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Art: J.T.C., R.I.P.

3 minute read
TIME

The book is published by the respected Paris house of Gallimard, dedicated to Minister of Culture Andre Malraux, endorsed enthusiastically by Picasso. The typography is meticulous, the illustrations lavish. And the subject is a man who never was, Painter Jusep Torres Campalans.

Campalans is the invention of a Spanish writer and critic named Max Aub, 58, who five years ago became disgusted with novels (“all tired”) and biographies (“all false”), decided to invent a new form combining the two. In the process Aub painstakingly wove one of the most ingenious art hoaxes of recent years.

Aub decided that Campalans would be a Catalan born in 1886, the fifth son of a peasant family. Adding details, he had “J.T.C.” run away from home, pursue an actress to Barcelona, meet Picasso, invent Cubism (“It’s simple. Before, pictures were seen from the outside: now they are seen from the inside”), explore Abstractionism, then abruptly disappear from Paris in August 1914.

Not until 1955, while Aub was on a lecture tour in Mexico, did he “meet” J.T.C. By then, the painter, as Aub tells it, was a wizened, forgotten genius, the “missing link” of modern art, living like a peasant and “crossbreeding” with Indian maidens. Shunting aside his own work, Aub became so caught up with his invention that he devotedly contributed his talents to “resurrecting the reputation of Campalans.” He composed a scholarly biography, right down to footnotes that have footnotes. For pictures of his subject’s peasant parents, Aub used a pair of appropriate Spanish postcards. To document J.T.C.’s friendship with Picasso, he found a face in a newspaper crowd scene, mounted it on a photo of the master.

When Aub then asked Picasso to support the tarradiddle, Picasso roared with laughter, shouting: “J.T.C.! and how I knew him. As much as you wish!” The most essential element in Campalans’ career—the paintings—Aub provided himself. “When I did not know what to do,” said Aub, “I simply slopped some oils on a canvas and held it under the hot water faucet.” He gave them such names as Coal Dealer’s Daughter—whatever popped into his head.

When the last tile in the mosaic was complete, Aub unveiled his masterpiece at the elegant Excelsior Gallery in Mexico City in 1958. Most of the Campalans paintings in the accompanying exhibition were snapped up. Said Famed Muralist David Siqueiros, thoroughly duped: “I knew Campalans well in Paris. Orozco liked him very much.” A few weeks later Aub confessed his hoax. Mexicans fumed, then laughed embarrassedly.

Now the gag cannot stop running. Purchasing the French rights for Aub’s “biography,” simply titled Jusep Torres Campalans, Gallimard pulled out the stops. Needing a few sketches from J.T.C.’s “middle period,” the publisher asked Aub to fill the gap. In moments, on the back of office stationery, he did. A big first printing of 5,000 is selling well, aided by Gallimard’s deft exploitation of France’s latest art world celebrity. Had he lived, J.T.C. would have been gratified.

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