artenol0416_sm_flipbook

FALL 2016
DAVID PRYCE-JONES
Modern art?
‘Bogusness!’
WALKER MIMMS
Boswell seeks,
finds self
Make art great again
Alex Melamid’s challenge:
Want to save art? Destroy it
$10.00 US/CAN

g a l l e r y
VOHN GALLERY serves as a platform for exhibitions,
intellectual inquiry and cultural exploration. Though
its name is new, the gallery is a continuation of a
journey that was started in 2008.
The group of international artists that VOHN works
with share a strong conceptual underpinning to
their practices. Their work is in the collections of
MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum and The Guggenheim
Museum. VOHN’s projects/exhibitions have
received critical response in The New York Times,
The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and Interview
Magazine, among others.
VOHN GALLERY launched in September 2014 as a
re-imagining of a project space that ran from 2012
to 2013 in Chelsea, New York. The new gallery’s program
will include upcoming exhibitions in TriBeCa, offsite
projects and the sponsoring of Artenol magazine.
vohngallery.com
Further information: info@vohngallery.com

From the Editor
4
ON THE
COVER
The zeal is
contagious as
art workers take
to the streets to
celebrate art’s
imminent return
to greatness.
Soviet-era
poster
repurposed
for Artenol
n WITH THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN IN THE FINAL THROES OF ITS YEAR-LONG ASSAULT
ON OUR POLITICAL SENSIBILITIES, ARTENOL HAS DECIDED TO TAKE INSPIRATION FROM ONE
of its ubiquitous slogans for this issue’s theme. No, it’s
not “Lock her up!” We’ve devoted our Fall 2016 effort to
the lofty goal expressed in the phrase,
“Make art great again.” This, of course,
begs the question: What is great art?
Artenol founder Alex Melamid has a
pretty good idea what isn’t great art. In
a lecture given at the Kopkind Colony
in Guilford, Vt., in July, Alex laid out
the failings of contemporary art, as-
David Dann
serting that it's not the economy that is at the heart of
our malaise, "It's the culture,stupid!" (more inspiration
from the political realm). His words, and contributions
from the Kopkind workshop participants, form this
edition's cover story.
Also contributing to the “make art great again”
theme are four art world professionals. They share
their observations as members of a vast collective that
labors behind the scenes, providing support services to
art institutions. Michelle Furyaka and her art consulting
firm offer a strategic plan for restoring greatness
to art. Conservator Erica James profiles the role art
conservation plays in the nefarious “Museum Value
Machine.” Artenol's publisher, Gary Krimershmoys,
discusses his transition from Wall Street broker to a
socially-responsible investor in great art. And Rowling
Dord chats with a museum “guard” who sees himself
as an integral part of what makes great art great.
In this issue you’ll also find entertaining – and
provocative – stories by Josie Demuth and Julia Kissina,
as well as diverting essays on fashion – both sartorial
and gestural – by Stan Tymorek and Zinovy Zinik,
Artenol’s British editor. Renowned author and editor
David Pryce-Jones offers an insightful assessment of
modernism’s short selling of humanity.
On our display pages, you’ll find a dramatic image
taken of the aftermath of a fire by news photographer
Chris Ramirez, and an uncanny recreation in three dimensions
of a familiar Pop Art image by food stylist
Laurie Knoop.
This issue of Artenol was made possible by these creative
contributors, and I'm grateful to them for their
generosity. The magazine’s editorial, production and
support staff were tireless in their efforts to bring Fall
2016 to newsstands. But its publication was also greatly
aided by the many supporters who donated to the
magazine’s recent Kickstarter campaign.
In just under 30 days, we were able to raise $8,251,
an amount well in excess of our stated goal of $7,500.
Those funds will go toward expanding our distribution
and developing our Web presence as we move
into our second year of publication. Response to the
campaign was greatly encouraging to all of us here in
Artenol’s corporate headquarters, and we are determined
to move the magazine forward with more insightful
articles, provocative essays, absurdist humor,
subtle satire and whatever else we can think of to help
“make art great again.”
Thanks to all who helped out, and remember: It's the
culture, stupid!
n
FALL 2016

Inside
9 The human dimension
Modernism plays games with us by David Pryce-Jones
14 Make art great again: The contractor
A research firm’s program for MoMA by Michelle Furyaka
16 Make art great again: The conservator
Serving the “Museum Value Machine” by Erica James
20 Make art great again: The investor
The art of socially-engaged investing by Gary Krimershmoys
22 Make art great again: The artworker
A “guard” contributes to art’s greatness by Rowling Dord
24 Starting over: Rethinking art
An art workshop at the Kopkind Colony by Alex Melamid
37 Snap, crackle and pop art
Painting re-creation takes the cakes by Laurie Knoop
42 Scene: Fire call
A barn fire caught by a firefighter’s camera by Chris Ramirez
45 Fraught couture
When royal dressing was a royal pain by Stan Tymorek
50 Poem: Fire or water
Inspiration from the flow of Goya’s art by Gabe Seidler
52 Good heaven! What is Boswell?
Examining “The Biographer’s” early years by Walker Mimms
57 Story: We don’t give a shit ...
Trendy art exhibit is a real killer by Julia Kissina
33 The equal opportunist
The secret to one artist’s success by Josie Demuth
63 Closer: Full mental jacket
Seen in the New York subway by Elisabeth Kaske
Departments From the editor 4 | Letters 6 | Contact 7 | Contributors 8 | Find Artenol on the Web 61
Hand job
What hidden hands
say about those
who hide them
Essay by Zinovy Zinik
38
OUT OF SIGHT

6
Please send all
correspondence to
info@artenol.
org. Letters
may be edited
for length
and clarity.
Letters
Class act
I just received my latest issue of Artenol, the “Money
Issue,” and I love it. Last fall I used your premiere
issue for my class at California College of the Arts
in Oakland, Cal. It was a great way to start the year.
With all that is going on in the world, I have decided
to use the theme “The Color of Money” for my color
theory class, and I think the “Money Issue” (Summer
2016) would be a great way to kick-off the discussion.
Could you please let me know if it is possible
to order 18 copies for my students and if so, what
would the cost be? Thank you. Keep on publishing!
Eugene Rodriguez
Via email
August 6, 2016
Editor: Prof. Rodriguez’s copies of Artenol were shipped
soon after we received his request. We hope his students
found the “Money Issue” inspiring. If you missed your
copy, you can purchase one at artenol.org/subscribe.html.
Art work
I liked that Artenol devoted space to workers’
rights, or lack of, along with Hedrick Smith’s look
at what used to be called “robber-baron capitalism”
(“Hired? Check Your Rights ...,” “The Share Withholders,”
Summer 2016). Missing from the issue, however,
was any mention of labor unions. However flawed,
unions are the one defense working people have to
protect themselves. Since the “Reagan Revolution”
unions have been under constant attack, with no
help from the Democrats they supported. That is
because union are, arguably, the best method to
redistribute wealth in our nation; they created the
home and car-owning “middle class” that has been
disappearing. It is those people whose American
Dream has been stolen who support the insurgent
candidacies of Sanders and Trump.
Well, you might ask, that might be true, but unions
... art ...? And I say visit the Hospital Workers Local
1199 hall in New York and check out the mosaic
mural built around Frederick Douglass’s “Without
struggle there is no progress.” Or the Benny Bufano
mural at the ILWU Local 6 Hall in Oakland. Just to
mention two I know well. Unions have promoted
worker culture and art since before the Depression,
with annual festivals in Washington and the Bay
Area. When I was a union official we produced
special edition union newsletters celebrating our
worker-artists, writers, actors, singers. Labor educators,
training generations of union leaders, routinely
MURAL An allegorical work by artist Benny Bufano
dominates one wall of the ILWU Hall 6 in Oakland, Cal.
Photo provided
include film and fiction, and teach hard-bitten shop
stewards to write poetry. Here’s a haiku written by
a Bay Area fast food worker that is life-changing; I
gave them the first line:
on the job today
a customer yelled at me
I spit in her food
There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
working class artists who – like Artenol – reject crass
commercialism and celebrate real people, who express
their feelings through art. Yes, “It’s the culture,
stupid,” including working class culture.
Albert Lannon
Retired Labor Educator, Laney College
Former staff and local officer,
International Longshore & Warehouse Union
Via email
August 7, 2016
PayPal alternative
I would like to subscribe to Artenol, but I don’t want
to use PayPal. Is there another way I can pay for a
subscription?
Richard Helmick
Via email
August 4, 2016
Editor: Yes. In the PayPal window that opens after you
click “Subscribe,” there is link that says “Pay using your
credit or debit card.” Click that and you should be able to
use either of those alternatives. If you don’t see that link,
you may need to change your browser privacy settings to
allow “cookies” and other personal data transference.
FALL 2016

FALL 2016 | ISSUE 6
PUBLISHER
MANAGING EDITOR/
ART DIRECTOR
ASSISTANT EDITOR
BRITISH EDITOR
ACCOUNTS/CIRCULATION
SOCIAL MEDIA
PUBLICITY/OUTREACH
ADVERTISING
FOUNDER
LEGAL COUNSEL
PUBLISHED BY
ON THE WEB
CONTACT US
Gary Krimershmoys
David Dann
Walker Mimms
Zinovy Zinik
Denise Krimershmoys
Z Nelson
April Hunt
David Zelikovsky
Walker Mimms
David Dann
Alex Melamid
Katya Yoffe, PLLC
Art Healing Ministry
Suite 8G
350 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
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Artenol is published four times annually by the
Art Healing Ministry, 350 West 42nd Street, Suite 8G,
New York, NY 10036. © 2016 Art Healing Ministry.
All rights reserved.
Fall 2016, Issue 6.
Single issues of Artenol are $10; foreign orders are
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7

8
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Katya Yoffe, PLLC
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646-450-2896
katya@kyoffelaw.com
kyoffelaw.com
Rated by
SuperLawyers
for 2014, 2015
Contributors
• Josie Demuth | The Equal Opportunist (page 33)
Josie Demuth is an author whose books include Liggers
and Dreamers (2015) and The Guest (2012).
• Michelle Furyaka | The Consultant (page 14)
As president of FURY Art Advisory, Michelle Furyaka
has helped art institutions around the world organize
strategies for creating and expanding collections of art.
• Erica James | The Conservator (page 16)
Erica James is an art conservator in private parctice, providing
painting conservation services for art institutions
and individuals. She is also a poet and technical editor.
• Julia Kissina | We Don’t Give a Shit ... (page 57)
A member of the Russian Samizdat movement during
the 1980s and ’90s, author and artist Julia Kissina is also
the creator of The Dead Artist’s Society. Her books include
Elephantina’s Moscow Years and Shadows Cast People.
• Laurie Knoop | Snap, Crackle and Pop Art (page 37)
Food stylist and producer Laurie Knoop owns Studio 129
in New York City, where she styles food for photography
and video for clients like Savory, Food and Wine, Culture
Magazine, Simon and Schuster, and Harper Collins.
• Gary Krimershmoys | The Investor (page 20)
A provider of holistic wealth management services, with
a focus on socially-responsible investing, Gary Krimershmoys
worked for years in capital markets. He has also
facilitated art exhibits and is the publisher of Artenol.
• Alex Melamid | Rethinking Art (page 24)
One half of the famed Russian art duo Komar and Melamid,
Alex Melamid has continued to create art on his
own since 2013. In 2015, he founded Artenol magazine.
• Walker Mimms | Good Heaven! ... (page 52)
Walker Mimms is a writer living in Nashville. He is also
Artenol’s assistant editor.
• David Pryce-Jones | The Human Dimension (page 9)
David Pryce-Jones is a noted author and editor for
National Review. His books include Betrayal: France, the
Arabs, and the Jews (2006) and Fault Lines (2015).
• Chris Ramirez | Scene (page 42)
A freelance photographer and journalist for The New York
Times, the Discovery Channel, The Wall Street Journal and
others, Chris Ramirez is also a volunteer firefighter for a
small community in upstate New York.
• Stan Tymorek | Fraught Couture (page 45)
Stan Tymorek is an author, copywriter and editor of
several volumes of poetry for Abrams. He was formerly
creative director for Lands’ End.
• Zinovy Zinik | The Hidden Hand (page 38)
A Moscow-born novelist and critic who lives in London,
Zinovy Zinik is a regular contributor to The Times Literary
Supplement and BBC radio, and is Artenol’s British editor.
FALL 2016

Opener
The human dimension
By David Pryce-Jones
My family shares a
house in Florence, the city
of the high art of the Italian
Renaissance. To go into
the museums and churches
there is to be in touch with
the Old Masters, and the
experience has the effect
of making you sense that
there is more to life
than you thought.
And that, I take it, is the purpose of all art. Writing novels
as I do, I have learned that no matter whether the theme
is positive or negative, success depends on being able to
create this mysterious sense inherent in good art that life
would offer more if only you reached out for it.
The Old Masters had an advantage: They were religious,
or at least worked in an atmosphere of religious
faith. Over a period of four or five hundred years, the
core subject of painting was the fate of every human
being after his or her death, either salvation or damnation.
Angels and beauty on one side of the picture
or fresco, demons and ugliness on the other side. Put
another way, art used to be akin to worship, a paying
of respects to whoever or whatever gave the artist his
gifts. Like the huge majority of people today, I am an
agnostic, which means a lot of hard work to find in
today’s art the moral equivalent of faith.
A great friend in Florence was Sidney Alexander,
alas, no longer with us. A big man in every sense, also
shambling and shambolic, he had fought in the U.S.
infantry in Italy during the war, and stayed on afterwards
on the scheme organized by Senator Fulbright
to pay the university education of every ex-serviceman
who wanted it. A man of the widest culture, Sidney
played the flute and gave concerts, learned Latin in addition
to Italian and created impeccable translations of
the Odes of Horace and the classic work of the Renaissance
historian Francesco Guicciardini that have both
been published by a university press. He also wrote
the biography of Marc Chagall. His special study,
however, was Michelangelo, about whom he published
several books. One day, he agreed to guide me
on an explanatory tour of the works of Michelangelo
that are to be seen around Florence. Standing in front
of the famous statue of the young biblical David sizing
up the shot that will kill Goliath, he quoted some lines
from a poem by Michelangelo to the effect that a “Yes”
and a “No” moved him equally. Sidney was saying
that Michelangelo’s greatness lay in his understanding
that the difference between the good and the bad is an
issue for human beings, not God.
In my mind’s eye, I still see Sidney turning to me
CUBISM
SQUARED
Read Sidney
Alexander’s poem,
“Portrait of the
Artist’s Child in
a Predicament,”
published in The
New Yorker, at
artenol.org
9

to utter one of his deepest convictions: “Few things are
more bogus than modern art.” The cause of this dereliction
is the playing of games with everything that comprises
the human being, the face and the body, the setting
and the landscape. The artist is informing you that
character and moral judgment are unimportant, and all
you need know is how clever the artist himself is.
It would make a good subject for a book to try to
pinpoint why and how and when the arts all lost their
human dimension: Painting went non-figurative, music
forsook melody, poetry abandoned rhyme, architecture
meant building machines for living, and so on. It’s a
hundred years since the Dada movement reduced men
and women to absurdity, which may perhaps have been
a pacifist sneer of superiority to a world waging the First
World War. I suspect that Picasso and Cubism have a
lot to answer for, as well. Soviet realist art showed men
and women as mere cogs in the machinery of Five Year
Plans. At the same time, the art of the Old Masters has
been effectively dismissed as irrelevant. Anyone who
might try to follow the great tradition would be mocked
as a romantic, a dupe engaged in meaningless beautification,
a grievous fault in the view of the politically
correct. The world has become horrible and frightening,
runs this line of thought, and art should therefore reflect
it. The new does not succeed the old, but degrades
and throttles it. Trying to invent organizing principles
that would garner status in academia, critics confect
whole categories and movements of uglification, such
as Brutalism or Minimalism. Conceptual art is the outcome
of the kindergarten teacher’s encouragement that
everyone is an artist just because they say they are, and
there’s no need for all that tiresome preparation.
Not long ago, I found myself in Bilbao and took the
risk of visiting the Guggenheim Museum there. Supposedly
a showpiece of Modernist architecture designed
by someone very famous and much applauded,
the museum is an assemblage of irregular caverns in
which you immediately become a disconsolate wanderer
in search of order which is not there. Up on the
third floor, as I recall, the caverns were more like warehouses
in which were stacked huge and oddly shaped
but overpowering red lumps, the work of someone else
very famous and much applauded. Leaving this museum,
you could only conclude that art and humanity
are dead, laid out in a mortifying Kafkaesque setting.
CAVERNOUS The Guggenheim Bilbao, universally acclaimed as one of
the contemporary art world’s great museums, strikes some visitors as
Modernism on a dehumanizing scale. Guggenheim Bilbao photo
See a video about
the Bilbao museum
at artenol.org.
10

