Forgy Mark - The Forgers Apprentice: Life with the Worlds Most Notorious Artist

Copyright 2012 Mark Forgy

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1470193086

ISBN 13: 9781470193089

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62345-184-4

In the summer of 1969 college was little more than a bulletproof vest giving me a deferment from the draft and Vietnam. The previous year saw hope and sanity burn on the funeral pyres of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Chicagos Democratic Convention captured the mood of the country: tear gas, riot police, batons beating protesters, and organized resistance. American society had not been as divided since the Civil War. By April of 69 more than thirty-three-thousand bodies in black zippered bags came home from the Tropic of Hell. I knew I wouldnt let myself be inducted or induced to just sign up and get it over with, as my father urged me to do. It was an immoral war, indefensible and unwinnable, I thought. Drugs and the spirit of rebellion carried me and millions more in their currents. Rather than going to beautiful Southeast Asia, I elected to go to Europe. It would be an escape from my flirtation with higher learning, although the consequences of my decision would change my life in ways I could not have imagined.

On the Spanish Mediterranean island of Ibiza, I discovered a refuge friendly to the 60s counterculture. There, I met an artist named Elmyr (pronounced el-MEER). De Hory, his family name, he declared is Hungarian. The inflection in his voice elevated the ordinary to extraordinary, as in I would like a steak, lending a piece of meat the uniqueness of a jellyfish souffl. He had an impresarios flair about him I came to accept as normal, and this infectious enthusiasm was apparent to anyone around him. His appearance, like his manner, was best appreciated in a mirror, or the eyes of an adoring audience. People, he told me, will always judge you by their first impression, so it is important that you look your best and make a favorable impression. He imparted such pronouncements as though reading them off a stone tablet. It was therefore unsurprising that his silver hair was neatly parted, and often by the tortoiseshell comb he always kept in the pocket of his crisply creased pants. Shirts made from Egyptian cotton, cashmere sweaters, wool suits tailored by the same hands as those made by appointment to some member of the British royal family, and polished leather shoespreferably Italianall had their assigned places in his drawers or bedroom closet. Refinements such as these went with the polished silver, rows of books, and the paintings and sculptures that graced his hilltop villa, all part of the careful stagecraft intended to impress others. The charm, ready smile, and the twinkle his brown eyes unleashed reflexively made him a human magnetattracting his victims who, succumbing to an irresistible allure, welcomed their fate. I, like so many others in his company, fell under his spell. I sensed something special about Elmyr when I spotted him the first day I arrived on the island. It was a sun-filled autumn morning when the ship docked in the port of Ibiza town. Towering above the clustered white stucco buildings, like irregular, vertically stacked dominoes, the sand-colored ramparts of the Old City suggested this small island had been a once-important landmark along an ancient seafaring trade route between the Balearic Islands and the Mediterranean coast. Leaning over the rail, I watched as two men pushed a mobile stairway next to the ship while two others looped thick ropes around steel-knob hitching posts. It was Sunday, the first of November, and though still warm, the crowds of summer had vanished. I noticed Elmyr standing alone on the quay; he wore a cardigan sweater, open-collar shirt with an ascot, and Hollywood sunglasses. Inspecting this new brigade of hippies who disembarked, he searched our faces, looking for one familiar to him. I approached him and asked if he spoke English. He smiled. Like they do in Kansas City! he responded, although his accent was something other than Midwestern. I then asked if he could recommend any hotels. He pointed to a narrow cobbled street. Youll find several inexpensive pensions in that direction, he said. I thanked him and left. When I discovered nothing available, I resigned myself to another night sleeping on a beach. That evening, after weaving in and out of some portside bars, I ran into Elmyr again. Did you have any luck finding a place? he asked. I told him no. He said Well, I have a guest room in my house youre welcome to use, if you like. It was a spontaneous offer, I thought, one I couldnt refuse. My overnight stay drifted into days, then a week. I tried to make myself useful, offering to help with whatever needed to be done during that time. He then asked if I cared to stay on, working as his assistant. His home had a swimming pool, a housekeeper hed fashioned into an amazing cook, and Elmyr was generous and entertaining. There was no down side that I could see. Nor could I guess the secrets in Elmyrs past. All I knew was that he disappeared into his studio each morning and that I wasnt supposed to bother him during that time. Curiosity only once prompted me to ask what might warrant knocking on that door. He glared at me as though Id forgotten my mothers name, turned without replying, entered his sanctum, and closed the door.

My chores around his house entailed helping out at his frequent parties, keeping his garden weed-free, cleaning the pool, driving for him, and secretarial duties, helping with his correspondence; his English vocabulary was larger than mine, but his handwriting looked as cryptic as a doctors prescription. I also had a slightly better grasp of punctuation. There was no heavy lifting, just mostly indulging a need I recognizedcompanionship. Here was a man who was lonely despite the flurry of social activity surrounding him. Within a few weeks of our meeting, he told me that if I wanted to live in Europe, I needed to speak two or three languages. He then enrolled me at the local Alliance Franaise for private French lessons.

He recommended books he deemed essential. He urged me to read Balzac, Dostoyevsky, and Thomas Mann, along with art books, biographies, and historyeverything that would give me a well-rounded education. Yet it was daily life that provided the most remarkable learning experiences of all, and meeting Prosky made clear the chasm between the life I had known and what it had become.

While it would have been easy to dismiss Prosky as an archetypal thug, I tried to avoid that impulse of first impressions, one Elmyr indulged with a nonchalance he learned from a lifetime of habit. I wanted to be more generous in my assessment of others. Still, it was hard not to notice that Proskys nose had been at odds with others points of view more than once, and how his early-man features stretched over Bigfoots chassis. Underneath his black leather jacket and half-buttoned shirt, shocks of black chest hair intertwined with gold chains. A neat shave line encircled the base of his neck, where the forest began. He possessed the coarseness of a wood rasp, but he and Elmyr shared an interest in art and money, and both were Hungarian. Moreover, Prosky could sell you cold dishwater and make you feel good about buying it.

One day I glimpsed, from the second-floor window of Elmyrs home, Proskys black Mercedes convertible with its red leather seats. A talc of off-road dust dulled the cars sheen. He parked in the shade of the house, got out, and walked up the stone steps to the front door. The steel doorknocker announced his unexpected call. His six-year old daughter waited with his Doberman pinscher in the car. (Elmyr quipped, in case the dog got hungry.)