The Talented Mr. Picasso.
What did Ripley get right about the artworld?
Steven Zaillian’s Ripley miniseries on Netflix was nominated for a flight of Emmys and won four last week—I don’t watch a lot of TV, but when there’s a Patricia Highsmith adaptation loaded up with interesting paintings, I’m in.
I appreciated that the miniseries hewed more closely to the book’s plot than did the lovely 1999 film with Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow. With no voice-overs or inner dialogue, Ripley gave us enigmatic, mask-like performances—the effect was a little alienating, but then, it heightened the suspense: what does Ripley know? When does he know it? Are we watching his becoming, or has he always been this way? Highsmith gives us so much of Ripley’s perspective in the books that these are settled matters—but in the show, they’re left open, and the effect is profoundly unsettling. In surmounting the same problem, the 1999 film gave Ripley and his prey a film-friendly activity over which to bond: the idly-rich Dickie was converted into a jazz fan, and this becomes the topic of conversation for Tom and Dick. 2024’s version dispenses with that—jazz is far too joyful for the dark noir of this world—but in place of jazz, there is a different pursuit given to the fated pair: a love of fine art.
How well did Ripley get the artworld? I give it an uncanny A+. John Malkovich shows up late in the show, at a louche party at Pegeen Vail Guggenheim’s Venetian palazzo—this isn’t in the book, either, but Malkovich’s relentlessly being John Malkovich wasn’t enough to distract me from the familiarity of the scene. That scene was like a documentary of a conversation I have 52 times a year. (It’s also an Easter egg to those who saw the 2002 Ripley’s Game, in which Malkovich played Ripley. Ripley’s game recognizing Ripley’s Game, so to speak.)
There’s a weird little reenactment of the final days of Caravaggio—weird that we jump to 1606 after spending a nine episodes in 1960, but, if Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (2012) is to be believed, everything they said about Caravaggio is true.
Architectural Digest ran down the paintings that Ripley examines in a listicle a few months back,1 but what caught my eye, as a lover of Highsmith, was the role of a 1910 Picasso in the show. The painting is a presence in the design of the show—it looms over the entire relationship between Dickie and Tom, and, as AD (and probably a hundred others) pointed out, the prismatic view of this early Cubist painting manifests the fractured, prismatic personality that Tom develops as he performs as three different personas: as himself; as his murdered friend Tom; and as a Caravaggio-inspired version of himself.
What AD didn’t mention is the significance of the painting’s date: in 1910, the Spaniard was painting alongside Georges Braque as they pioneered Cubism. Theirs was a deep collaboration: they painted side-by-side, sometimes on the same canvas. Picasso reminisced:
“Almost every evening, either I went to Braque’s studio or Braque came to mine. Each of us had to see what the other had done during the day.”2
It’s the type of relationship Tom aspired to have with Dickie. It’s as good a pictorial metonym for the series’ first act as Caravaggio is for the last. The only thing Ripley got wrong about the Picasso is the most important thing: its signature.
II. What’s it worth in 1960?
Specifically, that the painting has a signature at all: those years of collaboration between Picasso and Braque, 1907-1914, were so intense that they tempered even Picasso’s famous ego. The Guitarist or The Guitar Player, as the painting is variously known, is not signed on the front. The signature was added for one reason: so that Ripley can see the signature and know that it is very, very valuable.
The painting is also planted in the show to cover a big, gaping plot hole that did not port over from the book—spoilers ahoy if you haven’t read the book! At the end of the story, Tom has been living off cashing Dickie’s trust fund checks—but once Dickie is publicly known to be dead, Tom will be cut off from the trust fund. How will he keep living this lavish life?
In the book, Tom solves the problem by forging a suicide note and revising his will to include Tom as his sole beneficiary. It passes muster with Dickie’s father and Tom gets to live his life happily rich, if a little paranoid about getting caught.
If this seems like a bridge too far, the producers of the show seem to agree: they cut out that bit about the forged will. In its place: the Picasso! Tom steals it and mails it to himself, unwrapping it in the final moments of the show to reveal that he hasn’t lost it in his many hasty exits. That’s his lifeboat.
But how good of a lifeboat is it?
Picasso was having a banner year in 1960, when the show is set. A huge show in London that year has been called the “first artworld block-buster,” and the anglophone world was in the grip of “Picassomania.”3 Picasso had obviously been a big deal for a long time, but while MoMA and other New York institutions had feuded decades prior over the acquisition of the best early Picassos,4 the Tate’s vast retrospective was the real ice-breaker to previously chilly British art-lovers—and the heat in London reignited interest in the still-vibrant painter’s work.