The museum is an assemblage of
irregular caverns in which you immediately
become a disconsolate wanderer in search
of order which is not there.
The Royal Academy of Arts was once the protective
haven of tradition that its name suggests. Here is the
announcement of its forthcoming exhibition: “Abstract
Expressionism will forever be associated with the restlessly
inventive energy of 1950s New York. Artists like
Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning broke from accepted
conventions to unleash a new sense of confidence in
modern painting. Experience the scale, color and energy
of their radical creations in this the first major survey
of the movement in the U.K. since 1957.”
Abstract Expressionism is a phrase that would have
sent my friend Sidney into a disquisition about bogusness.
For a start, the two words have no genuine association
and have been shunted together to give an
appearance of scholarship. Far from being restlessly
inventive, the three identified artists were dealing in
splodges and stripes connected, if at all, to interior
decoration rather than painting. A new sense of confidence
implies an old lack of it, now being resolved.
That phrase, and the co-opted nouns “scale, color and
energy,” amount to a euphemistic way of concealing
the role of the agents and dealers and collectors who
have made a market in these painters, and buy and sell
their canvases as ersatz stocks. The only thing that is
radical is the sum of money put into speculations of
the kind. I know one collector who spent a hundred
thousand pounds on a picture so constructed that it
would fall to pieces and disintegrate so that after ten
years nothing would be left of it. To buy a picture in
order to boast that money is no object to the purchaser
goes way beyond ordinary bogusness.
I conclude with a shaft of good news. There are two
art schools in Florence engaged in counter-revolution,
that is to say teaching technique as it was taught and
practised in the time of the Old Masters. Graduating
from these classes, students should be able to restore
to art the human element and the moral judgment that
goes with it. We will all be the better for it. n
11

12
FALL 2016

Artenol’s campaign
to reinvigorate art
MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN

THE CONSULTANT
With this issue of Artenol, we address the perplexing problem of contemporary art’s general banality.
Time was when art played a central role in the lives of everyday people, but no longer. To rescue
art from this malaise, to restore it to its former greatness, Artenol asked FURY Art Advisory, a leading
research firm, to tackle the task of “making art great again.” We proposed that the company
address the issue as though the Museum of Modern Art were its client. Michelle Furyaka, FURY’s president and
CEO, and her team created this report, an analysis of the issue with suggestions for resolving it, as she would
have done for any of FURY’s Fortune 500 clients. We believe it offers a fresh perspective on the issue. – Editor
The Museum of Modern Art ( moma) is one
of the largest and most influential museums in the
world, housing more than 150,000 works of art as well
as a film archive and an extensive library.
It is evident that this museum is the world
authority on modern art. Since 1929, when
founded by Abigail “Abby” Rockefeller, the museum
and its exhibitions have been captivating the public
with legendary artists like Van Gogh and Picasso. It’s
no wonder its early founders were called the “daring
girls.” Today this renowned art institution is once
By Michelle
Furyaka
again tasked with a “daring” assignment:
to investigate and develop a well-defined
strategy for “making art great again.”
Proposal: FURY Art Advisory was selected
based on their expertise in the art industry.
As a potential partner, they will
conduct a series of research initiatives
and offer a solution on how to “make art
great again.” Consulting firms are often brought in to
conduct market research and present museums and
non-profits with their findings. Analytical findings
allow clients to understand exactly what is happening
in the marketplace, thus enabling them to make
decisions based on that data.
FURY will analyze
the musuem’s
assets and identify
qualifications that
make artists ‘great.’
developing superior strategies, the MoMA chooses
FURY as a strategic partner.
Solution: To help MoMA tackle distracting forces and
misinterpretations worldwide, FURY will provide
a comprehensive offering from its suite of integrated
solutions. This includes a review of the history of
the museum and the original pioneering spirit of its
founders. Market conditions for artists and collectors
are far better today than in the days following the
Great Depression when the museum first opened.
Therefore, FURY will evaluate current
market conditions and present studies on
qualifying artists, based on various technical
and functional skill sets. They will
also provide an analysis of public opinion
and awareness, as well as a forecast of
collector trends and reliable investments.
FURY will conduct an extensive study of
other art institutions and will arrive at a
specific roadmap for “making art great again.” FURY
will also test various focus groups and will perform
a root-cause analysis to identify issues and obstacles.
Findings will be shared, viable solutions will be proposed
and a viable roadmap will be selected and implemented.
14
Business challenge: MoMA wants to “make art great
again,” but is challenged with the presence of various
distractions in the market and various market
barriers. Many people are dissatisfied with the direction
art has taken. MoMA needs real-time insights
into the current art market and a clear analysis of
the public’s perception. It is also extremely important
to build a strong awareness and attract followers
to this initiative. The museum wants to explore the
option of starting a movement, an art collective that
would “make art great again.” Recognizing FURY’s
deep knowledge of the art market and its expertise in
Strategy: During the discovery phase of the project,
FURY will endeavor to understand and gather information
from MoMA regarding why this initiative
is important to them, and what it will mean to them
once it is accomplished. FURY will also analyze the
musuem’s assets and identify qualifications that make
artists “great.” Some qualifications, like technical expertise,
effective communication, understanding of
cultural values, and in-depth emotional connection to
work and career path, will be measured. These findings
will be shared with other art institutions around the
world and a global grading system will be developed
FALL 2016

MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
QUANTIFYING “GREATNESS”
To establish a comprehensive profile for great art, FURY Art Advisory conducted a series of evaluations of art and artists in the Museum
of Modern Art’s collection during the discovery phase of the project. Two sample assessments – one deemed highly normative, the other
far less so – are presented below.
n Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
n Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889)
10
This famed Dutch painter sets the standard for great
art. Evaluated using 10 key art-related criteria, Rembrandt
rated a 9.3 on the FURY Greatness Quotient
(FGQ) scale.
10
An academic painter of historic, allegorical and
portrait works in the Beaux-Arts style, Cabanel only
achieved a 4.1 on the FGQ scale, well below the
“greatness” mean of 7.3.
8
6
4
2
8
6
4
2
0
Technical skill
Functional
viability
Originality
Complexity
of work
Cultural value
Effective relay
of message
Career longevity
Emotional connection
with viewer
Market value
Influence
among peers
TRENDS IN “GREATNESS”
FURY tracked annual visits to view works that scored 7.3 or higher on the FSQ scale in selected musuems around the country over four
decades. The results provide a picture of the appeal of great works over time. It can be seen that since the 1970s, Pop Art’s greatness
has grown steadily, while Rennaisance art, despite its high FSQ rating, has remained largely flat.
Total visits
70M
60M
50M
40M
30M
20M
10M
0
Rennaisance
Neoclassical
Impressionism
Cubism
Abstract Expressionism
Pop Art
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
Charts and data courtesy FURY Art Advisory
0
Technical skill
Functional
viability
Originality
Complexity
of work
Cultural value
Effective relay
of message
Career longevity
Emotional connection
with viewer
Market value
Influence
among peers
THE CONSULTING TEAM
FURY Art Advisory (FAA) has built a
strong reputation for successfully
helping private collectors and worldrenowned
art institutions build collections
with a mission and develop
strategic projects. Clients include the
Furyaka
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow,
the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., and
the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
Michelle Furyaka, president and CEO of FAA, has
worked with clients in Moscow, New York, Berlin
and London. Under her guidance, FAA has advised
collectors and institutions in making educated acquisitions
when expanding existing collections or when
branching out into other art styles and genres. An
art collector herself who was born in Russia, Furyaka,
favors work by the Soviet-era Nonconformist artists.
15

16
ENGAGED Visitors to the Musuem of Modern Art
crowd its second-floor galleries in search of great art.
Ingfbruno photo
so that artists, museums and the public can all collaborate
and be part of the “make art great again”
initiative.
Expected results: The engagement with FURY
Art Advisory provided a head start for MoMA. The
benchmarking study allowed the museum to develop
superior and effective plans to achieve their
specific goals. MoMA set out to start a movement
to “make art great again.” Through various social
media campaigns, the museum and its affiliates
were able to create an awareness of the initiative.
The various marketing campaigns conducted by
FURY created a following for the museum’s mission.
People who are dissatisfied with the direction
art is taking now have a cause to join. FURY’s
proposed grading system and plans for “making
art great again” will be published on the MoMA’s
website. FURY also suggested beginning a dialogue
with emerging artists to engage the public
in their creative process. Research indicates that
many people feel art is meaningless because they
don’t understand what the artist is trying to convey.
FURY determined that this gap can be closed
by examining previous art movements and quantifying
the way they were initially received by the
public. FURY Art Advisory will demonstrate that
change is necessary in order to make art meaningful
and thus “great again.” What remains is for
MoMA to implement recommended strategies and
launch the “great art” roadmap.
n
THE CONSERVATOR
Almost every single artifact in a museum on
exhibition (of any age) has had intervention.
The department that stabilizes artwork so it
can be exhibited without its condition being
questioned is the museum conservation department.
Art conservators are different than art restorers. The
difference is best highlighted in the following example.
If one has a sword blade with spot areas of corrosion,
a conservator would treat those tiny areas and not
By Erica
James
re-galvanize it (an act of restoration). Theoretically,
conservators don’t need things to
look new. This is done for a variety of reasons.
In terms of the sword blade, the existing metal is
the original material; in preserving this material, the
conservator maintains the value (monetary and otherwise)
of the sword. More importantly, this less invasive
approach preserves the material for future scholarship,
etc.
Allow me to briefly give you a bit of background. I
have been engaged in the art conservation field for 26
years, starting when I first became (passionately) interested
at age 18. I completed undergraduate work in
studio art, art history and chemistry, before going on
to graduate school where I specialized in painting conservation
with an interest in modern materials. Two
more fellowships followed, and then private practice
and a position in a museum. Typically, a painting conservator
would keep a position like that for life. I was
out in less than five years.
The question is why? It wasn’t the fact that in a field
that is 95 percent female, males hold most of the positions
as heads of museum conservation labs. As ingrained
as sexism is in the museum world, that wasn’t
the reason. The reason was that as time dragged by in
my dream job, I gradually started to sense the workings,
the light thrum and the endless combustion of
a “Museum Value Machine.” Think of the nonsensical
machine paintings by the early 20th-century artist
Francis Picabia. A Picabia machine is incredibly detailed.
Exacting, elegant and specific. And people stand
back and admire its specificity. There is only one problem.
The machine doesn’t work, and its dysfunctionality
is systemic. One plug fires, creating movement in a
wheel whose only output is noise and a requirement
for more action. The situation with museum conservation
is like that, but even more complicated. Think of
one of those strange vehicles (only more heavily detailed)
from an early Mad Max film. Hoses, wires and
FALL 2016

MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
tubes in abundance. If one piece was removed, the mechanical
puzzle would be incomplete. So it is with the
Museum Value Machine.
Typically, art conservation in the museum environment
isn’t about the art, although it plays a pivotal role
in how art is valued. If art conservation isn’t about art,
what, then is it about? How does the Museum Value
Machine transform the manifestation of a creative act
into a thing so specialized and rarified that its most significant
valuation is monetary?
The more specialized and rarified a museum’s art
product appears to be, the more luxurious it becomes.
Who can afford such luxury? People who have money
– in the case of art, a lot of money. And thus the
inflation of art value by the Museum
Value Machine dictates big museum
(and small museum) policy.
As conservators, we are expected to
be completely devoid of interest in this
monetary valuation. Art conservators
aren’t appraisers. My classic response
to a private client who asks if something
is worth conserving (i.e., will
cost less to conserve than it is worth)
is, “If it’s worth it to you, it’s worth it.”
But often, museum conservation will
increase the monetary value of an artifact.
This added value is highly disruptive
to the conservation psyche that
prides itself in being neutral or simply
absent when the valuation of art comes
into play.
In order to understand the big
picture of Museum Value Machine
pathology, one must go behind the
scenes. First, who works in a museum?
On top are board members who have
big art collections and dictate policy
so their collections, often stored at the
museum for free, are in a secure place.
Board members also give money to purchase artworks
whose acquisition by a museum not only increases the
value of the artwork acquired, but perhaps also increases
that of artworks that already reside at the museum.
Museum board members curry the most favor
because they not only have artwork that may someday
be donated to the museum, but they also have money;
and art and money are the fuel that make the Museum
Value Machine go.
Next in line is the museum director, who executes
the vision of the board and heroically shuffles and reorganizes
the employees. Museum directors also have
I gradually started to
sense the workings,
the light thrum and the
endless combustion of a
‘Museum Value Machine.’
Think of the nonsensical
machine paintings by
the early 20th-century
artist Francis Picabia.
an important say in who the musuem’s curators are.
The curators manage respective collections based on
their art history expertise and are in charge of coming
up with exhibition ideas, maintaining relationships
with other institutions to facilitate loans, buying new
artwork and sometimes deaccessioning pieces. They
also maintain relationships with the board and fulfill
board requests. If a board member can get his or her
artwork into an exhibition, its exposure increases its
potential monetary value. Alternatively, if an exhibition
can be founded on a specific group of paintings,
their exposure – and value – also goes up.
In other words, the strategic handling and promotion
of artwork in a collection potentially increases
its value for present and potential
owners – board members and museums,
respectively. A rising tide does,
indeed, lift all boats. And the curator
is beholden to board member requests
because those board members
not only have the money to purchase
other artworks (hear the heavy gavel
drop down at your local art retailer),
but also have art collections that may
eventually come to the museum. The
curator does everything to make sure
the board members are appeased. This
can include a whole range of activities,
from professional discussions about
the management of a board member’s
collection, to the facilitation of a board
member’s private event at the museum
after hours.
For all intents and purposes, curatorial
activities serve as the oil for the
Museum Value Machine – constantly
lubricating the works to minimize any
sort of friction.
And who are the curators in
charge of? Well, us. The outwardly
high-minded, and inwardly hand-wringing, conservators.
The only power that conservators have in a museum
is a claim to this high-minded specificity. Art conservators
“treat” paintings and objects for exhibition.
We take something that isn’t up to snuff and propagate
the myth that it is exactly as the artist intended. That it
hasn’t aged. We blind people with science and include
the results in glossy catalogues on exhibitions that are
no more in our control than are the laws of physics.
Make no mistake about it, however. Conservators are
tradespeople. We fix things. We may use an enormous
amount of science to do it (making us seem all the
See a video on
conserving modern
art at artenol.org.
17

