Self-Portrait

by Andrew Ervin

Before the shitstorm begins I want you to hear the real story. For the past few years I’ve been writing newspaper articles and the occasional work of fiction under the pseudonym “Andrew Ervin.” I even earned a master’s degree and have a diploma that says “Andrew Ervin” on it, which is pretty fucked up when you think about it. For various legal reasons, I can’t get into all the details here except to say that I’ve become irrevocably trapped behind this name. At my lawyer’s insistence, I can’t even publicly divulge my real name for fear of being charged with theft and fraud and some other crimes I’ve never heard of.

Like it or not, I have in many ways become Andrew Ervin.

I stole a painting a few years ago from an art gallery in Philadelphia. That part is true. The painting is titled “Self-Portrait” and it’s by a Polish artist named Jerzy Przybyl. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He’s had several small-to-medium exhibitions in the U.S., but now lives in southern Sweden and goes by the name Jan Pol. He was briefly engaged to my mother-in-law, who first asked me to write an article for the Philadelphia City Paper about the exhibition. Which I did, but they didn’t publish it. But I also stole Jerzy’s “Self-Portrait.” It’s here in my Champaign, Illinois, apartment, hanging just above the screen of the computer on which I’m typing this sentence.

In November of 1994, I moved to Budapest to live with my college girlfriend, E., who had gone to study music. Almost five years later, ready to get married, we moved back to Philadelphia. We rented the second floor of a row house on Manayunk Avenue in Roxborough, a hilly, blue-collar neighborhood overlooking the Schuylkill River and Expressway. I found work as a copywriter and eventually managing editor for an e-commerce company out in King of Prussia and E. took a job, at first selling sheet music at Theodore Presser’s and then later teaching flute lessons at Settlement Music School. We were happy.

I made good money, more than you’d think reasonable, but quickly began to hate my job: the fifteen-mile, hour-and-a-half commute on the Schuylkill, ten hours every day lost in an over-lit cubicle-maze also occupied by hipper-than-thou web designers who wore anti-corporation t-shirts but secretly sent their resumes to Nike and Microsoft. I would get home late, irritable and depressed. I started drinking heavily. Half of every paycheck went toward Yards and Yuengling down at the Dawson Street Pub. I heard myself getting angry at E. all the time but could never explain why.

The solution to my life occurred to me one evening while I was walking past the Wissahickon SEPTA station. A scraggly man was dragging bound stacks of Philadelphia City Papers out of a decrepit VW van and loading them into an orange newspaper dispenser. You know those urban weeklies: the journalistic equivalents of severe head colds that arrive on Thursday and linger through the weekend only to dissipate in time for work on Monday morning. I took a copy, eager to sit down with a beer and scan the Help Wanteds. Five pints of Love Stout later, I had a plan. The next morning, mid-hangover, I told my boss’s voice mail that I quit.

Like that, I felt free. And broke.

Next, I telephoned the Arts & Entertainment Editor of the City Paper and asked him for a job. He asked what kind of experience I had. I lied. He told me to come in and bring some clips of my previous work. I told him all my clips were destroyed in a fire. Tragic. We spoke for a full ten minutes before he asked my name. I lied again.

That same editor has tracked me down and is currently writing an exposé about me. He’s the reason I got caught.

Since that day, I have been known, except to my wife and some close friends and family, as Andrew Ervin. That’s also the name, the real name, of a photographer from Iowa who shoots pictures of lightning. I saw a small exhibition of his work in Budapest years earlier and the name somehow stuck with me. Some of his work is here.

The first article I wrote was about the Philadelphia Orchestra’s search for a new music director, which from all outward appearances wasn’t going especially well. I recommended several candidates for the job, one of whom eventually got it. On Thursday, I walked down to the train station to get a copy and was startled to see the byline “Andrew Ervin” on something I had written. I felt cowardly, sure, but also mad that someone else seemed to be getting the credit for my work. That still bothers me from time to time.

