He smoothed his mustache, as thick and dark as the hair on his head, and regarded her. “As a fellow teacher, I feel the need to come to your aid.” She couldn’t place his accent, eastern European, perhaps.
“I don’t need your aid. I needed the editor of Vogue to see my illustrations and offer me a contract, which did not happen because Mr. Lorette buried my work.”
“You’re so confident that this editor would have hired you on the spot after seeing your work?”
“I am.”
“Very well, then, you belong with me. Come downtown with us. We’re going to Richard’s, which is full of people who hold similarly high opinions of their own work. You’ll fit right in.”
A few moments ago, all she wanted was to go back to her studio on East Tenth Street, rip up all her sketches, shove over her drawing table with its paints, trays, and rags, and watch the rubbish clatter to the floor.
It would probably be better for her art supplies if she avoided going home until her rage subsided, and part of her wanted to pick a fight with this man, who seemed sure of himself and his place in the world.
She squeezed into a taxi full of jabbering students, Nadine perched up front next to Mr. Zakarian, and stared out the window until it pulled up to a basement restaurant off West Fourth Street. The place was full, but the owner ushered them to a room at the back, where Mr. Zakarian took a seat at the head of a long table while the rest pulled up chairs around him, shouting out orders to the waitress.
Clara hung back and watched Mr. Zakarian’s disciples jockey for the seats nearest him. The only other teacher present she recognized was Sebastian Standish, who had achieved a modicum of fame with his flattering portraits of newly wealthy businessmen and their families. He led the antique drawing class, where beginner students were taught to draw from cast models of Greek and Roman sculptures.
“It’s old news,” Mr. Zakarian announced, in response to a question Clara hadn’t heard. “The Armory Show was the death knell to representational art. Anyone who doesn’t think Picasso is a genius will be left behind, sketching and resketching four-hundred-year-old nudes until their pencils wear down to a nub as the rest of us move on to cubism, modernism.”
The Armory Show. Where the work of avant-garde artists like Duchamp, Matisse, and Picasso had graced America’s shores for the first time. Among a certain faction of the art world, the exhibit had caused a seismic shift in theories and approaches.
Mr. Standish bristled. He had at least twenty years on Mr. Zakarian, and his Newport plaid suit stood in marked contrast to the other teacher’s shabby lumberjack shirt. “The Armory Show was fifteen years ago, Levon. If the curators intended to shock those of us who believe that a realistic drawing of peasants working in a field is a truer work of art as compared to a mishmash of shapes and colors signifying nothing, they have failed. I’m in no fear of being left behind.”
“If a student has talent, they need inspiration, not rigid rules: ‘Draw the finger like this and the torso like this.’” Mr. Zakarian’s mimicry drew laughter.
“You must admit that classical techniques ought to be mastered first. Can you at least admit that?”
Mr. Zakarian relented. “We agree on that point. But if my student wants to draw a fish on the head of his figure, why shouldn’t he?”
As they railed back and forth, the students breaking out into smaller arguments among themselves, Clara leaned against the wall. She had nothing to add. The hierarchy in the art world had been established hundreds of years ago: Oil painting trumped watercolors, portraits trumped landscapes. And all of that, summed up as “fine” art, trumped commercial art. Illustrators lay at the very bottom of the totem pole.
Mr. Zakarian had probably invited her along to show her how little her tantrum mattered in the rarefied world of high art.
“You must declare your affiliation and stand by it,” said Mr. Standish. “Academic art has been around for far longer than your cubist goulash. In a hundred years, it will still be the standard-bearer for great art.”
One of Mr. Zakarian’s students chimed in. “You don’t understand how fast the world is changing. Pretty pictures are no longer of interest, except to stodgy collectors.”
Back in Arizona, taking classes at her provincial art school, Clara dreamed of meeting other artists. No one in her family understood her passion for drawing. How sometimes at night she’d lie awake, thinking about the line of a cheekbone on a portrait she’d been struggling with, imagining the exact brushstroke she’d use the next day.
But this discussion, if you could call it that, was far beyond anything she’d been taught. She didn’t have the vocabulary to join in, even if she wanted to. A part of her knew this was why she’d kept to herself this past year. Everyone else in New York was so polished. She was not, her family hailing from hardscrabble stock who endured the blistering heat of desert summers.
But even if she didn’t speak like they did, her confidence and passion in her own work were unwavering. When she drew or painted, it was as if an unseen hand guided her own. She’d never been able to explain that to anyone. To her, painting was an internal expression, not a political or social one. She didn’t have a manifesto or an affiliation, other than to please herself doing what she loved to do and make money doing it. The first part was easy—the second, more elusive.
“Picabia is no better than an illustrator.” The speaker was Nadine. Her friendly smile from earlier that evening had disappeared.
Mr. Zakarian’s gaze swung Clara’s way like a lighthouse beacon. “An interesting supposition, Nadine. Luckily, we have a distinguished illustrator here. Perhaps Miss Darden has something to say in her own defense?”
Clara was only vaguely familiar with Picabia’s early drawings of machines, which resembled instruction manuals and were of no interest to her. But that wasn’t the point here, and Levon knew it. He was challenging her to prove herself.
Her heart pounding at the attention, she went on the attack. “I assume you rarely have illustrators join in your cozy after-hours gatherings, but my guess is that’s because illustration requires both talent and discipline. Which in turn requires honing your craft instead of staying up all night talking about it.”
Mr. Zakarian grinned; her audacity seemed to please him. “You can only work so many hours in a day. If you don’t know why you’re working, what’s the point?”
“I know exactly why I’m working. To please the client. Illustrators have to be malleable experts at all styles and subjects.” The silence that followed only fed her disdain. She wouldn’t be working at the school much longer, anyway, so what did it matter? “I’d like to see you get a commission, figure out the approach and execution, then do it all over again the next day, with a different client with a different set of expectations. You wouldn’t last a week.”
“Fine, it’s a tough field,” said the student sitting to Mr. Zakarian’s right. “But you can’t call it art. It’s a magazine cover or an ad, and then it’s trash.”
She stood firm. “One day, illustrations will be as venerated as the works of Matisse.”
Mr. Zakarian laughed. “So you’re saying that one day, an ad for pea soup will be framed and hanging on the wall of a museum?”
“Maybe. What I’m saying is that many illustrators are more proficient, more skilled, than fine artists.”
“Let’s prove it. I dare you to come to my life drawing and painting class. Tomorrow.” Mr. Zakarian’s words had an edge that belied the smile on his face.
Mr. Zakarian had no idea whom he was dealing with. Clara had been born into a family of great wealth and indulgence in Phoenix, and she vividly remembered screaming as a child of three when her mother refused her a sweet. Her father had adored her ferocity, encouraged it. When his embezzlement scheme—selling shares in a copper mine that never existed—finally unraveled, it had only made Clara more demanding. For fifteen years, the world had revolved around her, and then suddenly she was an afterthought, her tyrannical ways no longer effective at getting attention or a pleasing response. But she could summon up the familiar fury at a moment’s notice, if necessary. “I’d be delighted.”