MAKING IT LOOK GOOD
In preserving an art object, conservators use
tested methods that restore the item to as close to
its original condition as possible for as long a period
as possible. Guidelines included applying minimal
intervention, using appropriate materials and
reversible methods, and fully documenting whatever
work is done.
Because preservation
techniques improve
over time, emphasis
is now placed on the
reversibility of the
conservation processes
employed. That
reduces potential
problems for future
CLEANUP The conservation lab at the Smithsonian
American Art Museum, above, is a typical facility for
conservation and restoration of valuable artworks.
At left, an icon is gently cleaned with a cotton swab
and distilled water. wikimedia.org photos
treatments. Conservation is usually reserved for
works of historial or aesthetic importance; their rarity,
representativeness and communicative power are
also taken into consideration by conservators.
18
more specialized and rarified), but we basically make
those things the museum so desperately needs on its
walls look presentable. This often increases the value
of the artwork.
Here is an example of how the conservation section of
the Museum Value Machine works. A modern painting
is going out on loan. The curator assigns it to a modern
painting conservator to be conserved. The curator
comes in and stands over the painting with the conservator
and ruminates on how it should look. Intervening
too much, altering it too severely could decrease a painting’s
value. A difficulty arises when mounting a large
exhibition and paintings in a wide variety of conditions
come from all over. The perfectly adequate painting my
curator has pales in comparison to the pristine, relatively
untouched painting that another museum is lending
and (as it happens) will be placed right next to it. The
couch looked great until I purchased those new drapes.
And it isn’t a matter of moving the painting. These exhibitions
are painstakingly planned out with every painting
in the same position in every venue – false walls
abound. It’s all about context, people. Or better yet, as
in retail, location is everything.
This is where it gets very noisy in the conservation
section of the Museum Value Machine. The pressure
to make a painting look presentable applies not only
to itself, but to itself in comparison with its exhibition
neighbors, and to a potential increase in its value. Pressure
also comes from the board to mount a successful
exhibition (not to mention the fact that if a board member
is lending an artwork to the exhibition, it will be
conserved for free) and from the public who has been
conditioned to expect blockbuster exhibitions.
By the way, the museum world pretty much assumes
that while the average visitor may not know
anything about art, he or she does understand “bigger
is better.” Museums know that will draw crowds. The
message museums put out to the general public isn’t
something like “As a public institution, we act on your
behalf to bring you an art experience that we hope will
add meaning to your life.” It’s more along the lines of
“This exhibition was brought to you by us. It’s a rare
opportunity to see this artwork made by this popular
artist during this time! Thank goodness it’s only our
board that has paintings of this artist from this specific
era, or we would never know what the artwork from
this most rudimentary period was like! Let’s make it a
blue-chip extravaganza!”
The Museum Value Machine isn’t about the philanthropic
sharing of art for the betterment of humanity.
It is about the calculated sharing and borrowing of
artwork to increase its exposure and monetary value.
And conservation is a tool of this pragmatism, serving
as a sort of “check engine” light, should some portion
of the museum machine require a tune-up.
In a museum, there is always a ton of money, and no
money at all. I worked for one institution with a billion-dollar
endowment where its highest paid employee
– the director, of course – was earning sometimes
625% more than its lowest-paid employees (nearly
everyone else). The glory days of a member of the social
register taking one dollar a year to head a museum
By the way, the museum world pretty
much assumes that while the average visitor
may not know anything about art, he or
she does understand ‘bigger is better.’
FALL 2016

MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
are over. The days of that same director taking time to
walk through the museum to check on the guard who
was recently in the hospital are also long gone.
While money always seems to be found to buy artwork
at an inflated price, efforts to locate funds to provide
a museum’s lowest-paid workers with a living
wage are never made. It is a myth, really, that there is
no money to be earned in the art world. There definitely
is – just not for anyone who isn’t already wealthy. The
romantic image of the starving artist and the glamour of
the art world all play into the mystification
of the museum world experience.
Art conservation contributes
to this mystification in a big way by
simply fixing things and then tarting
up the process with a lot of science
and jargon. The conservation process
is not without real value, but its practicality
can assume a sanctimonious
gloss under these conditions.
The Museum Value Machine increases
monetary value by conserving
artwork, but it also contributes
to increasing mystique by adopting
a minimally invasive “hands-off”
approach to the preservation of
art. For example, there is no small
amount of discussion involved in
conserving a painting. Conservators
may make very little compared to
higher-level staff, but can wax philosophical
about original intent and
sing the praises of reversing “chemical
degradation.”
The irony here is that one would
think that this intervention corresponds to the age of an
artwork, that it is directly proportional to it – and that is
often the case. The conservators of several-centuries-old
“old yellow paintings” work very hard (sincerely so) to
make them presentable to the public. But with the advent
of newer materials used in newer works came new
problems, and conservators of 20th-century works have
their work cut out for them preserving modern and contemporary
art. Such work also happens to have some of
the highest valuations in art.
For example, we modern conservators fret about
the aging of materials that came into use during the
last century (one word: plastics) and will do a bit less
to conserve them because, well, who knows what to
do? But you will rarely find a painting conservator
admitting as much. Instead, the myth is perpetuated
that we do less with modern work because we want
DREAM JOB Conservator Erica
James carefully cleans a contemporary
art piece for eventual display in
a museum. Photo courtesy Erica James
to stay true to the original intent of the artist and that
intent was ... to be ... abstract and conceptual. Again,
not entirely disingenuous, but in the finer workings of
the Museum Value Machine, these nuances enhance
the art world’s mystique. Think of it as detailing the
Museum Value Machine. It needn’t work to look good.
By the time you get to contemporary art, the materials
are so unpredictable in their longevity, and some of
the artwork is so devoid of craftsmanship and – here’s
the kicker – the value so HIGH, who even wants to
touch them?
Of course, the spin remains the
same: We do less because we want to
stay true to the original intent of the
artist. And we don’t know what that
is because it is all so ... conceptual.
This becomes quite ephemeral
when, for example, a conservator
of contemporary art is the keeper of
an “idea” by the artist. So, when the
artwork has to be conserved, somehow
the conservator lets the idea
emerge from his or her lips like a
Pythian priestess. Ideas are important,
and intellectual property is, too.
But it all gets very vague, contrived
and practiced. If one has any common
sense at all, it becomes quite
apparent that a lot of this is made
up. The emperor has no clothes.
This wouldn’t be such a big deal
if it wasn’t so insidious. But at the
end of the day, like many things,
it comes down to money. Because,
although there are many ways to
measure value, money is the driver for Museum Value
Machine culture. Not freedom of expression, not passion,
not beauty, not spirit, not creative drive, not intellectualism,
not philosophy, not, not, not. Not anything
you would expect or want it to be about. Most of all,
what it isn’t about is the art.
And, in those moments when one talks shop with
other museum folks, precious few of them imbue the
conversation with the following: “You know, it is just
about the art for me. I just try to make it about the art.”
The truth is, it never will be about the art in the Museum
Value Machine’s infrastructure, because art only plays a
very small role as fuel for the machine. Along with money,
it is simply a currency that keeps museum culture
running. And conservation, despite its best intentions, is
never a means to an end, but only a barometer for what
is best for any artifact by means of comparison. n
19

THE INVESTOR
20
My first child was born on March 30th,
2008, at the Portland Hospital in London.
It was a momentous occasion, of course,
for more then the usual reasons. In the
heat of the moment, I decided to spend the night after
the birth with my wife in her private room. The nurse
brought in a cot, but I tossed and turned, unable to
sleep. The birth of my son wasn’t the cause of my restless.
At a time when everything in my life was about to
change, I was thinking that my job needed
changing, too.
I wanted to be a role model for my
son. That night, I decided I would follow my passion.
When my paternity leave was over, the next day at
work, I scheduled a meeting with my boss to discuss
the terms of my exit. I told him I was quitting my job as
a financial broker.
So began my circuitous path to socially-engaged art
and socially-responsible investing. After spending my
early childhood in the former Soviet Union and emigrating
to the United States in 1981 at the age of 9,
I instinctively knew that capitalism worked and communism
didn’t. That was reinforced when, right after
graduation from college, my first job was in that
bastion of capitalism, the stock market. Working initially
as an option trader on the Philadelphia Stock
Exchange, and then within a year moving on to the
American Stock Exchange in New York, I bought the
neo-liberal story hook, line and sinker. I religiously
read the Wall Street Journal and hungrily consumed the
works of Ayn Rand. All of my inherent preconceptions
about economic and societal rights and wrongs were
reinforced and amplified.
A change in my ironclad life philosophy came during
the eight years my wife and I lived in England. We
moved to London in 2001, a couple of months before
the attacks on 9/11. It was a fortuitous move because I
might have still been working at the American Stock
Exchange, about a block from the World Trade Center.
In London, I dove headfirst into the world of capital
markets, first as a stock option trader, then moving on
to be a broker of credit derivatives and then structured
credit derivatives. With each new year, I was making
more money, moving up through the ranks, eventually
heading the European brokerage team at the second
biggest interdealer broker in the world. But something
was missing. I found the days at work mind-numb-
By Gary
Krimershmoys
ROLE MODEL Artenol’s publisher, Gary Krimershmoys,
organizing the hanging of the magazine's recent "The
Revolution Continues"show in Manhattan. Krimershmoys
has found renewed purpose in socially responsible investing.
Artenol photo
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Here are a few things practitioners of sociallyengaged
art and socially-responsible investing
can learn from each other.
n Socially engaged artists can tap into institutional
pools of money, perhaps by offering art from
funded projects for corporate collections. Though
this can associate a project with a commercial
entity, the impact the artist’s work has on the
community is key. Donating pieces to the corporate
sponsor serves a larger purpose.
n Impact investment funds can incorporate
artists and cultural nonprofits into urban renewal
projects while engaging directly with underserved
communities.
n Artists are often adept at generating publicity.
They can create interest in stories that the media
might overlook. By teaming up with SRI funds,
artists can highlight some of the biggest offenders
in the corporate space. This can be similar to
what Greenpeace does with polluters, but on a
wider, multi-industry scale.
Currently, both socially responsible investing and
socially-engaged art are in the growth phase. In
20 years, it's very likely both will be considered
mainstream, no longer niche approaches in the
larger systems where they operate.
FALL 2016

MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
It was the feeling of serenity that permeated
my otherwise-frantic mind whenever I spent
a few hours at a museum that won me over.
ing and the nights entertaining clients (who mostly
couldn’t talk about anything other then the markets or
making and spending money) physically and emotionally
abusive. I found that the lifestyle didn’t produce
for me real, basic happiness.
Another crack in my philosophical foundation
formed when I saw that there could be an economic
system different from Rand’s pure capitalism. Experiencing
the European economic experiment that mixed
capitalism and socialism, showed me, to my surprise,
that people didn’t derive all of their happiness from
economic prosperity. I started to believe that contentedness
could be found in shared purposes and stories,
more so than through the often-egocentric materialism
of financial success.
With the birth of my son, I decided to extricate myself
from the lucrative brokerage business. To achieve
a deeper satisfaction in my working life, I inventoried
my passions to see which of them might accommodate
a career shift.
After about a year of considerable soul searching, I
settled on the art world. I was won over by the feeling
of serenity that permeated my otherwise frantic mind
whenever I spent a few hours at a museum. That,
along with a few guided gallery tours and the start of a
small art collection, became the foundation of my new
career. My ego whispered, “If you can be successful
in the cutthroat world of high-level finance, how hard
can it be to succeed in the art world?” And so the next
phase of my journey began.
The art world seemed a mysterious cauldron of social
commentary and engagement, human purpose
and ego, vanity and an alternative-asset class. These
contradictions drew me in, and I was soon managing
an international art advisory business, and eventually
a gallery in New York’s trendy Chelsea neighborhood.
In my new career, I found chances to combine ideas
of social progress with a business that had a spiritual
joy to it as part of the cultural commentary. The appeal
of contemporary art that had a social message and was
politically engaged was manifested for me in the first
pop-up exhibition I curated, one where I enabled Alex
Melamid (the founder of Artenol) to “cure” people
with the power of art through an entity called the Art
Healing Ministry (AHM). Set up as a kind of gallery/
dispensary, people could come to the AHM to get their
maladies cured through the power of art.
Other projects over the years ranged from the purely
commercial to the purely conceptual. These had
wide-ranging degrees of success, measured mostly
by the yardstick of magazine reviews and occasional
sales of artworks. The conclusion of my exhibition career
came with a last show at Vohn Gallery, an exhibit
called “AUTOIMMUNE.” Artworks shown diagnosed
the human imprint on the world, as a doctor might diagnose
a patient’s disease.
One of the goals of AUTOIMMUNE was to examine
current social questions, the cultural moment, with a
fresh eye toward finding answers where none seemed
forthcoming. There was also, looking back at on it, an
unconscious pull toward combining art and medicine.
That pull culminated in Artenol, as characterized by
the magazine’s name (taking inspiration from the drug
Tylenol).
In the 1960s, “land art” combined natural elements
in artistic ways to create pieces that lived and breathed
in the environment they occupied. Going back further,
Art Brut was a movement built on the ash heap of the
Second World War, a rejection of a civilization that
could perpetrate murder and genocide on an industrial
scale. Art movements of this sort helped to create the
recent wave of socially engaged art. These works use
communities, collaboration, ephemerality and public
engagement in a reaction, in my mind, to materialism
and the commodification of contemporary art.
I've seen and appreciated the impact that socially-engaged
art could have, from Paul Chen’s New
Orleans performance of “Waiting for Godot” in the
wake of Hurricane Katrina, to Theaster Gates’ projects
in the blighted areas of Chicago and Rick Lowe’s
effort to transform neglected shotgun houses in
Houston into art.
Realizing that this type of artist-instigated social impact,
on a scale that mattered, can only be financed by
cultural institutions, major non-profits and deep-pocketed
commercial galleries (unlike the one that I was
a part of), my research took me back to the world of
finance, to those capital institutions that also tried to
improve the environment, create social cohesion and
foster corporate accountability. Their efforts seemed to
have spiritual affinity with those artists that produced
socially-engaged art.
As artists try to change the course of society’s arc
by influencing culture through empathy and a bit of
spectacle, so do a few warriors in the financial sphere
try to change the direction of the steamroller that is
world finance. These entreprenuers’ efforts have been
dubbed “Socially Responsible Investing” (SRI). The
Find a link to
an article on
socially responsible
investing
in Forbes at
artenol.org.
21

22
field also has other strategies that fall under the
same umbrella, with names like “Sustainable and
Responsible Investing” and “Environmental, Social
and Governance” screening.
SRI pioneers, possibly taking a cue from the early
Abolitionists’ rejection of the slave trade, created a
movement that was a key in dealing a death blow
to the apartheid regime of South Africa. These investors
are currently dealing with some of society’s
most pressing issues, like the impact of human activity
on the environment, the role of finance in society
and income inequality.
Currently, it’s institutional investors like pension
funds and major non-profits that are largely leading
the SRI revolution. These funds try to foment change
by pooling their shares and voting as a bloc for progressive
resolutions put before company boards.
They use the media to build pressure for change, and
they engage with communities where companies
operate and are headquartered. By using these techniques,
SRI investors can successfully demand inclusion
of those communities into company mandates.
In this sphere, a positive version of trickle-down
economics is becoming increasingly common. SRI
strategies are being adopted more and more by individual
investors. The cutting-edge of the movement
is “Impact” investing, where investors can put
their money directly into projects they find appealing.
The result is something like a merger of philanthropy
and investment – a pairing that at one time
was considered an unholy marriage.
Today, American society faces a choice between
two paths. One path leads to fear, separation, materialism
and violence. The other moves toward an
understanding that humans are part of an interconnected
whole that comprises life on this planet, and
advocates cohesion and environmental stewardship.
Both socially responsible investing and socially
engaged art have a part to play in the second trajectory.
Even if they don’t work perfectly, the intention
of both fields is noble and worth supporting. If
the financial industry can show a soft side through
SRI, socially engaged art can be one of the beacons
that draws participants away from the status quo
and into a less-commoditized, more open and embracing
art world.
My assertion and hope is that, in 20 years, socially
responsible investing and socially engaged art
will no longer comprise a niche investment strategy
but will be a viable part of the global financial
mainstream.
n
THE ARTWORKER
They’re as much a part of our art museum
experience as are white walls and hushed,
expansive interiors. We look beyond them,
moving from one displayed piece to another,
careful to keep a respectful distance.
When we do notice musuem guards, they seem bored,
vaguely disdainful, footsore. Roused from lethargy,
they proffer directions to the restrooms or reprimand
the visitor who tries to touch. They all seem vaguely
By Rowling the same – salaried employees doing a
Dord job that, like any other, is both a grind
and a paycheck.
But Artenol has uncovered one musuem guard who
is not what he seems. He is an artist whose art is a kind
of unending performance, a marathon of tedium spent
in commune with some of the art world’s great masterworks.
He sees his presence as one element that, for
museumgoers, makes great art great. He agreed to talk
about his work, though he asked that we not use his
name or mention where he is employed, saying only
that he is “on exhibit” 40 hours a week at a major museum
in the New York area. Our interview took place
in August during a union-mandated break in his regular
work shift.
I understand that you were trained as an artist and have
a degree from Yale.
Yes, I have an MA in color theory. My thesis was on
17th-century egg tempera pigment variations.
But you’re now a museum guard?
Officially, yes, that’s my title, though I prefer to call
myself a facilitator/collaborator.
A facilitator ... what?
Facilitator/collaborator. I view myself as an artwork
on display along with the more conventional pieces
on the wall and on pedestals. They and I are part of
the overall art environment in the museum. I am an
extension of them, as they are of me.
How so?
My presence confers meaning, signifies a valuation.
I represent a judgment about whatever art is
present in the space with me. The fact that I’m here
tacitly implies to visitors that the work on the wall is
great. And, conversely, the fact that a piece merits a
place in the museum’s galleries imbues my presence
with a gravitas it otherwise would lack. Without
these masterpieces on the wall, I’m just another secu-
FALL 2016

MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
INTERACTIVE
EXHIBIT
rity guard at a 7-Eleven.
So how do you see yourself as an extension of the art you
guard?
You know, “guard” is really the wrong word. That
implies division, distance. The art and I are one, in
fact. What I do is I facilitate a piece’s entry into contemporary
life-space.
In what way?
I provide a context, just as the museum space does.
But the fact that I am a living, sentient being, just like
the visitors themselves, gives me an expanded role. I
instill in the art an immediacy it would otherwise not
have. I bring it into the here-and-now.
You mean you’re a kind of bridge between visitor and
art?
Yes, that’s a good way to put it. The artworks and
I collaborate to create a contemporary experience for
the visitors, even though the pieces on exhibit may
be decades or even centuries old. In that way, I make
great art great again – on a daily basis, if you think
Artenol photo
about it. That’s the core of my work, a collaboration
that results in the revitalization of hoary artifacts.
That makes them relevant to the present. Without me,
a great artwork’s meaning is much diminished.
You’re speaking of its monetary value? Meaning that
because a so-called guard is present, the art has worth?
No, no – though that might be how it appears. I
mean that my presence gives art an importance in
terms of its intellectual and social worth. Its greatness,
regardless of its market value. I’m a sign of an
artwork’s absolute greatness.
So if someone in a blue blazer is in the room, the art is
great?
Only if he’s awake (laughs). Really, it’s not so simple
as that. There needs to be a conscious effort on the
part of the “guard” to complete the facilitation. There
are subtle ways to do that, but that’s the part of my art
that has to be experienced rather than described.
One last thing. Can you direct me to the restroom?
Sorry, I’m on break at the moment.
n
23

Cover story
STARTING OVER:
I
am an artist. I’m
an old artist, and
I’ve been an artist
all my life. About
ten years ago, I
had a revelation,
a Road-to-Damascus kind of
St. Paul moment. At that time,
I was 60 years old, and I had
been an artist since I was about
10, when I painted my first oil
painting. So I’ve been in the
business of making art for 50
years. My road-to-Damascus
revelation was this – I said
to myself, “Listen, I’ve been
doing something for all my life
which is total nonsense. It is the
most idiotic thing in the world,
this thing called art!”
And since then, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve
been doing, and what art is. I now, more than ever,
more than I did 10 years ago, think that art is what
Marx said about Christianity – a “false consciousness.”
It’s a kind of a religion for the godless world,
and we’re coerced, forced into believing in it, under
the premise that it’s a good, benign and refined thing.
We’re under an umbrella of belief that art’s really good
for us. I’ve tried to find out how it’s good for us, but
have been unable to do so. So the impetus behind
By Alex Melamid
IN JULY, ARTENOL FOUNDER ALEX MELAMID
gave a lecture via Skype at the Kopkind
Colony in Vermont. He addressed contemporary
art’s current malaise and offered
several proposals for reinvigorating it.
Those who attended the workshop were
asked to complete surveys on their interest
in the arts and to offer their own vision
for an art of the future, an art that had
been “made great again.” Mr. Melamid’s
talk is transcribed here in full, as well as his
responses to selected questions from the
audience. Artenol managing editor David
Dann acted as the evening’s emcee and
Kopkind Colony board president JoAnn
Wypijewski hosted the event. – Editor
creating Artenol, our arts magazine,
was to uncover what
art is, to find out whether I’m
right that it’s a false consciousness
that serves the upper
classes in order to subdue and
keep in check the general population.
Art does this not out
of malice, of course, for the art
world’s insiders and institutions
also believe that art is a
force for good. But what art is
very good at is keeping things
in order.
Now, with the current revolt
of the masses against the political
elite in the 2016 presidential
campaign, it’s really interesting
to note that art is also a
staunch defender of the status
quo. Traditionally, modern art has been about starting
something new, creating a catalyst for change. Nowadays,
it’s just the opposite: art is a catalyst of the status
quo. If you observe the way the art world works,
you’ll quickly understand that absolutely everything
is controlled. Neither artists nor art institutions are
interested in any change at all. Change is what they’re
afraid of – and rightly so, because they’re doing quite
well financially, myself included.
But for me, it was important to create Artenol so that
IS CONTEMPORARY ART 'IDIOTIC,' 'SENSELESS'? IN A
24
FALL 2016

MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
RETHINKING ART
KOPKIND WORKSHOP, ALEX MELAMID MAKES THE CASE
25
SKYPED IN Artenol founder Alex Melamid addresses a group of journalists and community activists via Skype at
the Kopkind Colony in July. Managing editor David Dann, left, emceed the event. Debbie Nathan photo

‘Great art’ survey
Artenol surveyed participants in the Kopkind workshop to gauge their interest in the arts. Here are the results.
n RESPONDENT PROFILE
Gender
Respondents,
by percentage
39
MALE
61
FEMALE
Income
Household, per annum
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
Age
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Less
than 25
Marital status
Single
Married
Divorced
25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65 and
older
22%
20%
Education
Level successfully completed
8% PhD
17% Post-graduate
68% College
58%
Favorite color
By percentage, other
colors less than 1%
33 25 17 8 4
Favorite cuisine
By percentage, other
cuisines less than 1%
Favorite music
23
Chinese
18
Italian
16
Mexican
9
Thai/Vietnamese
8
Indian
By percentage, other music
genres less than 1%
0%
Less than
$25K
$25K-
$49K
$50K-
$79K
$80K-
$99K
$100K or
more
7% High school
n RESPONDENT ART INTERESTS
29 Rock
24 Folk
26
Art education
Formal classes taken
Art history
34% 7%
59%
Studio course
None
Art activities
Those regularly participated in
Painting
None
Drawing
18%
6%
61%
15%
Sculpting
19 Soul/R&B 7 Jazz
6 Classical 5 World
Favorite pastime
Art objects
Number of artworks owned, by percentage
Art relevance
Art’s importance to the average person
Top 2 activities, by percentage
6 15 7 9 66
None 1-5 6-10 11-19 20 or more Not relevant Highly relevant
71 Dancing
58 Reading

MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
n RESPONDENT ART PREFERENCES
Preferred style
Respondents were asked to pick which of 6 artists – Picasso,
Warhol, Rembrandt, Fragonard, Rockwell or Koons – they most
favored. Results shown by percentage.
36 Rembrandt 22 Picasso 20 Warhol
9 Rockwell 8 Koons 5 Fragonard
Spatial acuity
Respondents selected the most pleasing arrangement of the
4 below. Results shown by percentage.
48
12
34
Involvement
Frequency of respondents’ art gallery and/or museum visits. Results
shown by percentage.
6
67 At least once a year
43 At least once a month
we could initiate a discussion of these matters. The
name “Artenol” comes from Tylenol – the magazine is
to be a remedy for the art world’s ills. I’m looking for
the truth, though some people might find my views
controversial.
I just wonder why people don’t want to see the
obvious. Why do they accept the status quo, believing
what everyone else believes rather than finding their
own beliefs? Harold Rosenberg, one of the great postwar
art critics, described this condition in an essay
titled “The Herd of Independent Minds.” In his view,
we are a “herd of independent minds” – we’re like a
herd in that we strive not to think individually.
If you think about art, it becomes obvious that it is
wrong. But it’s not just art. Our culture also defines
us. Traditional Marxist teaching says the economy
shapes our minds, but I believe it’s just the opposite.
In a phrase, it’s the culture, stupid. This variation on
the famous slogan from the 1992 Clinton presidential
campaign says it’s art, in a broad sense, and not the
economy, that defines everything in our lives. If we
change culture, we will change the world.
Art, as it’s presently defined, should be destroyed,
demolished. You know, there are different definitions
of what art is. If you go to the Metropolitan Museum
in New York, you’ll see paintings, of course. But you’ll
also see medieval armor, some silverware, all sorts of
utilitarian things of fine design. Spinoza said – and he
was called the first atheist – that everything is God,
and therefore God does not exist. Similarly, if everything
is art, if everything has an artistic value, then
there’s no need for art to exist at all. There’s no need
for a separate entity called “art.”
Of course, people like to decorate their homes with
beautiful things, paint their walls with pleasing colors
– you can call that “decoration” or you can call it
“art.” The point is that art exists now as a special, holy
occupation. Artists are “higher beings,” in a way, so
their art represents something not just beautiful, decorative
or pleasing, but something deeper, something
hidden, a condition that began with modern art.
Traditionally, art, from medieval times, was used
to illustrate the Bible. Everyone believed in God, and
artists illustrated the Bible’s stories. So, in a way, the
light of God was reflected in art. But with the demise
of traditional religion, some new religions, new
beliefs, came into being. They included Marxism,
socialism and then Freudianism. The most powerful
of all these was Theosophy, which was established
by a Russian woman, Madame Blavatsky. Theosophy
revolutionized art, in a fundamental way, because
it gave it new meaning. There was a very important
27

ook, Thought-Forms (1905), written by a follower
of Blavatsky, an outstanding, distinguished woman
named Annie Besant. She wrote that our thoughts,
our feelings have forms, that specific abstract forms
can represent jealousy, happiness, anger, emotions of
that sort. Kandinsky took much of his imagery from
Besant’s forms, because he truly believed in these
mysterious teachings. Mondrian, too – they were all
members of the Theosophical Society.
These were the reactionary, senseless ideas that created
modern art. Nowadays, we try to justify abstract art
by – I don’t know – quantum theory
or quantum mechanics, or maybe by
relativity. But actually, modern art
came from Theosophy. Freudianism
was another of the spooky, arbitrary
teachings that played a role in modernism.
But I believe that both are total
nonsense and bullshit, and they keep
our minds imprisoned in an irrational
and senseless environment we call art.
It’s nothing more than a cage.
I feel quite passionate about this.
I’ve always used humor in my work,
as you know, but I’m getting older and older, and
angrier and angrier. I just painted a big, life-sized asshole,
and it’s a painting I’m very proud of (laughs). I
just cannot stand it any more! I’ve even started throwing
raw eggs at a blank canvas. The result is very
beautiful, and it’s better than any art in a museum or
a session with a shrink.
We have to throw off the chains of art, break free of
art’s shackles. You have to understand – we’re imprisoned
by our culture. I believe that everything starts
with culture and art is its major part. Visual arts are
the holiest part of culture, considered to be the top of
the cultural pyramid. You know, art as an institution
is now the size of the Catholic Church. I worked in the
‘I once was in a museum
in Singapore, and the next
day I traveled to a museum
in Denver, Colorado –
and these museums were
absolutely the same.
Alex Melamid
Artist, Artenol founder
Vatican, I painted portraits of cardinals and priests. I
lived for a year in Rome and I got acquainted with all
those people, and I saw how the Catholic Church is a
massive institution. But art today is a bigger institution,
and it has become catholic as well, meaning it’s all over
the world. I once was in a museum in Singapore, and
the next day I traveled to a museum in Denver, Colorado
– and these museums were absolutely the same.
It’s like the Catholic Mass, you know; it’s the same
everywhere. In art, it’s the same group of artists, the
same paintings, and even if they’re painted by different
people, you cannot distinguish one
from another because they look so
much alike.
This situation is getting worse,
and it’s a fraud. It’s a financial fraud,
totally based on a deception. On one
side are the art institutions, which are
nonprofits with tax-deductible status,
and on the other side are the for-profit
corporations. The money goes from
the corporations to the art institutions
for big tax write-offs, and the
art institutions then use the money to
promote artists whose work the corporations or their
shareholders invest in. This cycle increases the value of
the artworks, which increases the value of the art institutions’
collection and also the value of the corporate
shareholders’ investment. Everybody makes money.
But the fraud isn’t only financial. There’s intellectual
fraud, as well. Children are taken to museums
and told, “Look at this! This is important!” It’s like in
Detroit where there was a great uproar over whether
to sell the art in the Detroit Institute of Arts – “What a
catastrophe for Detroit!” some people said. Yeah, that’s
Detroit’s biggest problem! Obviously not. We need to
change these art institutions, and then we’ll change
the world for the better.
28
After Alex Melamid’s presentation, the
workshop was opened up for questions from the
participants. What follows is a selection of questions
asked and Melamid’s response to them.
So if we were to demolish all that fraudulent art, what
kind of art should we be interested in?
It’s up to the individual. You can do whatever
you want! You can dirty some surfaces with paint,
whatever, it’s your private business. It’s an individual
thing – you don’t need an institution to support you.
It’s like with religion. You can believe in whatever
you want – God, evil, devil. But it’s your problem,
not an institutional problem. You know, there’s a very
important book which I discovered recently. It’s by
Richard Popkin and is called “The History of Skepticism.”
Philosophical skepticism was very important,
beginning in the 16th or 17th century. It offered the
insight that everything we take for granted shouldn’t
be taken for granted.
I’m having trouble grasping what the crisis is here.
When you say we have to break the chains of art, I feel like
that in itself is removed from the reality we live in. I don’t
see what the crisis is, as a person who isn’t entrenched in
the world of art.
FALL 2016

MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
WORKSHOP IN THE WOODS
The Kopkind Colony is an educational summer
residency program that provides opportunities
for independent journalists and community organizers
to meet, discuss current
issues and participate in seminars
and presentations by guest
lecturers. Located in Guilford,
Vermont, on the site of the Tree
Frog Farm, the long-time residence
of renowned author and
journalist Andrew Kopkind, the
kopkind.org photo
Kopkind
Colony seeks to mentor young and not-so-young
reporters and writers in the social and political
journalism that Kopkind practiced throughout his
career. Previous presenters during the Colony’s
summer session have been community organizer
Kevin Alexander Gray, author Dr. Donald Tibbs
and activist lawyer Pamela Bridgewater Toure.
More about the Kopkind Colony and its various
programs, past and present, can be found at
kopkind.org.
We have a website which is called “Freedom from
Art,” at freedomfromart.org. On it, we say that art
should be stripped of its nonprofit status – that will
change everything overnight. We also say we should
also stop coercing people, stop telling people, from
children to adults, how good art is. But economics are
the most important part. Donations to art institutions
should not be tax-deductible. People say to me that a
lot of museums would then have to close down, and
I say, OK, that’s very good. A lot of museums should
be closed down. But here’s something that I discovered
lately that I want to share with you. Every museum,
every art institution, every artist, every collector,
everyone has these huge storage rooms where they
keep art. I estimate that 99.9 percent of art that has
been created, and is being created now, is destined
to be locked up in a warehouse somewhere. That art
has little or no chance of ever seeing the light of day.
The vast majority of art produced today will be stored
face-to-face in huge, dark rooms, and it’s a waste. A
kind of pollution. Art production can be seen as a true
form of pollution – physical pollution, of course, but
also intellectual pollution. There are now hundreds
of thousands, maybe millions, of artists making art
around the world, if you take China, Russia, you
know. What is that about? Why are they doing this?
What’s the chance that their work will ever be seen?
There is no chance. But everyone desires to seen, to
be shown. My works, with my ex-collaborator, are
in every major museum – MoMA, the Guggenheim,
the Met, you name it – but I haven’t seen those works
in years. They’re somewhere, stored away. But we’re
lucky artists – we’re in those museums. Most artists
are not in any museums – they’re nowhere. It’s like
over-production, like a totally senseless machine that
just produces certain things.
Tell us about Artenol, because if you want to destroy art,
it seems nonsensical to put a magazine out.
It’s about art being nonsensical. I need to prove that
to people. It’s like the magazine The Masses. They
were trying to prove that the existing social system is
wrong. That it needed to be replaced or destroyed. We
want to do the same thing, but culturally.
Art, before it was subverted by those with privilege and
money, was used as a vehicle for community work, for the
people. To say that it should be destroyed, doesn’t that
disregard the other ways that art can be used?
Your first statement, that money that came into art
and destroyed whatever came before, destroyed its
connection to the community – let me tell you, there
never was a time “before.” Artists have always been
the lackeys of the ruling class; they’ve always served
the ruling class. There was a time before, when art
was made for the church, for the religious public. The
rich people subsidized it, of course, but they were
giving money to the church, not to artists. An important
difference was that God was behind the art of that
period. There were teachings, the Bible, the story.
Artists were the illustrators of the religious system’s
story, which was totally ingrained in people’s minds.
You couldn’t ask a medieval person if he believed in
God – it was a given. If God exists, art exists. If there’s
no God, no art. In modern times, though, art itself
took on the function of religion. Artists became the
priests, the agents of God’s will. With the demise of
traditional religion, the rich people, the elite, began
putting their money into the new art religion, and
they co-opted its priest class, the artists. I was just
lecturing at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown,
Mass., and they had a show from the Prado collection
in Madrid of paintings of naked women, of Venuses.
Read a
Washington Post
story on how
Donald Trump
might make art
great again at
artenol.org.
29

