“I paint with words.”
“What do you mean?”
“ARIEL”
“That’s a beautiful word. But I don’t like the font.”
“Tell me how can I make it more expressive?”
People often wondered how Celeste managed to elude the clutches of Filippe Goncourt, one of the richest and most egotistical men in southern France.
Celeste had gone to work for the monster Goncourt in her twenties. Goncourt was by turns tyrannical and predatory. In those few months, she stayed in his life until she concluded there were as many see-through elements to the apartment as there were to his character.
While she was working for him, she met an artist called Josef Klein.
One day, Klein persuaded Celeste to pose for him. To this end Klein asked her to disrobe.
Being Mediterranean, and French to boot, Celeste was not prudish about her body. She began to giggle as Klein placed blobs of paint at strategic points all over her body.
“I’m sensitive,” she said.
“All the best people are, my dear Celeste,” said Klein. “Now if you would care to lie on the canvas.”
Celeste did as she was told.
Klein proceeded to wrap her up in the canvas. “Are you ready?”
“Why not?” she said, gamely.
Klein gripped the edges of the canvas and unravelled her like a Persian carpet. Then he sprang on her with his own painted body.
Celeste was quite giddy when it was over. Klein made her a present of the canvas and signed it on the back: with Love, Paint and Squalor. So, when Klein’s reputation began to grow, Celeste turned her giddiness into profit, and she was able to sell lithographs of her canvas to the demi-monde of Monaco and the French Riviera.
The first exhibition in her gallery was of Klein’s work. Needless to say, Goncourt, although invited, never came to the opening night. Klein had his foibles, but he had no need to spy on her.