The particular painting in Ripley wouldn’t’ve been hanging on Dickie’s wall: it had been on the walls of the Pompidou for a decade, a 1952 gift of one André Lefèvre—but suspend our disbelief for a moment and understand that this early Cubist painting would have been worth a lot. We don’t have a transparent listing of auction results from the early ‘60s, but today, the top of Picasso’s market is in the hundreds of millions—Picassos have cracked nine figures a half-dozen times. But, notably, the top examples are later paintings. You just don’t see many 1910 canvases at auction—they are all hanging in places like the Pompidou. So if this painting did come to market today, think well north of a hundred million dollars.
That’s good money. But is it kill-someone-and-get-away-with-it money—in 1960?
No easy way to say this: 75 years ago, it was worth a lot less, even correcting for inflation. More examples were on the market, Picasso was alive, and the huge spikes in art market activity were still in the future. If Ripley had the tenacity to hang onto it for a few decades, he would have been exceptionally well-positioned to make a killing.
And then there’s that plot-hole problem. If this painting is supposed to be so valuable that Ripley can go around living in Venetian palazzos for the rest of his life, then we also have to consider that it cost Dickie a lot to buy. Say it’s a ten million dollar painting—isn’t that worth a lot more than anything else Dickie owns, including the precious ring that his father only reluctantly gave to Tom? Put it another way, if this painting is “Easy Street” money, how come no one is asking about it?
That unasked question is at least as incredible as the idea of Tom making a fake will to himself. So if we’re to continue to ignore that glaring problem, it is only because no one knows that Tom has the painting—and in order to get away with its sale, he’s going to have to sell it through a criminal-minded dealer.
Lucky he has one of those: John Malkovich. We’ve talked about good and bad art crimes, and while there are some that you can probably get away with, there’s always a cost. For Tom, the cost is just dollars and sense: there’s no way this stolen painting is going to pass muster at public sale. Christie’s and Sotheby’s are not going to handle this sale without a lot of scrutiny—scrutiny Tom won’t endure. So forget about Picassomania—he can’t reap the upward-reaching insanity of an auction, so he has to deal with black market private sale. I have never sold a picture on the black market, but think about a mark down of 70-90%. Whatever the retail number was in 1960—ten million? Twenty million? Fifty million? Ripley’s going to see only a few of those millions.
Two or three million dollars—Is that rent-a-Venetian-palazzo-for-six-months rich? Sure. Is it murder someone and get away with it forever rich? It’s not even Pegeen Guggenheim rich.
So, as we close, let’s all say it together:
Crime does not pay!
Thanks for reading! Join us again next week as we dig into the ruins of the Old World with the work of Lyonel Feininger. See you in seven short days,
Jonathan
Jonathan@JoanthanMillerSpies.com
LAST WEEKS: Paul Shore | Whirligig.
Paul Shore | Whirligig is on view through October 5 at 526 West 26th Street, 419. Open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 PM.
Around Town:
Twenty-fourth street is alive with excellent showings by women artists. An engaging show by Joanna Pousette-Dart at Lisson Gallery at 504 W24th shows how much juice remains in the pulp of the shaped-canvas paintings. The artist is the daughter of Richard Pousette-Dart and has long since developed an idiom of glyphic forms and colors that feel personal and universal at the same time. Carrie Mae Weems at Gladstone, and a group show of women color-field painters of the 1970s at Lincoln Glenn includes a few names you’ll want to know. While you’re in the neighborhood, swing by the surprisingly beautiful Mike Mignola show we profiled last week, and join us at Paul Shore | Whirligig in its final weeks!
Cathy Whitlock, “We’re Enamored With the Design in Ripley—Here Are Our Top 5 Favorite Details From the Thrilling Netflix Series,” Architectural Digest, May 4, 2024.
As quoted in MoMA’s press release for Picasso Braque: Pioneering Cubism, 1989-1990.
Tim Adams, “Picasso, Tate, 1960: The World’s First ‘Art Blockbuster,’” The Guardian UK, September 28, 2012.
The feud between Albert E. Gallatin at his NYU museum, and Alfred Barr at MoMA, over the 1921 canvas, The Three Musicians, was a real slug-fest—read more about it in our article on Gallatin here.