PROVOCATEUR
Gallery of ‘great art’
n Survey respondents were asked to create artworks
for a world in which art had been “made great again.”
Here are a few examples of the pieces suggested.
30
Debbie Nathan photo
Nobody, of course, believed in Venus when these
works were created, but they liked looking at naked
women, and they encouraged artists to paint them.
Was that serving the community? Maybe, but by that
time artists had been totally corrupted by money from
the rich people. So you could say that Titian is not as
bad as Jackson Pollock – definitely, he is better – but
they are both bad. A work by Jackson Pollock is the
most ridiculous, idiotic, senseless enterprise ever. Art
critics say a Pollock is the greatest accomplishment of
the 20th century. The greatest accomplishment? Just
splashing paint? And people truly believe that. But
compared to what? Quantum mechanics? I understand
that Pollock’s first gesture was a liberating
moment. But that was his liberating act. It was not
my problem. And then his splashing became part
of the machinery, part of the culture of art. Harold
Rosenberg called this art “apocalyptic wallpaper.” It’s
wallpaper, yes, but there’s nothing apocalyptic about
it. Tell me, who invented Jackson Pollock? Why do we
need to believe in this nonsense?
It sounds like what you’re saying is that once art becomes
a commodity that is bought and sold, and acquires value
outside of its original meaning, then it becomes meaningless.
The money is just a result. Don’t blame money
for the problem. We ask for the money. The most
profound thing I ever read – it was actually a mistranslation
– came from a Russian philosopher and
revolutionary named Alexander Herzen. It sounds
good only as it was wrongly translated, but it says,
“We think we are the doctors, but we are the disease.”
You have to see yourself as a disease, not as a
doctor. Artists are responsible for what’s happening
to them, not the buyers and rich fat cats. We take
their money, but it is we who are the problem. n
“A mixed-media piece using 1950s cookbooks
with illustrative songs playing ...”
“A world where black art is valued ...”
FALL 2016

MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
“Art that connects
people to nature ...”
Artenol photos
“The most beautiful ass of a woman ...”
“Aboriginal, soot,
fire, drumming ...”
“A tidal-driven music
machine in the Minas
Basin in Nova Scotia ...”
“Murals in place of
all the billboards ...”

Poster
IT'S THE CULTURE
STUPID!
MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
Cut poster out along dotted lines and
then display wherever appropriate.

Careers
The equal
opportunist
A tale of check- box culture
By Josie Demuth
Babatunde was tired of the dizzy, disappointing world
of arts applications. Having graduated from Camberwell, he
had been peeved to find himself working in the supermarket,
Lindl, with just one solo show, which he had paid for at a
for-hire gallery. Out of money, he had been about to give up
and return to Nigeria, when something happened.
The government’s Arts Board was under fire. No
marginalized artists had been included in their prestigious
awards, and upon further scrutiny, the media
revealed that no funding had been made available
either. It was all a shambolic whitewash, and the government
could only respond by creating a whole new
program for those on the periphery.
A spark of hope ignited in Babatunde, and he submitted
an application to “On the Edge” and crossed
his fingers for one of the lucrative grants it offered.
To his delight, a letter arrived from the Arts Board,
and he held his breath as he opened it. Babatunde’s
heart sunk. He had not been successful. His work was
described as “unable to ignite the inspiration sought.”
But his work had been a set of classic English
portraits, embellished with Nigerian coins. It was
symbolic of the two cultures colliding to become one.
To make matters worse, Babatunde’s Lindl supermarket
branch was closed, leaving him jobless and
almost instantly in debt. He returned to his “On The
Edge” application. Could it be he was not marginalised
enough? Well then, perhaps he could change this.
He resubmitted his application, ticking the box
“ethnic minority” as before. This time, however,
he also struck the squares next to “disabled” and
“homosexual.” He clicked “send” and reclined in his
broken desk chair. He could already feel a sudden
turn of the wheel.
2.
MANY MONTHS LATER, Babatunde reclined in
his state-of-the-art wheelchair. His paintings were
being hung across the light, spacious gallery, and
curators and gallerists fussed about him like mother
hens.
“Put that one over there!” ordered Petunia, the head
of the Arts Board. “It’s the most distinctive piece. It
screams out Babatunde’s struggle.”
Babatunde stuck up his thumb at the skinny
brunette. It was an old piece from his for-hire gallery
show, squashed in transit. Petunia seemed to
be drawn to its trampled effect, her small, grey eyes
glinting upon its unveiling. It was reminiscent of his
treatment, as a multi-challenged individual, she said.
This was his fourth solo show in a high-profile
gallery. In just a year, he had become one of London’s
most celebrated artists. A symbol.
33

34
STATE-OF-THE-ART
It had all been completely unprecedented. Yes,
his wildest dreams had come true, but at the same
time, it all made him a little nervous. Surely it was
only a matter of time before he was caught out. A
student from art school had already been in touch on
Facebook, congratulating him on his successes, but
expressing how sorry she was to learn of his “coinciding
misfortunes.” How long would it be before
someone from Lindl, too, caught on? How would he
explain his sudden disability? He would have had to
have had a car accident and become a rising art star,
all in a matter of weeks. He was now popping up in
all the free London papers, and they were bound to
spot him. After this show, he would escape back to
his village in Nigeria, he decided. One of his artworks
had just sold at Christie’s for hundreds of thousands.
He would live like a king, and would return to London
in a decade or so, and visit the galleries he had
grown to love.
It was a hot, late spring day and he fanned himself
with a newspaper, pausing to catch the headline. The
Chancellor of the Exchequer was making more cuts
to unemployment and disability benefits while the
wealthy got another tax break, he read.
This country was not quite the place it seemed,
anyway. Perhaps the sooner he left, the better.
3.
THE NIGHT WAS YOUNG, and the liggers
were at the London Arts Fayre. The
event was located in a warehouse in
central London, where three floors had
been erected to accommodate the
“affordable” contemporary art,
which hung within the labyrinth
of plasterboard walls.
Despite the complexities of the environment, Mac
and Simon had easily located the champagne stand,
and now they sailed past the artworks, glasses in
hands.
Mac wore a red corduroy shirt, and his shaggy
blonde hair was brushed to the side. “Wow, is that a
Hatzborg?” asked Mac, in his broad Australian accent,
pointing at a large purple abstract painting.
“No,” replied Thomas, the Swiss, his bald head
gleaming under the white lights. “It is not shit enough
to be a Hatzborg.”
“Well, there sure are a lot of look-alike art pieces
here,” said Mac, scouring the content on the everlasting
white walls. He paused at a bulky canvas. A
giant book of spells had been cemented to it, and the
whole arrangement was sprayed in a rusty orange
and powdery green. Mac squinted at the name tag of
the artist. “Gee, I mean, let’s face it, that’s a full-on rip
off of a Keifer.”
“This is what the institution does nowadays,” said
Thomas angrily. “They get a load of unknown artists
to imitate the high-selling ones – the tried-and-tested
products. But I just can’t believe that even the
Hatzborg rip-off artist is better than the real one.”
Mac laughed. “Well, Brad Pitt likes him,” he said,
scooping up another glass of champagne. “He bought
a whole series.”
Thomas was silent now, watching Mac wearily. It
was only last night that he had screamed down a gallery
owner in Cork Street, and it was by no means the
first time. After a certain amount of alcohol, a switch
would flick in Mac’s head, and he would rage about
various global issues, to everyone and anyone.
“Slags!” came a familiar squawk.
Thomas and Mac turned and looked into the excited
bespectacled eyes of Simon.
“Oh, Hi Simon!” cried Mac, enthusiastically.
“Did you get in all right?”
“I flashed last year’s ticket at the door, and
in I came,” he sang. “I don’t think they’re too
fussed about us this year; they want the crowds.”
“It’s not really that exclusive,” agreed Mac.
“Well, they probably think we’re going
to be stupid enough to invest in these
abominations,” cried Thomas, his eyes
bulging with contempt.
“Well, old Maureen over there
sure looks like she’s investing,” said
Mac, nodding to the left, before
emptying the champagne down
his throat.
Simon and Thomas turned,
FALL 2016

‘It’s just so great to see an artist like you,
who is not only black, but is gay and in
a wheelchair,’ said Mac, clearly throwing
discretion to the wind.
their eyes falling on an elderly woman, dressed headto-toe
in green. She wore an expensive, emerald-colored
cashmere jumper, teamed up with a matching
pencil skirt and green wool tights. She appeared busy
instructing a stall holder who was packaging up a
large, green print.
“Yeah, well, you know where she got her money,
don’t you?” said Simon.
“Yes, yes,” said Thomas. “From that Harley Street
surgeon.”
“He had a heart attack when she was giving him
head,” said Simon loudly. “Apparently her false teeth
fell out all over his bollocks.”
A crowd of nearby hipsters frowned and shuffled
away. Thomas laughed, but Mac was distracted now,
his eyes tracking a waiter who was offering cocktails
on a tray.
“If he starts, I’m leaving,” snapped Simon, as Mac
strode purposefully across the room.
“Yeah, that approach is useless. He will just follow
you,” replied Thomas, glancing at his watch. “What
else is on, anyway?”
“That Babatunde’s PV is going till ten,” said Simon.
“That poster boy!” Thomas retorted, his eyes widening
again. “I think I will just go home.”
4.
BABATUNDE WAS BEING lifted from his wheelchair
and into a seat in a quieter alcove of the gallery.
His opening show was in full swing, and he was
being moved here for photographs and interviews.
He tried not to tense his legs as he was carried the
short distance. He forced them to hang limply, even
though he was dying to give them a wiggle. He had
been sitting for hours now and had experienced several
flushes of pins and needles.
The gallery assistants smiled down at him. “We will
bring the press over shortly,” they said.
Babatunde smiled and relaxed into his chair with a
red wine. So far, so good, but he did feel a little anxious
about talking to the press.
Suddenly a tall, intoxicated stranger appeared by
his side. He looked up wearily and lifted the right
side of his mouth into a polite smile.
“I’m Mac,” slurred the stranger.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Babatunde, shaking
Mac’s hand.
Mac held onto it firmly and continued to pump
with vigorous, excitable movements.
“It’s just so great to see an artist like you, who is not
only black, but is gay and in a wheelchair,” said Mac,
clearly throwing discretion to the wind.
Babatunde nodded, glancing to the side. Where was
everybody?
“Well, all I can say is that we have to stop
this race into space,” said Mac suddenly,
leaning an arm on the wall, and swinging
a long leg in front of the other.
“I’m sorry?” said Babatunde.
“Look, for many years now, the Russians
and the Americans have been trying
to get into space and ... I don’t know what
they’re doing up there, whether they’re putting
their weapons there, or if they are trying
to actually relocate us to Mars.”
“I see,” said Babatunde, trying to remain
calm.
“I don’t know who they’re going to send to
live in space first. It’ll probably be the refugees of
Syria,” he continued. “They don’t give a fuck if
they’re eaten by aliens.”
Five long minutes passed, and Babatunde
was subjected to an array of rants,
during which Mac’s voice grew louder
and louder. Was this man drunk, or barking mad? He
couldn’t quite tell. His eyes were glazed over, almost
as though he was locked in a psychosis. He wasn’t
even interacting with him anymore; he was simply
shouting at thin air.
Babatunde leaned forward now, beckoning to the
gallery assistants to the far right of the room. They
were too busy chatting to members of the press to
notice him. He began to feel incensed. Could they not
hear this commotion? And why was he being overlooked
like this? Abandoned in Hell.
He felt a splash of champagne on his shoulder, as
Mac gesticulated wildly, launching into a tirade now
on female genital mutilation.
Babatunde felt himself go dizzy, and he slowly
became detached from his surroundings. He did not
know where or who he was anymore. All he knew was
that he had to get away, and get away fast. He stood
up and moved quickly into the centre of the gallery,
feeling an initial rush of relief. Oh, he was free.
It was only as he stood in the middle of the room
that he came to. Lord, have mercy! What had he
35

done? He froze, his eyes darting from side to side.
Everybody was busy, just like before ... except ... for ...
Petunia.
The head of the Arts Board looked back at him,
rigid and aghast, mirroring his own statuesque pose.
Seconds passed, and they remained frozen to the
spot, as the gallery scene continued around them, its
inhabitants unaware of his movements. This
was it, thought Babatunde in a haze of
horror as he looked back at Petunia. He
was going to prison.
But then something happened.
She nodded to the left and his
heart beat accelerated. She was
signalling to him; he needed to get
back to his chair.
He scanned his surroundings. By
some form of a miracle, guests were
all engrossed in his works. He bowed
his head and tip-toed back to the
alcove, perspiration trickling down
his brow. He fervently prayed he
would make it. He was nearly there
– but then he froze, panic-stricken.
There, in his seat, sat Mac, crossedlegged
and staring ahead with a
burning intensity.
“Move,” Babatunde cried hoarsely.
Mac was unresponsive. Whatever he had been
verbalizing before was now clearly continuing on the
inside.
Babatunde was at his wit’s end. He could not hover
like this a minute longer, and in a dream-like moment
... in a dream-like moment of
panic, he turned and sat down
on the madman’s bony lap.
of panic, he turned and sat down on the madman’s
bony lap. Mac, in turn, seemed perfectly OK with this
development, clasping a firm hand around Babatunde’s
waist and remaining mute.
They sat here for a couple of seconds before a mass
of approaching footsteps could be heard. Babatunde
craned back his neck and saw a drove of bemused
journalists had arrived.
“Good evening,” he croaked, unable
to account for his peculiar seating
arrangement.
The clatter of high heels broke
the silence and Petunia swanned
into the scene.
“Everybody, Babatunde has
decided he would like to address
you all with his partner,” she
announced.
There was a chorus of appreciative
murmurs, and Babatunde felt his
guts clench. His partner? Oh, Lord
have mercy!
“This is ... Mac,” he whispered.
“Good evening, Mac,” said a tall
man, accompanied by a cameraman
with a large video camera.
“Dave, from the British Broadcasting
Company.”
“I DO NOT WANT TO SHIT AND PISS ON
MARS!” Mac screamed out suddenly, and the journalists
skittishly backed away.
Babatunde closed his eyes. At this very moment in
time, he begged to differ.
n
UNDERGROUND BOXING
Classes
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Cuisine
Styling by Laurie Knoop with Aurora Satler, Gina Mungiovi; photo by Adrienne Abseck
SNAP, CRACKLE AND POP ART
n LIFE IMITATES ART Laurie Knoop is a food stylist and producer who owns a commercial photography studio in Manhattan.
Her clients include many prominent names in the food industry, and she often has a surfeit of product after a shoot – leftovers
she sometimes puts to novel uses. "The idea for this photograph came from a Rice Krispies job we did," says Knoop. "We
had lots of extra boxes of the cereal, and I decided to use the Krispies to make cake forms and decorate them like the ones in the
famous painting by Wayne Thiebaud. It's something I've always wanted to do." The Thiebaud work, "Cakes" (1963), can be seen
at right. Knoop has done similar images based on works by Andy Warhol, Lewis Carroll and the Bloomsbury Group. – Editor
37

