many flowers?”
They went upstairs to the permanent collection, which was another thing
that Daniel liked about the Met. The art here tended to be older, quieter. He
found the past simpler than the present. He could admire work up to 1866,
say, without needing to compete, without feeling judged by it.
Abbas, however, responded differently.
“Courbet? Ugh. I hate Courbet. Every government building in Paris has
one. The only painter who is worse is Millet. And there he is. Disgusting. And
Ingres. So overrated. His women look like shiny dinner plates. These are all
French painters. Do they have nothing here but bad French art?”
They started in the nineteenth century and worked backward. Daniel
thought Abbas might become less talkative, less competitive as they got fur-
ther from their own century, but it didn’t happen.
“The Dutch. Which means Rembrandt. Boring old Rembrandt. And Ver-
meer. There he is. Two, no, three Vermeers? I like Vermeer. Sometimes. I
might like him more if stupid people didn’t love him so much. Steen. Hals.
Cuyp—the cow man. He paints cows over and over, the way that Bonnard
paints naked women in bathtubs. I wonder if he ever fucked a cow.”
Daniel tried to be amused by Abbas’s chatter—some of it was funny—but
the man suffered a bad case of the anxieties of influence. He appeared to be
in competition with the entire history of art, trashing everyone in a nervous at-
tempt to clear a space for himself. Daniel had met others like this, but they
were usually bad artists, fakes. Abbas was a wonderful artist. He could afford
to love someone.
There was a Thomas Eakins show in the American wing, which Daniel
wanted to visit, but Eakins was a guilty pleasure and Daniel didn’t dare ex-
pose the earnest, repressed American to this anxious, flippant Iranian. He
might come away hating both men. He proposed they visit the Islamic gallery.
Let him kill his own, he thought.
“No, Islamic art is all boring ornamentation,” said Abbas. “Where are the
moderns? I want to see the moderns.”
E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a
1 7 9
Suit yourself, thought Daniel, and he led them toward the Lila Wallace
collection in the back.
“I was wrong,” said Abbas. “This place is not like a bank. It is like a train
station. A train station full of terrible art.”
They walked into a room full of Picassos.
And Abbas came to a halt.
He looked around, frowning. Daniel braced himself for a new string of
jokes and insults. There are more bad Picassos in the world than good ones,
but these were pretty good. A couple were great. There was the portrait of
Gertrude Stein and a few bold, beige Cubist works. Three Musicians was here,
jagged and colorful, apparently on loan from MoMA. Next to it hung Harle-
quin.
“Good old Pablo,” said Daniel. “The man just shitted paintings.”
He only wanted to get in the first wisecrack, but Abbas turned to him,
looking insulted.
“Kidding,” Daniel chirped. “I love Picasso. He’s a giant. You think you
know him, you think he’s old hat, and then he goes and surprises you all over
again.”
Abbas took a deep breath and nodded at the paintings. “These are here?”
he whispered. “I did not know. I have seen only copies.”
“Yes, well, half are on loan, so we’re lucky to catch them.”
Abbas nodded again, in silence, struck dumb by great art. Daniel couldn’t
help feeling a gush of love for a man who could love an old warhorse like Pi-
casso.
Then Abbas said, “He depresses me.”
“He makes you sad?”
Abbas shook his head. “He got his foot into the door.” He was angry. “He
succeeded. Why can’t I?”
Daniel didn’t know what to say in response. Because he’s Picasso and
you’re not? Because he was doing this a hundred years ago? Even then it was
forty years before he got a break?
“Look at this.” Abbas passed his hand an inch in front of Harlequin, a fig-
ure like a checkered playing card with a small head. “So simple. A pattern on
1 8 0
C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m
a pattern. You see it in a book and it looks like magic. But it is only paint. A
little sloppy. A little handmade. Is it so much better than my work?”
“I love your work,” said Daniel. “You know I love it.” What else could he
say?
Abbas didn’t seem to hear. “What am I doing wrong? I work hard. I give
it everything. I paint the best I can. And what do I have to show for it? Not
shit.”
A young Japanese couple entered the room and went over to Gertrude
Stein. They wore headphones and were cocooned in audio; they didn’t hear