My name is Cameron (
The National Science Foundation, expressing interest in my study “Artist at Work” had seen fit to give me 30 large to perform an exhaustive study of the behavioral changes an artist experiences when exposed to continuous funding. Specifically, how does an artist react when he is given money? How is the “artistic hunger” maintained in the obvious absence of “actual hunger?” How does one invoke the muse and convince her of ones sincerity when one has developed gout from daily consumption of sweetmeats? In the context of the actual numerics employed, to what degree can an artist's worth be determined as a multivariate function of monetary input, patchouli output, and prevalence of blasphemous themes in the work? These are all questions the NSF wanted answered. If the artist can be quantified, his work may be likewise understood numerically—that is the theory.
The prime movers behind the movement to
sedate art and place upon its flawless neck a combination radio telemetry
collar/real-time pricing index monitor were the art galleries themselves.
Imagine the convenience—The wife of an artistically disinclined oil baron
enters a chic gallery in
“Hello, may I help you?”
“Why yes, thank you. I want a painting. Something unobtrusive.”
With no grasp of the underlying
mathematical structure of the painting's worth, the shop girl (traveling under
the pseudonym Élan) must pose all sorts of meaningless questions to the
potential buyer. “What sort of paintings do you like?” or “What room will this
being going into?” or “Are you opposed to something abstract?” This is exactly
the exchange which takes place at every gallery in the country prior to most
purchases. Eventually, Élan and the buyer will agree on a piece which captures
the mood of the woman's foyer and does not intrude on the “charming elk-hide
umbrella rack my Charles purchased on his most recent contract-signing marathon
in
Beneath the harmless request for a bit of décor is the woman's clear need to impose her will on the other members of her clan (the subset of the moneyed elite known collectively as affluent future ex-wives) and a clear desire to crush her rivals. We may clearly divine these undercurrents if we listen a bit more closely. Let us return to a few moments earlier, and turn our heads so that we might hear.
Hello, may I help you.
(I know that I can help you, for I see in the merlons and crenels of your designer cosmetics the heart of a lioness. Come to me, and allow me to prepare you for battle.)
Certainly, I want a painting. Something unobtrusive.
(I need a work of art that will assure guests in my home that I have taste. Exquisite taste, due as much to breeding as to present position and temperament. Show me something that will cow my guests without question. I want something daring, in an understated sense. Overwhelming in its subtlety. A tangible reminder that they are on hallowed ground, and that their every step could be into the abyss. It must be large enough to inpire and demoralize, but small enough to fit over the table in my foyer. Show me this piece and I will purchase it. Join me in this holy endeavor. Take my hand, lead me to that charming display case filled with ceramic frogs and I will love you forever. Don't be afraid, salesperson of the eternal mechanism. I intend nothing so pedestrian as that sweaty half-brother of love ,“eros,” but something altogether pure and wholly consuming. A mechanical adoration whose metallic fingers wax cold and unfeeling on the altar of desire. This and more are yours if you will sell me that painting over there. The one with the dogs playing pool. I think that pug is cheating and I love him for it.)
The problem facing the individual who looks at a painting, hears a composition, or is forced, by his friend who mimics an appreciation for performance art, to endure a three hour recitation of a “protorealistic tour de force” entitled “readings from the New York Municipal Phone Directory: Be-Br” is simply, “Is this good?” Posed alternately, the question is “Am I wrong for thinking this is crap somebody just made up?” Upon the completion of my work, the quantification of artistic merit (towards which my present funding is only a pre-inquiry) no one will need to think about these things. In the same way one never questions the precise origins of the middle-aged tennis instructor sporting a club foot and dressed as a school boy that was sent to your room by the escort service at the Hotel Caravaggio, one need never wonder about such trifling matters as the artist's intent, the events which drove him to paint such a scene, or the compounds which poisoned his blood stream as his hands trembled near the canvas. A person will be able to march right into his neighborhood purveyor of all things lovely and state simply, “Give me a painting. Something between a 7 and an 8. I am willing to pay for it.” The gallery folk will consult their tables, check the database, and produce a piece from inventory that has been certified and marked clearly in the register “~7.5”. I referred to this in my submitted proposals as “transforming the whole of art into a functional space—effectively mapping the highest of human pursuits, bijectively, onto the space of real numbers.”
I had to provide the artist, of course, in order to secure the funding. Using a human test subject would introduce a couple of serious problems. First, I would have to interact with an artist. Second, I would be forced to interact with an artist, possibly several. The next logical solution was cabashed by the humane society—outsourcing to a non-human. I have a friend, a specialist in primate development and cognitive science, who is the head of a chimpanzee enculturation project. His facility is a multi-billion dollar complex designed specifically to test the ability of the chimp to acclimate himself to a strictly human environment. His goal—Determine how closely the chimp’s behavior will mimic the behavior of human children raised in the same conditions.[2] My goal—get one of his chimps and allow it develop its artistic sense in an environment designed to prepare him for a seamless entry into the funded artistic elite.