Secrets
The hidden hand
By Zinovy Zinik
38
FORMER
MASCOT
n It’s been some time since I last saw Picasso’s
doodle of a dove holding a postdiluvian twig in its
beak. During the Cold War years, it had been used
as a mascot for every rally or international conference
dedicated to the struggle for world peace
and initiated, as a rule, with full Soviet backing.
With the Cold War over, this emblem of the epoch
mysteriously disappeared from public display as
quickly as portraits of the Politburo or the Berlin
Wall. Its post-flood symbolism might have been
useful in the struggle against global warming, a
condition which started immediately
after the Cold War had
ended. There is nothing extraordinary,
though, about this or that
public symbol losing its popularity;
what is remarkable is the tendency
to get rid of the dead objects
or live creatures behind such symbols
the moment they lose their popularity.
Take, for example, Picasso’s emblem
and actual doves or pigeons. In popular imagination,
these birds are not only symbols of peace
and bearers of goodwill, but also, paradoxically,
disseminators of pestilence and plague. With a
relentless determination bordering on rage, London's
mayor at the time, Ken Livingstone (nicknamed
"Red Ken" for his Trotskyite past and his
sympathies for Russia), declared street pigeons a
danger to public health and started a campaign
to rid Trafalgar Square of its legendary denizens.
Feeding pigeons on the square has been, for the
last two centuries, on the must-do list for any tourist
visiting London. Red Ken insisted that eliminating
the cost of daily cleaning the square of pigeon
shit would save tons of money, money that could
then be spent on helping needy humans. It would
also help restore to its former glory the statue of
Admiral Horatio Nelson, standing on a column in
the center of the square. With his head serving as
a perch for the birds, the admiral's features were
often hardly visible under the layers of pigeon shit.
After months of arguments, the pigeons were finally
removed from Trafalgar Square.
Having expelled the pigeons, Red Ken invited
his beloved Russian oligarchs and expats to transform
– with all kinds of expensive props – the place
commemorating the Battle of Trafalgar into a simulacrum
of Red Square. The purpose was to celebrate
Russian New Year’s Eve in the newly-cleaned
square. Russian food stalls, souvenir tents and
vodka kiosks were put up on the perimeter of the
square, and in its center the Red Army choir and
orchestra bellowed Russian songs into London's
winter air. Admiral Nelson observed all this from
his tall pedestal, but his newly-cleaned face was
hidden from view by a gigantic balloon advertising
the services of Aeroflot. Rendered headless, he
might have been mistaken by uninformed Russian
tourists for Alexander Pushkin, because the lower
portion of the Nelson statue resembled that of
a statue of Pushkin. The feature common to both
monuments is a hand inside the overcoat, behind
the waistcoat lapel.
Everyone who has ever taken part in amateur
dramatics knows that the main hindrance to stage
stardom is one’s hands. One simply doesn’t know
what to do with them – unless they happen to be
occupied with a cup of tea or a walking stick. We
intertwine our fingers behind the back of our neck,
fold our hands on our breast or play idly with
prayer beads.
Sculptors are confronted with the same problem.
They are lucky if their subjects can be put on
a bronze horse while holding a halter or a sword,
or horseless and grasping a handbag like Mrs.
Thatcher. They might sculpt their subjects making
a victory sign like Churchill, or stretching their
FALL 2016

hands toward the radiant future like Lenin or Hitler. If
there is no way to occupy the hands of the person, the
sculptor might be tempted to make the hero’s hands
disappear altogether. Luckily for portrait artists, playwright
and poet Vladimir Mayakovsky kept his hands
routinely inside his trousers – the way he is usually
seen in photographs. But the art of photography had
yet to be invented in Pushkin's time, and thus there
is no way to prove that the poet kept his right hand
under the lapel of his overcoat. Yet that's the way he is
immortalized in bronze in Moscow's Pushkin Square.
During the harsh winters, the sculpted Pushkin, under
a heavy layer of snow, looks as black as his Ethiopian
ancestors. His overcoat is evidently too light for the
winter cold – he hides his hand inside his coat to keep
it warm.
Pushkin Square, located in the center of Moscow (I
used to live a stone's throw from it), is still the city’s
spiritual heart. People continue to argue over Dostoevsky
and Tolstoy, but Pushkin’s reputation is indisputable
among people of every class and rank in
Russia. The indefatigable light-heartedness of his love
poetry, the wit and melancholic wisdom of “Eugene
Onegin,” the prose that reads like an epic diary of a
modern man, these have conquered the Russian world
in its entirety. Lovers and friends still use Pushkin
Square as the place to rendezvous. Songs and poems
are written about the square. It is the most important
venue for political protests, including the recent anti-Putin
rallies. The reason such rallies took place in
Pushkin Square can be found in Pushkin’s version of
Horace’s “Exegi monumentum ...,” reproduced on the
pedestal of his monument. In it, Pushkin lists among
his merits his “praise for liberty in our cruel age and
call for mercy to the fallen ones.”
Back in 1965, the crucial political event in the life of
Moscow’s intelligentsia was the arrest and trial of the
writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel. Their crime
was publishing their “anti-Soviet” novels abroad without
authorization. The date chosen for a rally on Pushkin
Square to protest their imprisonment was December
5, the official holiday celebrating the ratification of
Stalin’s Constitution by the 1936 Congress of Soviets.
It lasted just a few minutes. KGB agents quickly confiscated
the placards and arrested the participants. The
whole scene was grimly observed from above by Pushkin.
In this instance, we might have interpreted his
A PERCH NO MORE Admiral Lord Nelson stands, unsullied
by winged assailants, high above Trafalgar Square in
the center of London. It's hard to see at that height, but
the legend's hand is nowhere in sight. wikimedia.org photo
39

40
HANDOFF Why is Pushkin's
left hand inserted into
his waistcoat? The
reasons may be
manifold. wikimedia.org
photo
hand’s location as if he were searching inside his coat’s
breast pocket for his ID card – in case it was demanded
by the militiamen. Or was he hiding a samizdat manuscript
inside his overcoat to give it to a foreign correspondent
so that it could be published abroad?
There are other possible reasons for his hidden
hand. During his lifetime, Pushkin was
never allowed to cross the Russian border,
to visit Western Europe. Perhaps
he was reaching into his breast pocket
in hope of discovering his travel documents?
While Pushkin himself never
experienced a change of location,
his monument did, nearly a
century after the poet’s
death. Initially, when
erected in 1880, the statue
stood on the other side
of Tverskaya Street, facing
a Russian Orthodox
monastery. The monastery
was demolished
by Stalin, who, at the
time, was diligently
exterminating the evil
influence of religion
over the masses. Bronze
Pushkin was uprooted and
exiled to the opposite side,
adorning the newly created
space that became known
as Pushkin Square. The fact
that this move happened in
1937 – at the peak of Stalin’s
purges and mass arrests – is
one of the symbolic coincidences
in the posthumous
life of Pushkin: The poet
had been killed in a duel
exactly a century before.
With his usual sadistic glee,
Stalin, immersed in the Great
Terror, ordered the full text of
Pushkin’s “Exegi monumentum
...” to be included on the new pedestal. Perhaps,
with his hand inside his overcoat, Pushkin was ready
to draw the duelling pistol again?
Fifteen years after my emigration to the West, which
cost me my Soviet citizenship, I returned to Russia for
a visit. In the 1990s, the first messenger of capitalism
in the former USSR – McDonald’s – chose as its first
location the venerated Pushkin Square. In fact, the
company cleverly chose locations for every Russian
McDonald’s close to famous statues. The restaurants’
proximity to these monuments has transformed the
monuments’ characters. Thus, in some squares, Lenin’s
raised hand indicates not the path to a radiant
Communist future but the path to McDonald’s. Facing
the Pushkin Square Mc-
Donald’s and its long
queue of enchanted
fast-food converts in the
1990s, Pushkin may have
been reaching for the wallet
in his breast pocket
to check whether he had
sufficient valid currency
to buy a Big Mac.
Since those glorious
In some squares,
Lenin’s raised hand
indicates not the path
to a radiant Communist
future but the
path to McDonald’s.
days, the status of McDonald’s has plummeted, along
with the admiration for Western values once held by
the Russian hoi polloi. Patriotic fervor now rages. In
his “Exegi monumentum ...” (still clearly evident on
the statue’s pedestal), Pushkin expressed hope that his
poetic fame would reach even the exotic national minorities
of Russia such as the “Tungus and Kalmyks.”
It is not advisable, however, to proclaim yourself a
Tungus or Kalmyk in today’s Russia, where ethnic exclusion,
isolationism and hatred toward outsiders are
on the rise. Pushkin’s notoriously chauvinistic verses
about those Polish brethren who, like the poet Adam
Mickiewicz, “besmirched Russia’s holy name” may
provide an excuse for the patriotic mob to enlist Pushkin
as a comrade-in-arms in Putin’s fight against the
Western conspiracy. And yet, I believe, were he to turn
up in person in the square today, Pushkin, with the
swarthy complexion of his African great grandfather
(Peter the Great’s favorite slave and servant) and with
his numerous gay friends, would be nervously rummaging
in his breast pocket in order to produce a governmental
certificate confirming his status as the great
national poet of Russia.
As the Orthodox Church has today, in practice, replaced
the former Communist Party apparatus in its
political influence, the time is not far away when the
bronze Pushkin will have to move back across the
FALL 2016

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Marquis de Lafayette
Karl Marx
Wolfgang Mozart
Napoleon Bonaparte
George Washington
Simon Bolivar
Joseph Stalin
Horatio Nelson
MASONIC INFLUENCE Part of a Masonic ritual, the hand gesture seen in an illustration from "Duncan’s Masonic Ritual
and Monitor," above, bears a striking resemblance to poses in many historical portraits. From sacred-texts.com; wikimedia.org
street, giving way to a restoration of the old monastery
demolished by Stalin. And this second exile and
excommunication will not be caused by the funny,
blasphemous verses he occasionally wrote, but by the
very gesture of his hand hidden in his breast pocket.
Because this gesture proves that he is an archenemy of
the Russian Orthodoxy – a Freemason.
Like many symbols of a bygone era – Picasso’s
dove being one – some gestures become obsolete, too.
Their meaning is now obscure to us. Having noticed
a similarity in hand gestures between the Nelson and
Pushkin monuments, I decided to visit the National
Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery – both located
on the same Trafalgar Square – to study hand
gestures in the portraits of other great personalities.
I invite you to take a quick look at the portraits of
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Simon Bolivar, George
Washington, Lafayette, Solomon Rothschild and Napoleon
Bonaparte. What do they all have in common?
One hand is hidden inside their clothing. Searching the
web for more information, I found them all listed
(plus Marx and Stalin) on a single website – one dedicated
to the Masonic conspiracy.
The site explains that during the Masonic initiation
ceremony, the initiate must learn a secret password
and a hand sign – namely, thrusting his hand in his
bosom. The hidden hand lets the other initiates know
that the individual is part of this secret Brotherhood.
“The hand that executes the actions is hidden behind
cloth, which can symbolically refer to (the) covert nature
of the Mason’s actions,” the propagators of this
Masonic conspiracy explain. The ritual, we are told, is
in imitation of one given by God to Moses, when He
commanded him to thrust his hand into his bosom:
And the Lord said furthermore unto him, Put
now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his
hand into his bosom: and when he took it out, behold,
his hand was leprous as snow. And he said,
Put thine hand into thy bosom again. And he put
his hand into his bosom again; and plucked it out
of his bosom, and, behold, it was turned again as
his other flesh. (Exodus 4-6)
No one would dispute that the author of "Die Zauberflote"
was a Mason. Solomon Rothschild was proud
to be one, keeping his wallet close to his bosom. But I
am not sure about Marx and Stalin. Marx most probably
hid his hand during the photo session because he
had an itchy skin disease. Stalin had a deformed and
withered hand. As for Simon Bolivar and the rest of the
conspirators – only Pushkin could have enlightened
us! And yes, we should not forget our Nelson on Trafalgar
Square. But I am reminded that he simply had
no hand to hide – he’d lost it at the battle. This fact is
hidden by having the missing part of the body appear
not to be missing by putting it behind the cloth. That,
of course, doesn’t prove Nelson was not a Mason. n
Zinovy Zinik's latest book, Sounds Familiar or The
Beast of Artek (Divus, London), was published in June.
See a video on
Freemasonry at
artenol.org.
41

Scene
42
MY FIRE PAGER
sits on the floor
next to the bed.
When it goes off
it has this piercing
tone that just
means bad. I think
my heart hears
it even before
my eyes open. A
couple of deep
breaths as the
dispatcher speaks
slowly and you
begin to paint a
picture of what
you may be asked
to do. This is what
I signed up for. I
enjoy photographing
firefighting
efforts as much
as firefighting
itself; however,
I have learned
you cannot do
both at the same
time. My duty as a
firefighter comes
first. With heart
and dedication,
Devon Chester,
along with his
brother and sister
firefighters of the
fire department
in Rock Hill, NY,
responded
to this barn fire
in the spring.
Chris Ramirez
FALL 2016

Chris Ramirez photo
43

Ronald Feldman Fine Arts
31 Mercer Street, New York, New York 10013
212.226.3232 | info@feldmangallery.com
Kim Levin | Gloster Gladiator (1973) Oil on linen, 40"x 50"

Fashion
The French lady and
the fashion tyrant
Marie de’ Medici liked to picture herself
hanging out with the gods. In 1621, when she
was queen of France, she commissioned
Peter Paul Rubens to paint 21 pictures illustrating the
key incidents in her life. The Greek and Roman deities
appear in the 14-foot-tall paintings as often as siblings
in a family photo album. Her birth is attended by
a river god representing the Arno River, which runs
through her native Florence. This Queen of Self Esteem
probably didn’t object to Rubens painting a halo
around her infant self’s head.
“The Education of the Princess,” an early version
of American schools’ Picture Day, shows the young
Marie reading intently while Apollo, Athena and Hermes,
forming a sort of divine study group,
look on. In “The Debarkation at Marseilles,”
there isn’t a porter in sight. If there were,
he’d be upstaged, as the queen herself is,
By Stan
Tymorek
by Neptune and three voluptuous, naked Sirens rising
from the sea. They apparently guided the ship
on a safe passage, and now seem ready to unload the
Queen’s baggage, if she so desires.
Marie de’ Medici had Rubens’ paintings of her life
installed in the Luxembourg Palace, in Paris, while
it was still being built for her. About 90 years later,
the mistress of the palace, the Duchess of Berry, led a
life that was light years away from Marie’s baroque,
mythological splendor. If this interloper in the Luxembourg
had commissioned paintings of the betterknown
episodes in her life, the series would have to
include “Drunk Again at the Weekly Palace Orgy,”
“In Seclusion for Another Clandestine Pregnancy,”
SPOILED FLOWER The Duchess of Berry, painted by
Nicolas de Largillière as "Flora," was renowned for her
profligate ways – and for her frequent changes of raiment.
wikimedia.org photo
45

46
starlightmasquerade.com photos
FRENCH DRESSING The extraordinary ornamentation
of 18th-century formal wear can be seen in these photos
of a modern re-creation. Note that the stomacher is
an insert that fastens over the bodice front.
BODICES AND BOWS
Clothing for the aristocratic
French woman
in the 18th century took
real skill and patience to
put on, and frequently
required more than a
few attendents' assistance.
Open-fronted
bodices could be filled in with a decorative "stomacher,"
as seen, top, often festooned with numerous
ribbons and bows, above. The process of dressing
began with a chemise or shift, below, a loose-fitting
smock usually
made of cotton.
Over that was
worn a corset,
and then layers
of petticoats
with a hoop
frame, followed
by the various
sections of the
outer gown.
TOILETTE TOIL
A young woman
dresses for the evening
in "La Toilette" by
Madrazo y Garreta.
wikimedia.org photo
and “Walking in the Luxembourg Gardens in Disguise
and Getting So Angry Over Soldiers’ Advances
that She Closed the Gardens to the Public, Who Hated
Her For It.”
Born Marie Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, the Duchess
of Berry was a “legitimized” granddaughter of Louis
XIV, who allowed her to live in the Luxembourg Palace
after her husband died in 1714. She was also “one
of the most odious young women whom the Court of
France had ever seen.” That’s the blunt assessment
of H. Noel Williams, who in his book Unruly Daughters
(1913) goes on to say: “She had all her mother’s
arrogance and deceit; all her father’s irreligion and
licentiousness, to which she joined a violent temper,
drunkenness, gluttony, a contemptuous disregard of
ordinary decency and a most foul tongue.”
In other words, the Duchess was hardly a sympathetic
character. Yet I can’t help feeling sorry for her
because she became so infatuated with one Sicaire Antonin
Armand Auguste Nicolas d’Aydie, the Chevalier
de Rions (aka Rion) that she allowed him to dictate
what she should wear. Even worse, as Stendhal writes
in Love (1818), he did this for kicks:
(Rion) would amuse himself by making her
change her coiffure or her dress at the last minute;
he did this so often and so publicly that
she became accustomed to take his orders in
the evening for what she would do and wear
the following day; then the next day he would
alter everything, and the princess (Duchess de
Berry) would cry all the more. In the end, she
took to sending him messages by trusted footmen,
for from the first he had taken up residence
in the Luxembourg; messages which continued
throughout her toilette, to know what ribbons
she would wear, what gown and what other
ornaments; invariably he made her wear something
she did not wish to.
Choosing your own outfit every day is so important
that the freedom to do so should have been spelled out
in the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights
of Man and of the Citizen. This very personal deci-
We don’t know whether Rion spent most of
those 48 hours jumping her bones or rifling
through her closet – for future reference in case
she, too, were to fall under his sartorial spell.
FALL 2016

