Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Becky's Museum
After weeks of leaden skies, icy fog, snow, and slush in the streets the day they were to meet
at Becky’s greeted them with a sharp wind, blinding sunshine, and a biting cold under a deep
blue sky. The air was filled with fine, windblown snow crystals that piled into drifts along the
fences and houses. Their apartment, which had been depressingly dark for months, was
flooded with the diffuse reflected light.
They arrived in high spirits. Becky’s house, an art nouveau villa near the Taurichevsky
Gardens, seemed to float in the cold light. The white two-story building was adorned by a
staircase with stained glass windows. Along the upper level ran a mosaic of semi-nude
mermaids floating in blue irises. Swinging floral reliefs framed the windows. They climbed a
flight of broad steps to the main entrance, under a balcony embellished with a hand-wrought
iron arabesque: Ostentatious, but of uniform style and in the best taste.
Becky ushered her guests into an intimate salon where she served Earl Grey tea and
petit-fours from the best French bakery in town.
Konrad looked around. The interior decor and the furniture complemented the outside,
leaving the impression that her father had given free hand to a carefully selected architect and
interior decorator.
In contrast to the subtle decor the paintings were overbearing. They covered the walls of
the foyer, the living room, and a large formal dining room in two and three tiers up to the
ceiling.
On a first superficial inspection Alexandra recognized only a few: two Renoirs, a
southern French landscape by Cezanne, and a horse-racing scene, probably by Degas. Two
large, disturbingly colorful canvasses, a turbulent landscape and a pair of provocative, darkskinned
nudes, she could not place. Marti explained that the Tahitian women were by Paul
Gauguin and the Provençal landscape by Vincent van Gogh.
Marti became very agitated. Unable to sit still, he stared spellbound at the Gauguin.
Umoved by their excitement, Becky lazily offered to take them around, if Marti would explain
the paintings.
Konrad stood rooted before the Gauguin. It showed a tropical beach. A triangular stretch
of hot-pink sand slanted diagonally across half the canvas. The two voluptuous Tahitian
women, both stark naked, dominated the foreground. One was lying, highly foreshortened, with
the head to the viewer. The other sat facing them, one leg bent up, the other angled
underneath. In the background a horse drank from a colorful pond of paint in which a third
woman took a bath.
Konrad declared the painting outright obscene but then moderated his judgement. "On
second consideration, it is not the nudity that disturbs me as much as the outrage of the colors,
the pink sand in particular. It has already burned a triangular hole into my retina."
Marti meekly defended the freedom of expression of an artist. Dissatisfied with Marti’s
apology, Alexandra, overcome by excitement, brushed all conventional decorum aside. "Look,
what offends you is the unveiled sexuality that this painting conveys. Sex is a part of life, how
to show it in a painting? Gauguin dares to express the emotional heat by his colors. His two
nudes are in themselves completely innocent, the visual implications and the arousal are only
in the mind of the observer – and the painter. Maybe Gauguin was as shocked by the Tahitian
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