By Harissa Beaumont
By now, I should know that if a week seems like it’s going to be straightforward, something catastrophic is lurking just out of sight. This was meant to be a calm period—tie up loose ends, chase unpaid invoices, and, in an ideal world, sit still for five minutes without someone calling to ask, “Do you think this will double in value by June?” Instead, I found myself negotiating with a Premier League footballer about whether a Monty Carlo picture was too intellectual for his dining room.
Monday began in an unusual way: standing outside the gallery in the bitter cold, waiting for the world’s slowest locksmith to arrive. The lock had “been temperamental” for a while, which is code for “completely broken, but I kept ignoring it.” Fiona, my gallery assistant, suggested I see this as an artistic metaphor. I suggested she fetch us coffee instead.
By midday, the lock had been fixed (by a man who called me “darlin’” seven times in five minutes), and I was on my way to a meeting with a very high-profile client, one of the most expensive footballers in the world. I will call him Leo so he can’t be identified. Leo is Italian, adored by tabloid journalists, and—crucially—newly obsessed with contemporary art. His agent had emailed saying Leo was “looking to start collecting seriously.” This, translated, meant: Leo has recently discovered Instagram and would like his house to look like an editorial shoot.
I met him at his townhouse in Chelsea, where a housekeeper in head-to-toe black silently brought us espressos. “I love art,” Leo announced, gesturing vaguely at a wall that was, so far, empty. “I want something… big.”
We looked through a few options. A bright, abstract canvas by a celebrated abstractist Ptolemy? “Too messy.” A striking minimalist piece in shades of grey? “Too sad.” Then we got to a signed Monty Carlo piece, and his face lit up. “This is cool,” he said. “Monty Carlo, he’s… good, right?”
“Yes,” I said carefully, because I had learned from past experiences that over-explaining things to certain clients is a one-way ticket to disaster.
“I love that it’s deep,” Leo continued. “But not too deep.”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
“I think I’ll get it,” he said, then paused. “But do you think it’s too intellectual for the dining room?”
At this point, I had two choices:
1. Explain that Monty Carlo was a genius whose work explored power, and identity, and that no picture in history had ever been too intellectual for a dining room.
2. Say, “No, it’s perfect.”
I went with Option 2.
Wednesday was marked by an incident I can only describe as profoundly irritating. A woman stormed into the gallery wearing an impractically large fur hat and demanded, “Where is the pink painting?”
I blinked. “Which pink painting?”
“The one I saw here last year,” she said, as though I run a museum where everything stays in exactly the same place for eternity.
I explained that, unfortunately, paintings do tend to sell and that the pink painting in question was now in a house in the South of France. She let out a deep sigh, as though this were a personal attack. “I knew I should have bought it.”
“Yes,” I said.
There was a long silence. “Do you have anything similar?”
“Not really. Although I have a pink balloon you can have for free.”
Another long silence. Then she left, looking deeply wounded, as though I had personally denied her happiness.
Thursday was mostly spent dealing with logistics. I had to coordinate the shipment of a sculpture to a collector in Dubai, which meant six different phone calls to a shipping company where nobody seemed to know what was happening. “It’s an awkward size,” one of them told me, as though I hadn’t already seen the sculpture and deduced this for myself. Meanwhile, Jack Landon’s assistant sent yet another email asking if the artist of the iPhone sculpture would consider making a mini version for Jack’s private jet. I forwarded it directly to the artist, who responded with, “Absolutely not,” followed by an emoji that I assume was meant to represent despair.
And then, just when I thought I could quietly slip into the weekend, Leo’s agent called. “Leo’s obsessed with his Monty,” he said.
“Oh, fantastic.”
“Yes, and now he’s thinking maybe he does want something intellectual.”
I closed my eyes. “Right.”
“So he wants a Ptolemy as well. Abstract is intellectual, right?”
”Yes, yes, abstract is intellectual.”
”Great. Send one over. In green.”
This is the job.
Until next week,
Harissa