Cashing the first few paychecks proved to be difficult but I got around that easily enough at my local branch of Pay-Day Loans, who kept 17.5 percent for their trouble. Freelancing turned out to be pretty easy and I soon found work at other, more impressive newspapers across the country. I continued to contribute to the City Paper too, but for that paper I soon developed a different voice: Andrew Ervin’s. I submitted the meanest, cruelest reviews I could come up with. Those formulaic little articles began to express my utter disdain for contemporary art, for my former colleagues, for people in general. Even if I adored a CD or a book, I would bash it in the City Paper just for kicks. Why not? None of it was under my real name. I found it all very amusing.

To this day, I still get the occasional hate mail from fans of a particular, now-defunct punk band in response to my vicious review of the album “Idle Will Kill,” which read, in part:

By any reasonable definition the new CD from the L.A. band Osker should suck. The singing is so abysmal it will make your teeth hurt. […] These guys even agreed to appear on the soundtrack to the movie “Crazy/Beautiful,” so you know right off the bat that you’re dealing with either (a) punk rockers who aren’t against dangling their toes in the corporate waters or (b) savvy suburban popsters acting tough and hoping to cash in on punk’s street cachet. This disc will probably never again darken your CD player after the first listen.

That article ran on October 4, 2001. You can still find it online here.

My editor loved it. The more mean-spirited I got the better. He gave me sweeter and sweeter assignments. I got to interview David Byrne and John Barth and Rufus Harley, the world’s only jazz bagpipe player. Just fucking slammed them. You’re too good to play “Psycho Killer” anymore? Blam! Another preening, self-indulgent novel about writing another preening, self-indulgent novel? Blam! You want to play jazz in a kilt? Blam! Blam! Blam!

My reviews for the other papers were much nicer. In December of that same year, I published a review of a novel called Requiem in the San Francisco Chronicle. I called it a “true tour de force of American letters, [which] serves [as] a funeral march for the soul of a civilization lost in the shuffle for technological progress.” Go here and scroll down. Strangely, the Chronicle got my false name wrong and ran the article under the byline Andrew Cervin. The author, Curtis White, appreciated the review so much that he e-mailed me with an offer to enroll in the graduate writing program at Illinois State University, where he teaches. Two weeks later, E. and I drove our deteriorating Toyota one-third of the way across the country to visit the campus. She auditioned with the flute faculty and got accepted into the master’s program on the spot. We resigned ourselves to moving to the Midwest, where I hoped I would no longer have to be Andrew Ervin.

When we got back to Philly, E. called her mother to tell her we would both be enrolling in grad school in the fall. That was when we learned that her then-fiancé Jerzy was going to have an exhibition in Philadelphia. She said that I would absolutely love his work. She said that I should write it up for the City Paper. She said she would be coming to visit for the opening. She says a lot of things. But I agreed to do it.

Big mistake.

Jerzy Przybyl’s exhibition “A New Edda” showed in Philadelphia June 1–26, 2002, not in one of the prestigious Old City galleries or even one of the hipper spots up Second St. in Northern Liberties. No, it was in the Tea Salon—I’m not making this up—in the Tea Salon of the Warwick Hotel. My mother-in-law drove up from Bethesda for the Friday night opening. I came down with a sudden flu that afternoon and stayed home, swearing to her that the moment I felt better I’d see the exhibition and write a review. She stayed for the weekend, sleeping on the couch and complaining bitterly about it.

Once she left, I took the No. 9 bus into center city, to the Warwick, and rode the elevator up one floor to the mezzanine, a U-shaped landing that overlooked the reception desk and lobby. From there, a series of ornate double doors in the outer wall connected to a dozen conference rooms. I didn’t see the gallery right away. A few paintings occupied the walls here and there but they weren’t what you’d think of as art.

