He has been in self-imposed exile in Mexico for decades, until dealer Trevor Fabricant decides it’s time for a retrospective. Trevor sends Judd, a talented and tormented young painter, to serve as Malcolm’s assistant and unofficial minder. When they are joined by a beautiful young student, their tense equilibrium is upset. In Ten Unknowns, Baitz portrays, in the words of Linda Winer of Newsday, “a world conflicted with questions about the tyranny of art, fashion, and quality, about the benefits and blind spots in the outsider sensibility, about the warring American impulses for good and for meddling.”