ODIOUS
CREATURE OF HABIT After she was widowed, the Duchess
of Berry took an apartment in a Carmelite convent. The nuns'
simpler mode of dress may have had a strong appeal to her
after the sartorial demands of Rion. wikimedia.org photo
sion is sacred to anyone who cares about clothes, as
the Duchess clearly did. In 1715, before she came under
her Rion’s spell, she even organized a meeting of
the “reigning fashion plates, as well as the most clever
tailors and the most celebrated couturieres” to plot “a
fashion coup,” according to Joan DeJean, in her book
The Essence of Style (2007). These ladies of the French
court demanded that they get first crack at all the new
styles – a precursor to Fashion Week that was more like
"Fashion Cheats."
That the Duchess, said to have had her own way
from an early age, should become subservient to any
man is strange enough. But when those who knew
him tell us he was clearly hit with le baton laid (the ugly
stick), it’s downright incroyable. Stendhal writes that
he was “a short, stout lad with a round, pale face, so
thickly covered with pimples that it bore no bad resemblance
to an abscess.” The Princess Palatine Elizabeth
Charlotte, a memoirist and royal busybody of the
day, found that he was not just another ugly face, but
rather much worse: “I cannot conceive how any one
can love this rogue: he has neither face nor figure; he
has the appearance of a water-sprite, for he has a green
and yellow countenance ... one would take him for a
baboon rather than a Gascon, as he is. He is foppish
and not in the least intelligent; he has a big head shut
in between broad shoulders; and one sees by his eyes
that his sight is not very good.” Perhaps the Duchess
of Berry’s sight was even worse? The cause of her infatuations
remain a mystery, as it was, H. Noel Williams
tells us, even to Rion, who “found himself the object
of a passion such as few men so shabbily treated by
Nature can ever have been fated to inspire and which
must have occasioned him as much astonishment as
joy.”
Of course, we can’t discount the possibility that the
lusty Duchess thought Rion’s sexual prowess was also
incroyable. According to Princess Palatine, he was said
to be especially “amorous,” and a notoriously goatish
lady of the time had spent two days “shut up with
him.” However, we don’t know whether Rion spent
most of those 48 hours jumping her bones or rifling
through her closet – for future reference in case she,
too, were to fall under his sartorial spell.
Due to the complexity of French royal ladies’ outfits
worn at the time, Rion’s options for messing with the
Duchess were as varied as a medieval torturer’s devices.
Women wore both overskirts and underskirts, and
each was usually trimmed with embroidery. So, Rion
could first call for a blue overskirt with a single border
of silver embroidery, and a white underskirt with a
double border of gold-and-silk embroidery. Then, just
when the Duchess – or more accurately, her servants
– had slipped the white underskirt over her hips, he
could revise his instructions and demand a white overskirt
with a double border of gold-and-silk embroidery
and a blue overskirt with a single border of silver embroidery.
He must have had a field day with the tiers
of ribbons placed on each side of the bodice, often in
alternating colors, called echelles or ladders. I can just
see him snickering over his cafe au lait and croissants
as he went through a whole crayon box of colors while
changing his orders for the Duchess’s ladders. Cuffs
were such an important part of a woman’s “carefully
arranged toilet,” we learn from Augustin Challamel in
his History of Fashion in France (1882), that one woman
of means, who was not even under the control of a
man, spent a whole hour putting them on. If that was
the case, could the Duchess’s cuffs have possibly been
good to go before lunchtime?
If I have sympathy for the Duchess, I feel nothing
less than pity for the servants who attended her
while she got dressed. No sooner would they finish
buttoning or tying one of their lady’s garments than
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French clothing at
artenol.org.
47

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an out-of-breath footman would arrive with an edict
to replace it with another one. The messengers were
also overworked, running back-and-forth all morning
in the Rion Relay. As their footsteps echoed while
dashing through the vast gallery where Ruben’s Medici
paintings were hung, they must have looked up at
Hermes in “Education of the Princess” and wished for
his wings. If these servants had been around for the
French Revolution later in the century, they probably
would have thought the guillotine was too good for
the Duchess and her likes.
Apparently the Duchess’s culinary staff had it no
easier, because by all reports she was as infatuated
with food as she was with Rion. Princess Palatine
described her “frightful gluttony”with these words:
“Every evening she sits down to table at eight or nine
o’ clock, and eats till three o’clock in the morning.” It
got to the point, Williams tells us, that she sold all her
saddle horses because “even a quiet canter in the Bois
de Boulogne could not be indulged without discomfort.”
I assume Williams is referring to the Duchess’s
discomfort, but what about the poor horses bearing the
burden? After pissing off the citizens of Paris for closing
the Luxembourg Gardens, at least she made her
horses happy by letting them get out from under her
weight. One might suspect that after late-night binging,
some of her clothes would no longer fit her. So
there could have been a silver-embroidered lining to
her weight gain if it limited the number of paces that
Rion could put her through.
Just as inexplicably as the Duchess submitted to the
will of Rion, and while still under his spell, one day
this profoundly irreligious woman suddenly acquired
a getaway apartment at the Carmelite convent in the
Faubourg Saint-Jacques. She then divided her time,
doubtless to the relief of her servants, between the palace
and convent. Though her motivation for this move
has puzzled historians, I have my own theory. How
could she not admire and even envy the good sisters
for wearing the same plain habit every single day? Although,
like the Duchess, they wore what they were
told to wear, at least they were spared the shenanigans
of being told to wear something different just after getting
dressed.
But then, why did she return to the demands of her
palace life, even for limited periods? I’m no expert
on the daily life of Carmelite nuns in 18th-century
France, but I’m quite sure their dinners didn’t last for
six hours. For you can fault the Duchess for letting a
man control her so completely, but unlike many more
“liberated” women today, she was never one to starve
herself for fashion.
n
FALL 2016

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50
Fire or water
The water in the mountains and streams has changed
when leaving the mouth of the river.
Water follows the geography of its banks, but disrupts and alters
its courses when it becomes constricted in its needs.
The sun dries up the river beds, the clouds return life to them.
Water is alive, but is not life.
Water sustains life and water can take it away.
Water cleanses, sheds, carries and slakes,
and is hospitable.
Waters are the great deluges of scripture and myth, the means to cleanse the earth,
the floods of Bengali of the recent past, the great Jamestown flood, the sinking of the
Titanic, the tidal waves and the home of the great monsters that live in the deep.
Water makes heroes, poets, the great wines of the earth, sacramental rites,
it feeds the giant oak, the poetry of perfume, the Victoria and Niagara falls,
and it is the quaff of human thirst. Water has given to us “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,”
Moby Dick, the divine Odyssey of Homer, and it has inspired Goya’s “Water Carrier.”
Somewhere between “The Nude Maja” and his final fire-filled “The Milk Maid,” the excitement
of the “Water Carrier” appears. Goya was already past the scathing paintings of his own
monarch and family, he had experienced the Napoleonic cleansing of his nation by the use of
French guns and sabers, and recorded them in the stunning “This I Have Seen” etchings.
He was filled with an endless repertoire of man’s carnage to man, a loathing of the stagnancy of
the aristocratic elite and an equal contempt of the methods of its destruction. The bitterness of
his old age lives in the rendering of the Black Paintings, seethes through everything until
the last work from his brush,
“The Milk Maid.”
With these three high points, he has broken through and cast aside a view of life presented
in all his other work, signaling another aspect of what life contains, or is life-sustaining,
and that relates to woman and water. Everything else is condemnation of
man’s accomplishments and behavior.
Goya was an angry man and, living his life in the empire’s luxury, he remained a revolutionary.
Nothing was impervious to his critical castigating explorations, nothing, indeed,
was sacred except his inspired discoveries of these three aspects, the nakedness of woman,
her virtues as water bearer and her mysterious grace as milk maid.
Is this what carried him through the grotesques of mankind and life?
In a revolution, nothing gets done without fire.
Yet, what about the water?
– Gabe Seidler
FALL 2016

Poem
BREAKTHROUGH “The Nude
Maja,“ done in 1798, above left,
is an example of Goya’s early
style. “Water Carrier” (1810)
signified the artist’s fascination
with everyday people. His last
work, “The Milk Maid” (1826),
exhibits the calm that had suffused
Goya’s physical life in his
last years. wikimedia. org photos
Editor: The late Gabe Seidler was
a painter and writer who lived
and worked in New York City. In
the 1990s, he became a founding
member of the School of Bayonne,
a radical artists group dedicated to
bringing revolutionary change to
the art world. “Fire or Water” was
originally published in Spark, the
group’s newspaper, in July 1992.
51

Biography
Good heaven! What is
n WHEN THE 8,000-PAGE JOURNAL OF JAMES BOSWELL
(1740-1795) was discovered in a chest of drawers in Malahide Castle,
Dublin, in the 1920s, this provincial Scottish lawyer, whose reputation
rested almost entirely on the documentation of celebrity, became
a literary genius overnight. “Many of the greatest men that ever lived
have written biography,” Lord Macaulay had pronounced, a good
52
hundred years before the discovery; “Boswell was one
of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten
them all.” The unveiling of this breathtaking document
– gossiped about in literary circles for decades,
published in a limited vanity edition in the 1930s, then
brought out by Yale in fourteen volumes from the
1950s through the ‘80s – showed that the greatest biography
in the English language, Boswell’s Life of Samuel
Johnson (1791), was only a slice, in some parts literally
shorn off, of this small man’s monument to his own,
very large mind.
It wasn’t learning that made his mind great. Boswell
had an average intellect. But he paid close attention to
it. This was his gift. Take his run-in with “Signor Gonorrhea”
on a trip to London at age twenty-two, 1763.
Before:
A more voluptuous night I never enjoyed. Five
times was I fairly lost in supreme rapture. Louisa
was madly fond of me; she declared I was a
prodigy, and asked me if this was not extraordinary
for human nature. I said twice as much
might be, but this was not, although in my own
mind I was somewhat proud of my performance
... Louisa had an exquisite mixture of delicacy
and wantonness that made me enjoy her with
more relish. Indeed, I could not help roving in
fancy to the embraces of some other ladies which
my lively imagination strongly pictured. I don’t
know if that was altogether fair. However, Louisa
had all the advantage. She said she was quite
fatigued and could neither stir leg nor arm ... I
have painted this night as well as I could. The
description is faint; but I surely may be styled a
Man of Pleasure.
And after, while clapped-up in bed:
I thought London a bad place for me. I imagined
I had lost all relish of it. Nay, so very strange
is wayward, diseased fancy that it will make us
wish for the things most disagreeable to us merely
to procure a change of objects, being sick and
tired of those it presently has ... In the afternoon,
my brother came. He brought many low old
Sunday ideas when we were boys into my memory.
I wanted to indulge my gloom in solitude. I
wearied of him. I showed it. I was angry at myself.
I was peevish. He was good enough to say
he would go and come just as I chose. He left me.
I remained ill.
Here stood on each page an individual, more vivid
in his private jottings than Clarissa Harlowe or Samuel
Pepys. The latter, probably Boswell’s closest diarist
predecessor, a London naval administrator of the 17th
century, is remarkably observant in the diary he kept
for nine years. But he does not plumb the depths or
dramatize as Boswell does. Pepys, 1663:
Up betimes and to my office (having first been
angry with my brother John, and in the heat of my
sudden passion called him Asse and coxcomb,
for which I am sorry, it being but for leaving the
key of his chamber with a spring lock within side
of his door), and there we sat all the morning,
and at noon dined at home, and there found a
little girl, which she told my wife her name was
FALL 2016

Boswell?
How ‘The Biographer’ invented
himself long before he ever
chronicled Dr. Johnson’s days
DEDICATED DIARIST Young James Boswell,
below, as portrayed by the Scottish portrait
painter George Willison. Boswell was a legal
advocate, living in Edinburgh at the time.
wikimedia.org photo
SPONGY,
INCORRIGIBLE,
HONEST
By Walker Mimms
Jinny, by which name we shall call her. I think a
good likely girl, and a parish child of St. Bride’s
of honest parentage, and recommended by the
churchwarden ... Home in the evening my viall
(and lute new-strung being brought home too),
and I would have paid Mr. Hunt for it, but he did
not come along with it himself, which I expected
and was angry for it, so much is it against my
nature to owe anything to any body. This evening
the girl that was brought to me to-day for
so good a one, being cleansed of lice this day by
my wife, and good, new clothes put on her back,
she run away Goody Taylour that was shewing
her the way to the bakehouse, and we heard no
more of her.
The details here, like those of a Defoe novel, are quiet
(though not weightless). They revolve around
their narrator. But for Boswell, the everyday
details of his life and the people he meets
are inseparable from his self. What is
remarkable is that he records them
as such. Johnson may have been
53

54
the most important person in his life
and the star of his journal, but the gestation
of an identity is without a doubt
Boswell’s main subject.
Yet discussions of Boswell’s literary
richness and psychological penetration
rarely stray from their usual subheadings:
a) Johnson, Samuel, and b)
Johnson, The Life of. He has remained
The Biographer. Though his influence
on biography has been profound, Boswell
needs now and then to be met on
his own terms. Robert Zaretsky has reminded
us why in Boswell’s Enlightenment,
a spirited new study of Boswell’s
early years. Zaretsky focuses on Boswell’s
“Grand Tour,” 1763-1766, the
period of his life from which Johnson
and the London elite are by geographical necessity
most conspicuously absent.
Boswell’s Enlightenment
By Robert Zaretsky
Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press
March 2015, 278 pages
Zaretsky begins with the Church of Scotland,
in Boswell’s native Auchinleck. The “Kirk,” as it was
called, was a formative and terrifying influence on him.
It would have pleased John Calvin. As late as 1696, a
student was put to death at Edinburgh for blasphemy.
Boswell was born at just the right time – Locke had
begun to nudge Aristotle out of the physics department
– but the Calvinist residue was strong, not least
in his parents. Boswell’s mother loved him dearly, but
her devout Calvinism – she wept for her soul when
first obliged to attend the theater – instilled in him a
lifelong terror of the divine, of death, of the dark. Boswell’s
father, a frigid laird presiding over Scotland’s
highest civil and criminal courts, had lofty hopes for
his eldest son but was constantly disappointed. He
pulled Boswell from Edinburgh when rumor reached
him that he had become a common theatergoer. And
later, during Boswell’s first stay in London – he promised
to seek a commission in the King’s Guards – his
father found out he had been keeping a journal.
“Finding that I could be of no use to you,” he wrote
his son, somewhere between the appearances in his life
of Messrs. Gonorrhea and Johnson, “I had determined
to abandon you, to free myself as much as possible
from sharing your ignominy ... I had come to the resolution
of selling all off, from the principle that it is
better to snuff a candle out than leave it to stink in a
socket.” Boswell surrendered, and promised to return
to Scotland to complete the bar. But first, before he
settled down, could he tour the continent? His father
consented, but no more “mimicry, journals, and publications.”
It was precisely this journaling and
mimicry that kept Boswell afloat for
the next two years as he travelled
from London through Holland, Germany,
Switzerland, Italy, and Corsica.
On his tour he began a lifelong practice:
Each day he would sketch out
an “Inviolable Plan” for the improvement
of his habits, his behavior, the
constitution of his mind. “Be retenu,”
was a favorite motto. No more “lowstreet
debauchery.” “Go abroad with
a manly resolution to improve, and
correspond with Johnson.” “You are
to attain habits of study, so that you
may have constant entertainment by
yourself ... Remember that idleness
renders you quite unhappy.” Observe Locke’s “prescription
of going to stool every day after breakfast.”
But within days of his arrival in Utrecht, alone,
caught between his father and himself, he broke down.
“My mind was filled with the blackest ideas,” he writes
a childhood friend, “and all my powers of reason forsook
me. Would you believe it? I ran up and down the
streets, crying out, bursting into tears, and groaning
from my innermost heart.” He eventually props himself
up: “See to attain a fixed and consistent character,
to have dignity. Never despair.” Then word comes that
his illegitimate son, fathered in Edinburgh two years
earlier, has died. The old gloomy Kirk creeps back in.
“Did you not determine to keep mind fixed to real objects,
and to expel speculations, which you know to be
uncertain?” Then – in another letter:
The letter which you are now reading, is the
spontaneous Effusion of a man fully restored to
life and to Joy, whose blood is bounding thro’ his
veins and whose spirits are at the highest pitch
of elevation. Good heaven! What is Boswell? ...
Am I indeed the same Being who was lately so
wretched, to whom all things appeared so dismal,
who imagined himself of no manner of value?
Now I am happy ... The frame which I am
now in, is to me a convincing evidence of the Immortality
of the Soul.
This sets the theme for the rest of his travels – indeed
for the rest of his life. Add to this constant struggle an
illustrious cast of characters, and the journal makes
for wildly entertaining reading: first Hume in Edinburgh
and Johnson in London; then Belle de Zuylen,
the Dutch woman of letters, whom Boswell falls for in
FALL 2016

