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.[1] 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 [2]. 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.”
[1] A similar study was carried out in 1974 by a team at Brown. The key difference was their choice of environment. Rather than acclimate chimpanzee juveniles to human stimuli, they placed a series of infants into the care of a troupe of Mandrills. The team hoped the human children would develop behaviors identical to those of the Mandrill young. However, approximately ten minutes into the experiment, all the infants had been stomped, rolled, shredded, cleansed, folded, and otherwise manipulated by the males in the troupe. The official results were, according to the team, “inconclusive.”
[2] I now realize that this would be very easy to spin to the project’s advantage. If my chimp were seen at a substandard event, we would leak the information to the necessary grape-viners that his attendance was a commentary on a more exclusive opening. Eventually, his presence at these events would constitute a performance piece. [ed. Note] The So-Ho art mag “Karen’s Loafer” reviewed a similar piece since the close of the author’s NEA funding. A writer for the magazine mistook a tourist for famed (but as yet unphotographed) performance specialist Mr. Crack. The reviewer followed the oblivious tourist from gallery to gallery, chronicling his reactions to everything from the pieces to the venue to the wine lists. This resulted in a glowing review by “Karen’s Loafer” of Mr. Crack’s apparent subterfuge piece “Strolling about inconspicuously.”