He (or she) was to be provided with subscriptions to the New Yorker, Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, Scheiser Toten, and various chap-press offerings in order to teach him the language of the artist. Most importantly, via the upcoming events calendars, the chimp would learn which invitations to accept and which to pointedly refuse. Nothing would endanger the gravitas of my simian protégé (or protégée) more quickly than attending a B-list opening [3]. Second, the chimp would be taught how to throw tantrums, speak incoherently, and remain perfectly and mechanically unpredictable. If someone managed to garner the chimp’s interest long enough to ask a question, the answer must be incomprehensible, but not completely so. The questioner must be made to believe that something…something, is lurking in the steamy bowels of the chimp’s response, if only he can decipher it. To this end, the chimp would be taught a safe-word: exactly.
My research had previously indicated the existence of a single word which obviates the artist (writer, painter, sculptor, etc.)’s responsibility in matters of clarity. When asked any question about any aspect of his art, the artist may successfully respond, “Exactly.” For example, I once read a candy wrapper at a series of colloquia, “A Little to the Left: The Hermeneutics of Discomfort.” I had been asked to contribute to the proceedings of the event, and had forgotten to compile any data regarding anything of even the remotest interest to the attendees. After walking to the microphone, completely unprepared, I reached into my pocket and found a piece of some indeterminate chocolate candy. I chewed noisily into the microphone for about 3 minutes, licked my fingers, and began to read the wrapper in its entirety—ingredients, advertising tidbits, various warnings, etc. Since my talk was supposed to last 45 minutes, I stood and stared expectantly at the crowd, as if waiting for the glorious spark of comprehension in their eyes. Half an hour or so later, several of the listeners stood to leave. One of them raised his hand. He seemed upset.
“What the hell is this supposed to be?
I smiled benevolently, implying “I forgive you for your ignorance.”
He looked around for support, which he quickly gained from his herringboned compatriot, who piped, “All you did was read a damn candy wrapper…preposterous!”
This was the cue I had been praying for, “Lord,” I had said silently only a moment before, “Let someone speak the absolute truth, so I can make him pay for it.” The lord had replied, in the form of my two gentleman inquisitors, “Verily, Let it be so.”
I waited a moment for the “preposterous” to die down. When the last ripples of the outburst lapped the edges of the entrance hall, I responded, “Exactly.” My tone made it clear that I was relieved someone had seen the truth in my work. Someone had been listening. “Thank you,” I said, as I smashed my open hand into the lectern for dramatic effect. “Thank you, I am glad someone was listening.” I was simultaneously elated and heartbroken by what followed. As a scientist, one is always glad to see theory predict behaviour accurately. However, when the behaviour is ridiculous or otherwise contrary to what one wishes were the case in his heart of hearts, a certain sadness may intrude. Rather than be thought ignorant or unworthy of my message (which was apparently very important since it was heavily symbolic…turgid with hidden messages) the crowd began to applaud. By the time I left the lecture, discussion groups were already forming and I had received two offers for visiting professorships. I eventually wrote a series of essays for personal use on the power of “exactly” and its immediate corollary, “Does that make you uncomfortable.”
The beneficiary of this research would be my chimp. Equipped with the language, behaviour, and natural defenses of an artist, he could be unleashed into the strongholds of the urbane, the keeps of the intellectual elite, and the limitless expanses of the NSF’s funding depositories. His antics, however bizarre, would allow me to remain funded for at least a year. Done and done.
Sadly, this idea did not pan out either. The humane society got passed a little wind via the ASPCA grapevine. They claimed no creature possessing even the slightest hint of sentience should be made to experience a full year of coffee house/open mike/art opening/discriminating taste culture, and to subject our chimp to this would be considered a criminal act. Rather than be nightly accosted by the ASPCA’s crack sapiento-environmental anti-animal inconvenience squads, the ULU’s [4], I decided to locate a subject conspicuously free of any tremors of sentience, settling eventually on the handsome chap who inhabits my looking glass. I would become the artist myself. Given my previous work in the field[5],[6] , I was a logical candidate for these studies as funding became available.
Enter the NEA.
I proposed a performance piece. Tentatively titled (one must remember that the true artist’s medium is in constant and irrevocable flux) “Deus ex Cogitatum:?,” the piece chronicled, in real time, the completion of a scientific study by an investigator working under an NSF grant. It was intended to be a scathing commentary on the futility of scientific inquiry, when faced with the eternal mystery of l’art. In order to convince the funding committees at the NEA to accept my proposal, I spent the better part of an afternoon assuring the members, over lukewarm toddies and oyster crackers, that my work would remain untainted by the hammer and chisel of science.
“I will expose science as the nagging housefrau it has become,” I offered.
“How will your piece express? Will it live? How will its meaning affect its Meaning?” they wondered.
“Even the most explicit components of my work are rife with subtext. Beneath the façade of direct statement lies the implication, the obscure, and that which may be seen only from the side, and then only with one’s bad eye.”
They seemed convinced, especially after I raised my left eyebrow in a manner which could only mean, “Even my statements about subtext are so riddled with things left unsaid that if spoken in passing, they would dissolve like a tablespoon of smoke.”