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Authors: José Carlos Somoza
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wait naked and motionless in front of the window, telephone in hand, was simply the product of her own imagination. After all, she had still not received a single indication from the painter, whoever that might be, not a single gesture, not a word. Who would dream of painting with invisible silence? And besides, all this was running up a huge telephone bill. Jorge would laugh.
I'll count to thirty .. . OK, to a hundred ... if nothing happens, I'll hang up, she decided.
Having stood all day as Bassan's work of art, she felt exhausted, was starving and needed to sleep. She started to count. She could hear a gang of kids laughing on the far side of the street. Maybe they had seen her. She was not worried. She was a professional canvas. It was a long time since she had felt ashamed or timid.
Twenty-six ... twenty-seven ... twenty-eight ...
Art was her whole life. She had no idea where its limits were, if indeed there were any.
She had learnt to show and use her anatomy alone, in front of others, and with others. Not to consider any of its nooks and crannies as sacred. As far as possible, to resist the onset of pain. To dream as her muscles contracted. To see space as time and time as something that extended before her like a landscape in which she could stroll or laze around. To control her feelings, to invent, fake, and imitate them. To go beyond all barriers, leave aside any reservations, cast off the burden of remorse. A work of art had nothing of its own: mind and body were dedicated to creating and being created, to becoming transformed.
It was the oddest yet most beautiful profession in the world. She had ventured into it that same summer she had returned from Ibiza, and had never regretted her decision.
At Talia's she had found out that Eliseo Sandoval, the man who had painted By the Pool, lived and worked in Madrid with other colleagues, in a chalet near Torrejon. A few weeks later, she went there, alone and scared. The first thing she found was that she was not the only one taking this step, and that HD art was more popular in Spain than she had imagined. The house was teeming with painters and adolescents who aspired to becoming works of art. Eliseo, a young Venezuelan artist with the looks of a boxer and a fascinating cleft chin, charged a few euros to give rough-and-ready classes to underage models. He did this in secret and with no hope of selling any of the works, because HD with minors had not yet been made legal. Clara dipped into her scant savings and began to attend every weekend. Among other things, she got accustomed to being on show naked, both inside and outside the house, on her own or with others present. And was able to spend hours with paint on her skin. And the basics of hyper-drama: the games, rehearsals, the different kinds of expression.
Her brother got wind of these visits, and the conflicts and prohibitions began. Clara discovered that Jose Manuel wanted to replace her dead father as her guardian. But she would not permit it. She threatened to leave home, and, when the situation became unbearable, did so.
At sixteen she started to work with The Circle, an international society of fringe artists who prepared young people for great painters. She got her body tattooed, dyed her hair red, perforated her nose, ears, nipples and navel with studs and was able to study with Wedekind, Cuinet and Ferrucioli. At eighteen she was living with Gabi Ponce, an up-and-coming painter she'd met in Barcelona: her first love, her first artist. By the age of twenty she was getting calls from Alex Bassan, Xavier Gonfrell and Gutierrez Reguero to create original art works. Then it was the turn of the really well-known ones: Georges Chalboux painted a spirit with her body, Gilberto Brentano turned her into a mare, and Vicky brought out expressions in her face she never thought she was capable of.
Until now though, she had never been painted by a genius.
But, she wondered, what would happen if nobody replied,
I'll count to thirty .. . OK, to a hundred ... if nothing happens, I'll hang up, she decided.
Having stood all day as Bassan's work of art, she felt exhausted, was starving and needed to sleep. She started to count. She could hear a gang of kids laughing on the far side of the street. Maybe they had seen her. She was not worried. She was a professional canvas. It was a long time since she had felt ashamed or timid.
Twenty-six ... twenty-seven ... twenty-eight ...
Art was her whole life. She had no idea where its limits were, if indeed there were any.
She had learnt to show and use her anatomy alone, in front of others, and with others. Not to consider any of its nooks and crannies as sacred. As far as possible, to resist the onset of pain. To dream as her muscles contracted. To see space as time and time as something that extended before her like a landscape in which she could stroll or laze around. To control her feelings, to invent, fake, and imitate them. To go beyond all barriers, leave aside any reservations, cast off the burden of remorse. A work of art had nothing of its own: mind and body were dedicated to creating and being created, to becoming transformed.
It was the oddest yet most beautiful profession in the world. She had ventured into it that same summer she had returned from Ibiza, and had never regretted her decision.
At Talia's she had found out that Eliseo Sandoval, the man who had painted By the Pool, lived and worked in Madrid with other colleagues, in a chalet near Torrejon. A few weeks later, she went there, alone and scared. The first thing she found was that she was not the only one taking this step, and that HD art was more popular in Spain than she had imagined. The house was teeming with painters and adolescents who aspired to becoming works of art. Eliseo, a young Venezuelan artist with the looks of a boxer and a fascinating cleft chin, charged a few euros to give rough-and-ready classes to underage models. He did this in secret and with no hope of selling any of the works, because HD with minors had not yet been made legal. Clara dipped into her scant savings and began to attend every weekend. Among other things, she got accustomed to being on show naked, both inside and outside the house, on her own or with others present. And was able to spend hours with paint on her skin. And the basics of hyper-drama: the games, rehearsals, the different kinds of expression.
Her brother got wind of these visits, and the conflicts and prohibitions began. Clara discovered that Jose Manuel wanted to replace her dead father as her guardian. But she would not permit it. She threatened to leave home, and, when the situation became unbearable, did so.
At sixteen she started to work with The Circle, an international society of fringe artists who prepared young people for great painters. She got her body tattooed, dyed her hair red, perforated her nose, ears, nipples and navel with studs and was able to study with Wedekind, Cuinet and Ferrucioli. At eighteen she was living with Gabi Ponce, an up-and-coming painter she'd met in Barcelona: her first love, her first artist. By the age of twenty she was getting calls from Alex Bassan, Xavier Gonfrell and Gutierrez Reguero to create original art works. Then it was the turn of the really well-known ones: Georges Chalboux painted a spirit with her body, Gilberto Brentano turned her into a mare, and Vicky brought out expressions in her face she never thought she was capable of.
Until now though, she had never been painted by a genius.
But, she wondered, what would happen if nobody replied,
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