The Tea Salon turned out to be a huge, poorly lit meeting room in which a cosmetics convention was in full swing. Dozens of hugely-cleavaged Avon ladies yammered away like a pack of hyenas snacking on fermented mangoes. There was enough makeup frescoed onto their faces to restore the entire Sistine Chapel yet again. Most of them wore evening gowns. Jerzy’s paintings hung from the walls in a single long row.

The article I would write began to take shape in my mind. E.’s mother would never forgive me, I knew, but a nasty review of her lover’s paintings would be just one of a hundred complaints—some real but most of them imagined—she made against me. I took notes on some of the vapid banter around me, eager to incorporate it into my review. Then I got a closer look at the paintings.

You can see where this is going.

“A New Edda” was one of the most startling exhibitions I had ever seen. Jerzy’s best work focuses on Norse folklore and for “A New Edda” he depicted the entire pantheon. He worked on wood rather than canvas; some paintings had long wooden spoons or iron candle holders extending from the sides. He used his friends as models: my mother-in-law was Freya and Jerzy himself, of course, was Freyr. Yes, for his self-portrait Jerzy depicted himself as the god of fertility and marriage. The enormous scabbard for his sword jutted straight up in the air.

A small card affixed to the frame read “Self-Portrait.” It was the only unsigned painting in the exhibition. He had sawed a wooden panel into the shape of tombstone and apart from a bright, golden pig in the foreground—that would be Gullenbursti, the wild boar who pulled Freyr’s chariot—the washed grays and blues made it look like a real slab of stone. It was just over 14 inches wide at the base and 18 inches at the tallest point and, I learned later, insured for just over $10,000.

Jerzy—or is it Freyr?—appears calm in painting, which is how I knew him from the few occasions we’ve met, but his tranquility masks something like a deep-rooted remorse or even anger. I wonder what E.’s mother thought the first time she saw it. It’s beautiful, but disturbing too. His eyes say far more than what’s apparent on the surface of the wood. This man has a history, a thousand stories. The facial expression continues to startle me like only one or two other works of art have ever done. I remember standing there amid a cloud of competing perfumes, illuminated by the pale unfocused sunlight bleeding in through the enormous pastel curtains, dumbstruck by the intensity of that portrait. His eyes were the same steel-green as the painting’s background, which lent it a strange, statuary impression of physical depth. The first time I saw it, his gaze burrowed through the oil paint and through me. Not through me as in yet another nameless viewer or as an art critic or even as Andrew Ervin. They looked at me, the real me. The me whose name I cannot reveal for fear of legal prosecution, whose name in a matter of weeks will be splashed on the front cover of the City Paper and likely elsewhere.

Chances are you never got to see this thing before I got my hands on it. Modern Painter reported that Jerzy never even made a slide of it, which is a pity because it deserves to be seen. His work should be in museums, not in some forgotten conference room of a bourgeois luxury hotel. But no one—with the possible exception of Jerzy Przybyl himself—would appreciate his “Self-Portrait” the way I do. And maybe that’s the best any artist can hope for: one person who truly gets it.

If I’m forced to be honest with myself, Jerzy’s painting also repels me yet I cannot imagine living without it. My fascination derives in great part, I think, from the dread it inspires in me. You know Nietzsche’s line about how when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back unto you? “Self-Portrait” does that. Some days I can’t look at it.

I went straight home to write the article and e-mailed it to my editor. For obvious reasons I avoided any mention of “Self-Portrait.” Then I booked a room at the Warwick for the following evening. One night, under the name Andrew Ervin, I told E. I would be at a friend’s place watching the Phillies game and would stay over if I got too drunk. I dressed up but not enough for her to get suspicious.

I paid cash for the room in advance and then waited for the elevator. When the metallic doors closed and sealed out the noise of the lobby, I found myself surrounded on all sides by mirrored reproductions of myself. I sweated profusely. By the time I got to my elegantly appointed guestroom my collar was soaked. I watched cable TV for a few hours then got back in that elevator to go down to the mezzanine.

