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The Real Thing
by
Harry Buschman
“Well, I didn’t say it was every bit as good as a Picasso, I said it was like a
Picasso - but different from a Picasso.”
Sebastian stepped back and tilted his head to one side. “Not all that different
... remember 1920 to 1930 ... the cubist years,?”
Madame Tussot was not fully convinced, but she could see Sebastian’s point.
“Yes-s-s-s, similar. Very similar, Sebastian. What’s your point, my boy. What
are you trying to say?”
Sebastian raised his eyebrows archly. “The point, Madame? It’s simply that we
have here -- the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Sebastian! Really!”
“We are behind in the rent, Madame. Two months behind. The heat is turned off. I
hope I don’t have to remind Madame that I have not been paid in three weeks.”
“But, I could never ... I mean ... it’s not a Picasso, Sebastian. We can’t make
it something it’s not.”
“The mask. The mailed fist. The music symbolism. That is all Picasso is it not?”
Sebastian carefully pointed out the details.
“Yes, I see all those things, Sebastian. You don’t have to point them out to me.
I see the truncated male genital symbol too, thank you for not pointing that
out.” Madame Tussot knew very well where Sebastian was going with his line of
argument -- it was risky, very risky, and the penalties for conviction were
monumental. “We could never do it, Sebastian. This is not Houston, Texas --
there are too many experts in New York.”
“What if I told Madame there are two fake Picassos at MoMA.”
“Ridiculous!”
“Not so, Madame. I painted them myself.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “You’re joking.”
“Suppose you were a curator of The Met or the Museum of Modern Art, Madame ... “
Sebastian turned the painting until it stood out boldly in the overhead lights,
“ ... and you had just bought a Picasso for a million dollars, or a Matisse - a
Renoir perhaps ... and you learned it was a forgery. What would you do, Madame?”
“I’d shoot myself! I’d be ruined! It would be the end of my career as a curator.
Is that what you’re driving at, Sebastian?”
“Exactly, Madame. You would do everything in your power to convince yourself,
and everyone else that it was genuine.”
Madame Tussot approached the painting again and peered at it closely. “Do you
really think we could do it, Sebastian?”
“All it needs is the name in the lower right corner, Madame. Voila!”
“It’s not like it’s an old master, is it? I mean ... Picasso used the same
paint. The same type of canvas ... he even stapled the canvas to the stretcher.”
“The lower right corner, he always put his name in the lower tight corner.
Voila, Madame!”
Madame Tussot took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s go for it,
Sebastian.”
Sebastian squeezed a little Prussian blue on his palette and thinned it with
turpentine. He took a small round brush a worked it into the paint and in a
firm, bold hand he signed the painting P-I-C-K-A-S-S-O.
“Voila!” He said triumphantly.
the end
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