Chapter 5: Third Visitation: art!

Saturday 17 june

On the Saturday afternoon I walk through the city to an address, of which Joy had said I could discover good art for my appartment. Monique is 65, weaving artist and Paulus is 70, he paints and sculpts. I recognise their names, ah, that’s why she sent me here.

I enter their studio, Monique at the loom and large canvases on the wall. We start talking about what I am looking for. I see her beautiful wall hangings, in sisal and hemp, or coarsely spun wool, special weaving techniques and her all-embracing theme, the vulva!

“You were once with Abakanowicz?”

“Yes, in the seventies. I learned so much from her and enjoyed living with her. That’s her vulva” and points to a beautiful woollen weave in purple. “I only sell to women I love, not to horny guys” she warns me.

Paul comes from behind his easel, naked, erect and with semen crusted pubes. He looks attentively at me “You must be Ben” and puts a hand on my shoulder, grabs my chin and twists my head on profile. He strokes my moustache and lips with a finger and I smell the oil paint. Like he is going to portray me.

Origine de Monde - Corbet- Musée d’Orsay, Paris^[viii]

“As a guy you need a tightly painted canvas, pussies are to go in, not to look at from the couch” and takes me to a painting ‘When the fat lady sings’ from a BBW, lying in Courbet posture, but 40 kilos heavier, abstract knife technique in white/pink shades, with her face and vulva worked out in ‘magic realism’ detail. Of course without those annoying, chaste rags.

“I know that face” I notice and he takes a book from the case and shows me why. The lady in question resembles that angel of Hans Memling,’ Christ among the Musical Angels’ from 15th century Antwerp. “Look, she’s not singing, she’s coming! And his cross indicates, who his latest favourite is. Actually, it is Jesus among his groupies, singing: “O Saviour, for You I open wide my gate!

retable by Nájera: Hans Memling 1480-1494 ^[ix]

“Or perhaps” and I quote a song my father used to sing while shaving:

Heer Jezus heeft een hofken,
daar ‘t schoon roede staat,
daarop zo wil ik neuken gaan,
‘t is wel gedaan... ‘

‘Lord Jesus has a courtyard,
where a wonderful rod is standing,
on that’s where I want to go fucking,
it’s so well done... ‘

“I would like to have that fat lady on my wall, she can keep me company on lonely evenings” I say.

Paulus fondles my croch as we stand watching. “Karel Appel once told me ‘A good nude painting gives you an erection, a masterpiece gives you an orgasm’.

“Well, then, my couch will be white and slippery all the time,” I complement him.

Monique very seriously: “You only understand this work fully, when you made love to her intensely and only then you will be able to buy it. We enjoyed her full breasts, drank from her vulva and Paul enjoyed her hot thighs around his balls. I always had a wet pussy when she posed for him and saw how Paul behind his easel regularly and without hands squirted his seed into the air. Look how he lovingly and meticulously captured her pussy. You can smell her and finger her and expect her to sigh ... Find her, love her and the work is all yours.”

♂♀♂

We sit at her workbench behind a rosé and have a deep discussion about the more or less hidden allusions in late medieval and renaissance painting.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Ognissanti, Florence, 1480’s ^[x]

Paulus reminds me of Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Last Supper in both versions - a kind of comic strip before and after... “Where is Jesus’ hand? And why does John look so beatified? And Peter is trying to hide with talking over it.”

Domenico Ghirlandaio, San Marco, Florence, 1480’s ^[xi]

“Jesus still looks lustfully at his young lover, John, while the others look on jealously. John has the sanctified expression of having just finished off, while Judas still wants to caress him. Would John do it with all of them? Beware, so many men together and such a savoury bite in between...”

“There seems to be a hidden painting somewhere of da Vinci, Jesus and the apostles, playing with the whores in Mary Magdalene’s brothel, where He - in His godly nakedness - reveals to her the difference between sexualitas and amor, animal fucking versus loving each other. Jesus as the lover, caressing and kissing her, letting the Spirit descend into her belly and filling her with His Godfatherly seed. Perhaps it hangs somewhere in the Vatican to keep the cardinals straight and stiff”.

“Maybe you should repaint that one for the new temple that Joy and Felix are planning” I say. “seems wonderful to me, such a debauched and blasphemous work.”

♂♀♂

“And while we are on the subject of your work, in your ‘primavera’ of the temple you portrayed my parents, how do you know them?

Then they tell of their meeting on a nude beach in ‘83 and how they spent that weekend together in intimate sex on the floor of their studio. Paul pulls out a sketchbook and I see them making love in crayon and also separate sketches, close up, of the pussy and dick that made me, but here, long before that act.

“When your mother wanted to get pregnant, she pointed at her cunt and said: “this pussy means business” and only your pa was allowed in her from that moment on, and a lot of his squirting was needed, until you were made” said Paul.

“We later got a picture in the post of her round belly with on the back “new dick coming up, hope you’ll like him too”. “ I get up and pour the glasses again, Monique pulls my trousers from my ass and says,” And we’re going to test that now! We kissed your tummy when you were a baby, but afterwards we went to live in a commune in the Pyrenees, our affair with your parents was over and we lost contact.

I had knitted you a boy’s doll for your first birthday, a penguin, black back and wings, light pink belly and feet with a yellow, long beak. Your mother sent me a picture, you, naked and smiling loud, with that penguin on your knee”.

“Pingie! My dear companion, did you give it to me? You know, this last year I have soaked him with my tears, he is always lying next to me on my pillow, worn out ... Consolation, out of your hands!”

Tears in my eyes, I embrace her and she kisses my grief away. Our lips touch, and our tongues play a fiery game. A mixture of lust and childish love, like with my mother, when I had just confessed to her as an eager teenager.

Paul puts his hands on our hair “We should cherish and celebrate this, come”.

The Nativity of Venus -Sandro Botticelli - Uffizi- Florence ^[xii]

In their bedroom the life-sized ‘Nascita di Venere’, my mother again, a second picture, about 3 minutes after Botticelli had sketched her. In the meantime her nipples are hard, her red hair has fallen off her crotch and she touches her clit with a finger. Zephyr and Chloris - the much younger Paul and Monique - instead of blowing, kiss each other deeply now. I recognise Hora as ‘The fat lady’.