for?”
“Oh, yours will go for twice that, at least.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely,” Camilla says. “The long-lost homoerotic painting from the end of Klimt’s golden years? Could even be triple.”
“Hm,” Lardo murmurs. “When it’s at the auction, the only thing people are going to see is the name—‘Klimt’.” She’s quiet for a moment, looking lost in thought.
“What do you see?”
“Hm?”
“What do you see when you look at the painting?” Camilla asks.
They both turn to look at the half-finished painting propped up on an easel in the corner of Lardo’s studio.
“Well....” Lardo chews at her lip. “I see two lesbians. But they’re there to be looked at. They’re facing the viewer—not each other. One of them is totally naked. I mean, her boobs are right there. And that doesn’t even mention all the ‘oriental’ ornamentation shit Klimt put around them. He probably just slapped it on there because he thought it looked cool, but it’s Klimt, so it can’t be appropriation, right?” She takes a breath and lets out a small, frustrated sigh. “I just.... It’s a masterpiece, apparently. A straight white man’s masterpiece.”
“Not anymore,” says Camilla, and Lardo gives her a quizzical look. “Klimt is dead. It’s your masterpiece now.”
“I think we’re banking on the art world disagreeing with you on that one.”
“Maybe,” Camilla admits, “but I do think that a replica is art in its own right. Nothing is truly original anymore—all new art necessarily requires you to remix old art.”
“A remix isn’t the same as a replica.”
“No,” says Camilla, “I guess not.”
Lardo give Camilla an inscrutable look, and Camilla is just about to ask about it when Lardo stands and sets down her wine glass. “Hold on a sec,” she says, and rushes to her supply shelves.
Camilla watches as Lardo grabs her sketchbook and pencil and returns to the couch, sitting with one leg up on the cushion and the other dangling off the edge. Lardo’s hand flits around the page, her eyes glancing upwards every now and then to meet Camilla’s. The sketchbook is propped on Lardo’s knee so that it’s angled away from Camilla, and she wants to lean forward, wants to see the realities that Lardo is pulling from the paper, but she worries that she’d be overstepping. Instead she waits. She watches, and she sips her wine.
“Okay,” Lardo says eventually. She turns the sketchbook around.
On the page are two women. They’re standing close, their bodies angled towards each other, gazing at one another in that soft way that lovers do. One is nude, but her body is positioned in such a way that most her skin is covered by the red robes draping from the other woman’s arm. Surrounding them are a series of small but intricate designs, like woodblock prints.
One of the women has Camilla’s face.
“This one never belonged to Klimt,” Lardo says, subdued. “It’s ours.”
And Camilla hopes she’s reading this right. She hopes she hasn’t misinterpreted this, hopes she hasn’t misunderstood the wine and the sketch and the shy smiles. With a steady hand, she reaches out and places her palm over Lardo’s.
“Or... it’s yours,” Camilla says, “if you want it to be.”
Lardo curls her fingers around Camilla’s own, just slightly, and then reaches her other hand forward to rest on Camilla’s arm. “Yeah,” she says, leaning in. “I’d like that.”
When she tastes the wine-red seam of Lardo’s lips, Camilla never wants it to stop.
✿
‘Miracle’ Klimt Painting Sells for $142 Million, Sets Klimt Auction Record
A Klimt painting thought to be lost in a fire in 1945 was auctioned today for £110 million ($142 million American dollars) in an auction house in London, reports say. It is the highest auctioned Klimt painting to date.
The painting was recovered by longtime art enthusiast Camilla Collins, who discovered the piece among a collection of miscellaneous art she purchased from an art liquidation sale in Poland. It is believed that the piece was rescued from the fire by Austrian civilians, but its history after its near-destruction is unclear.
The piece was determined to be genuine in August after a month-long inspection process. The painting withstood rigorous authentication measures by some of the best Klimt experts in the world, including Alfred Weidinger, deputy director of Austria's Belvedere museum, which holds the world's largest Klimt collection.
The buyer was a private collector in Canada who wishes to remain anonymous.
In honor of the painting’s discovery, Collins will be opening a gallery in Seattle featuring Klimt-inspired artwork. The work of Collins’ partner, Larissa Duan, will be heavily featured. The exhibition will be opened to the public in October.
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The End