There it was: “Self-Portrait,” connected by thin metal wires to two hooks screwed into the corner where the wall met the ceiling. I snipped them with the clippers on my pocketknife, threw a bed sheet over the painting, carried it back up to my room and grabbed my overnight bag. That easy.

With the painting tucked under my arm, I took the elevator up another two floors. After sneaking to the far end of the hallway, I pulled the fire alarm. The clamor was incredible. People staggered out of their rooms dressed in suits and hotel bathrobes, and filed down the stairs. No one else used the elevator so I took it all the way back down. With the covered painting under one arm and my bag in the other, I walked calmly across the lobby and dropped my key along the way. The hotel staff ran all over the place yelling to each other. The guests piled down the staircase like an enormous German- and Japanese-speaking avalanche, providing enough cover for me to duck out unnoticed.

I picked up the No. 9 bus again, holding the stolen painting safely against my body. If the old men drinking forties of Bud at the SEPTA stop thought it strange that I carried a flat, roughly 14” x 18” bed sheet-covered object under my arm they didn’t say anything about it. Not to me at least. The next day, all of the TV stations ran small stories about the robbery. The police had no suspects. I had guessed as much, but it was nice to hear coming from Channel 6 Action News. It made the Inquirer and Daily News and the CrimeBeat column of the City Paper. No one connected the missing painting with the fire alarm, which I found odd.

Now E. is anything but stupid. She wasn’t going to dime me out but neither was she entirely comfortable about living with stolen property. Besides, as she pointed out, Jerzy probably would have given me the painting if I had just asked. I promised to keep it buried in a closet until we got out here to Illinois.

The following Thursday, I picked up a copy of the City Paper to see my review of “A New Edda.” You can imagine my surprise when it wasn’t in there. I finally found one good exhibition in that whole goddamn city and my editor didn’t run my review.

“Where the fuck is it?” I yelled into the phone.

“Now, Andrew. No one reads your articles to hear glowing reviews of modern art,” he told me. Prick.

“What’re you talking about?”

“The reason we print your stuff is because it’s critical. It’s mean. Face it—you’re an asshole. That’s what people want to read.”

In retrospect it’s better that he didn’t run the article. It’s unlikely, but someone might have connected the byline with the Warwick’s guest register for that night. It wouldn’t be conclusive proof that I stole the painting but it might have sent Philadelphia’s finest knocking on my door. They never showed up, I got out of town, and the painting’s still in my possession.

For now.

Unfortunately, some discrepancies in my financial history have come to the attention of the IRS, who upon discovering my pseudonym apparently contacted the Social Security Administration. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, I’m sure that it was my editor at the City Paper who tipped them off. He finally ran some kind of background check, I suppose. I haven’t been charged with anything yet, though I understand that’s going to happen any day now. My lawyer, an old friend of the family, swears it won’t go to trial, but he told me to expect enormous fines and fees. Probation. The Warwick doesn’t want any negative publicity, so they’re not pressing charges.

Jerzy has already offered complete amnesty if I return his painting. Some day soon he and I are going to sit down, our lawyers present and my mother-in-law translating, and I will try to explain why I stole his “Self-Portrait.”

“Why?” he will ask.

I stole it because the reproduction of his eyes in his self-portrait appear more lifelike than his real eyes. I’ll get the chance soon for a closer comparison, but Jerzy as I remember him looks like a cheap knock-off of his own self-portrait. The painting appears more alive in some essential way than the man it represents.

Every self-portrait is an exaggeration, a distortion; this one doubly so. Maybe that’s why I’ve hidden behind a pseudonym for so long.

When the legal dust settles, E. and I would like to move back to Philadelphia. Maybe my byline will once more grace the pages of the City Paper, if they’ll have me. I hope the editor reads this. Despite everything that’s about to go down, I don’t want to rule out being Andrew Ervin again one day.