Utrecht; Frederick the Great, whom he courts obsessively
in Berlin but fails to meet; Rousseau, whom he
interrogates in Switzerland for a solid week; Voltaire,
victim of a similar siege; John Wilkes, the exiled English
anti-monarchist; Pasquale Paoli, the great rebel
leader of Corsica, whose bid for an enlightened liberation
from France was in 1766 as promising as the
American colonies’ was from England. Armed with
letters of reference, Boswell had come for more than
Grand Tourism:
“But tell me sincerely, are you a Christian?” I
looked at [Rousseau] with a searching eye. His
countenance was no less animated. Each stood
steady and watched the other’s looks. He struck
his breast, and replied, “Yes. I pride myself on
being one.” ... BOSWELL: “But tell me, do you
suffer from melancholy? ROUSSEAU: “I was
born placid. I have no natural disposition to
melancholy. My misfortunes have infected me
with it.” BOSWELL: “I, for my part, suffer from
it severely. And how can I be happy, I who have
done so much evil?” ROUSSEAU: “Begin your
life anew. God is good, for he is just. Do good.
You will cancel all the debt of evil ...” BOSWELL:
“Will you, Sir, assume direction of me?”
The answer to that wonderful Boswellian flourish:
no.
Then Voltaire: “I suffer much. But I suffer with
Patience & Resignation; not as a Christian – But as a
man.” “I was moved,” wrote the Scot that night. “I was
sorry.” Then General Paoli: “Let us leave these disputes
to the idle. I always hold firm one great object. I
never feel a moment of despondency.”
Zaretsky does an admirable job of arranging these
giants – most of them delighted, some repulsed by
their animated caller – not only into the era’s intellectual
chain of being but into the pricklier chain of Boswell’s
selfhood. This is the heart of the book. Zaretsky
is right to call Boswell a “bricoleur of the self,” an assemblage
of the many people and ideas he absorbs.
One gets the sense he is writing himself into existence
– scribo ergo sum. “I had lately a thought that appeared
new to me,” he would write years later in desperation,
“that by burning all my journals and all my written
traces of my former life, I should be like a new being.”
Zaretsky is right to call Boswell a
‘bricoleur of the self,’ an assemblage of
the many people and ideas he absorbs.
This attitude toward oneself – thrillingly similar to
our modern attitudes, in an age where one’s public
identity is more malleable than ever – is not exactly
unique even in the second half of the 18th century.
It was an attitude at least 200 years in the making.
Modern scholarship in the “history of mentalities” –
dubbed by the French Annales school – has asked the
fundamental, nearly incalculable question of how historical
peoples became who they were, how they understood
themselves and acquired identities.
Stephen Greenblatt marks the Protestant
schism of the early 16th century as the decisive moment,
the great “unmooring” of personal identity
from state and religious forces. Luther’s German
Bible and William Tyndale’s English Bible liberated
the most important moral knowledge in the world,
formerly locked up and out of reach by the learned
priesthood, into the layman’s hands. One’s inner conscience,
a private mechanism to be fed and cultivated,
replaced the public Church confessional as the
measure of one’s moral life. Sumptuary laws were
abolished; handbooks like Machiavelli’s The Prince
and Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier proposed new
models of social conduct in court life. The merchant
class was born, and it grew from Spenser to Pepys to
the 18th century. This era has been well documented,
and we know it to be a breeding ground of social
climbing and imitation. But we arrive at Boswell: to
read his chronicle of every mood swing, every passing
influence consumed and digested into an identity,
one becomes so enmeshed in the young Boswell, so
convinced by his search for the right artifice, that for
a moment he seems the sole inheritor of Greenblatt’s
entire tradition of self-fashioning.
“Set out for Harwich like Father, grave and comfortable.”
“I hoped by degrees to attain to some degree of
propriety. Mr. Addison’s character in sentiment, mixed
with a little of the gaiety of Sir Richard Steele and the
manners of Mr. [West] Digges were the ideas I aimed
to realize.” “Let me moderate & cultivate my Originality.
God would not have formed such a diversity
of men if he had intended that they should all come
up to a certain standard ... Let me then be Boswell and
render him as fine a fellow as possible.” “Remember
Johnson’s precepts on experience of mankind. Consider
there is truth.”
Pause here and consider this entry, written two years
earlier, in Johnson’s slender diary:
Enlighten me with true knowledge, animate
me with reasonable hope, comfort me with a
55

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just sense of Thy love and assist me to the performance
of all holy purposes, that after the sins,
errors, and miseries of this world, I may obtain
everlasting happiness for JESUS CHRIST’S sake ...
It’s a similar plea for stability from a man with his
own crippling depression. But it’s a prayer – as is most
of Johnson’s diary. And it’s much closer to the Protestant
function of the very first personal diaries. Zaretsky
explains that “while Boswell continues this tradition of
self-probing, he also transforms it. In a sense, he takes
it out of the closet – that is, the praying closet where his
father’s generation retreated in order to wrestle with
their souls.”
Boswell wrestles with his soul, all right. But even
if he must remind himself to pray, even if his sanity
seems to depend on the promise of an afterlife (Thomas
Reid “has relieved me from the uneasy universal
Scepticism into which David Hume led me, and from
which I absolutely could not escape”), his journal addresses
only his innermost self. “While I am attacked
by melancholy,” he reports, in quite a different mood,
“I seldom enjoy the comforts of religion. A future state
seems so clouded, and my attempts toward devotion
are so unsuitable, that I often draw my mind away
from divine subjects.”
The title of Zaretsky’s book is, for this reason, an
ironic one. The godless Age of Reason doesn’t often
claim fatherhood of James Boswell, who, yes, suffered
from lingering doubt, but still clung for dear life to
the comforts of religion, scorned the French materialist
philosophes, and would years later all but beg
Hume for a deathbed confession in an attempt to save
the philosopher’s soul. Boswell’s strange relation to
the faith he so desired illustrates a tricky but vital
fringe of the Enlightenment: a reluctance to accept the
possibility that we are alone. Zaretsky: “In the end, it
is not the rightness of the Enlightenment’s methodology
we question, but instead the rightness of the
world it has given us.”
Taking his cues from Rousseau, an outspoken defender
of this paradox, Boswell lands somewhere
between the believers and the skeptics, or, rather, is
hurled violently between them as he searches not only
for a self but for an answer to the God question. Amid
the commotion, with a nudge from Robert Zaretsky,
this spongy, incorrigible, honest young man, lustful
not only in matters of the flesh but in all matters of life,
endears himself to the 21st-century mind, which like
him is left to fend for itself. Does he contradict himself?
Very well, then he contradicts himself, he is large, he
contains multitudes.
n
FALL 2016

Story
We argued all morning. Gnilovsky
maintained that modern life is
simpler than life, for example, for
Odysseus. I objected:
“When Odysseus was captured
by the Cyclopes, he was surprised that they didn’t
honor the gods. ‘We’re much older than your gods.
We don’t give a shit about your gods!’ answered
the Cyclopes. Modern civilization has returned to
the ways of the Cyclopes, we have no standards, no
rules, no reference points, and we, too, couldn’t care
By Julia
Kissina
less about the gods, understand?”
We smoked like chimneys. Gnilovsky
stared dreamingly out the window,
envious of Homer’s heroes’ adventures.
Across the way twinkled the neon sign of a porn
shop.
The radio woke up suddenly and a women’s solemn
voice made the following announcement:
“Yesterday, in downtown Frankfurt, at the Museum
of Modern Art, two more people tragically
perished.”
I startled. Gnilovsky, too, it seemed, came out of
his reverie.
“Are you sure we heard it right?” he asked in his
slightly bitter voice.
We got on the computer. Opened the Internet.
At the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt
people disappear or die every day. An exhibition,
entitled “Catastrophe,” the most important cultural
event of the season, is attracting ever more
visitors. Entrance is at your own risk …
Half an hour later, after dropping everything and
breathless with impatience, we were approaching
the museum.
“Art has become a funfair ride! Just a Disneyland!”
muttered Gnilovsky.
In front of the museum, where a crowd had gathered,
our path was blocked by two ambulances and
a school bus. People were upset and milling about,
anxiously silent. Most were women. Smokers were
kicked out of the crowd immediately. Someone
whined in dissatisfaction that the line was moving
too slowly, and there were complaints at the ticket
office. Later, a body, covered with a white cloth,
was carried out; general opinion was that the heat
had done it.
“Catastrophe” – the exhibition’s banner caught
my eye – while, nearby, someone rustled a newspaper.
Reporters rushed past the crowd. Enormous
cases of television equipment were delivered and
the crowd began to stir.
An hour later we reached the ticket office
and someone tapped my back.
“Do not under any circumstances enter the room
with the installation, or, uhhh … in short, where
you see the famous ‘Three Arrows.’” It’s been in
every newspaper.
“Three arrows?”
“It’s a cult thing, dangerous. From the Whitney
Museum’s collection. Had it been in the Seventies
it would have been regarded as a symbol of protest
against the war in Vietnam.”
“Want a lethal dose of art?” the cashier asked
poisonously as we paid the entrance fee.
“Seriously?”
We don’t
shit about
give a
your gods
57
SKEWERED

58
“Look at what’s printed on the ticket,” Gnilovsky
poked me in the side.
“People with irregular blood pressure, heart conditions,
and so on and so forth” – there was a list of all
types of health risks – “are advised against ... ”
The museum’s lobby was cool, well lit. The atmosphere
was festive but a bit antiseptic. “Catastrophe:
Enter at your own risk” announced a sign at the
entrance.
A guard checked us with a security scanner and
smiled sourly.
“From here, you’re on your own.”
We entered a large triangular space and
were blinded by light. On the opposite side of the
room stood two young men in sunglasses. The pair
observed our actions with open skepticism, not moving
a step.
Gnilovsky warily swiveled his eyes around and
showed me a small metal box atop a podium. There
was an opening in the box. The enormous hall held
nothing else.
“Clean and clear.”
“This is based on a random number generator. A
very interesting technical device,” I heard a woman’s
voice.
A click was heard. Almost instantly something
whipped with a swish past me through the air and
an arrow hit the opposite wall. Only then did I notice
that the entire wall was covered with arrows. On the
floor there was a small brown spot which at first was
difficult to identify.
“Well, well, well!” Gnilovsky grinned. “Art threatens
life. You walk through the exhibition, and at any
moment you might be skewered by that thing in the
box.”
“Three arrows?”
He nodded.
“I feel like a conquistador on the Amazon river. In
the bush are Indians with poison arrows, and the sky
is bluer than blue!”
“That’s the magical power of art!”
“Don’t bunch-up! You’re blocking other guests,” an
employee requested.
“Well, fine, we’ll crawl through,” decided Gnilovsky.
He stretched out on the floor. I lowered myself
beside him. A young couple followed our example.
A long-haired blond girl in a short dress fell on her
knees and then prostrated her body forward. Her
knight, blinking uncontrollably, repeated her movements
precisely.
“It really is fun after all!” the girl remarked.
Gnilovsky slowed for a few seconds. Then he
adjusted his glasses in determination and rushed
forward, seriously risking his life. Shutting my eyes
in fear, I followed blindly. While the four of us were
crawling across the white marble, two more arrows
whistled over our heads and stuck in the opposite
wall.
Crawling was not easy. The floor was freezing cold.
My knees, in thin nylons, hurt and my movements
were stiff. The scared girl’s whispers and her partner’s
heavy breathing played on our nerves.
“Well, so, past the first room!” Gnilovsky smiled
triumphantly when we reached the far side.
“Made it through!” confirmed the girl happily.
And then we saw, bunched up near the entrance,
an entire class of school kids. The childrens’ faces
showed sincere delight. Their teacher explained something
in a monotone, waving just a single arm.
In the next room, on a long, well-polished
table, lay piles of white powder. Above it hung a huge
metal cross and a glowing neon slogan, “Your Own
Personal Jesus.”
“I read about it on the net: one of the powder piles
is cyanide. They all look the same. Cute and courageous
I think. Like Russian roulette,” the girl was well
informed.
Next to the powders were disposable spoons and
stacks of white paper napkins. An elderly attendant
wilted nearby on a chair, eyes closed. His walkie-talkie
and its long strap had slipped to the floor,
apparently much earlier. It was unclear if he was
asleep or dead.
Suddenly, from the room with the arrows, we heard
a sharp cry. I ran to see what had happened.
On the marble floor, a boy lay writhing. From his
back, right out of his Adidas jacket, stuck an arrow.
A stain of blood in the shape of a heart had already
appeared on his back around the wound.
“He has only himself to blame. And a poor student,
too,” added one of the boys.
For some reason, the children treated me as if I
were responsible for everything that was happening.
The teacher stepped right up to me. Her eyes were
irritated and red.
“You don’t remember me? We studied at the
Academy of Fine Arts at the same time.” Her face was
vaguely familiar and I nodded.
“The students and I were getting prepared all week
for this exhibition, studying Viennese Actionism. I
even performed with Hermann Nitsch,” she said,
FALL 2016

‘I read about it on the net: one of the
powder piles is cyanide. They all look the
same. Cute and courageous I think. Like
Russian roulette,’ the girl was well informed.
extending her stump toward me. I looked in her face
with understanding as she continued, “In class, the
students and I discussed ethics and the role of art
in life, and then this exhibition popped up. Much
was written about it, especially its moral and ethical
values in a world choking on consumerism. At
a teachers’ council meeting we discussed the trip’s
educational value and pedagogical fit!”
Children, still crowding the entrance, watched with
horror as the teacher stooped and dragged the boy to
the side. While the teacher was rescuing her student,
her skirt rode up, showing her dark underwear,
which attracted my harried attention even more than
the rest of the scene.
“Stop ogling her backside, let’s go,” said Gnilovsky.
The young couple that was with us stayed
to sample the poisonous powders, but we entered
the next room. It was quite small. A hole in the floor
opened onto a metal staircase.
“I’ve visited this museum often. This staircase was
never here!” I said in surprise.
I was about to step inside when I spotted a strange
creature heading toward us. It was a man in the
depths of old age, thin and frail.
“Young ones, kindly help me!” rasped the old man.
“Please,” I offered him my elbow.
“I worked my whole life, I had women, money,
cars, I spared nothing. But as you can see, it all was
in vain. I came here to die. Please help me. I’ve been
wandering around this cursed exhibition for two
hours and I can’t die! You’ve got to help me. Come
with me.”
He spoke so slowly, I really did want to kill him.
Gnilovsky had nonetheless managed to preserve
some semblance of humanity and took the old man’s
hand. At the speed of a tortoise, he took us to an object
that looked like a tanning bed.
“It’s a sarcophagus. Kindly read me the instructions,
young man. But loudly if you will!”
The instructions stated that the sarcophagus would
disrupt the heart’s rhythmic pattern with electrical
impulses, producing immediate cardiac arrest. It was
the work of a young woman, a Japanese artist from
Nagasaki. It won first prize in the competition “Art
and Medicine.”
“Just the thing!” warranted the old man.
“But we’re not murderers.”
“I’ve got to die!” said the old man, filled with iron
determination. “You, what, don’t love art?”
“In this old man’s demand I see the future of
civilization! The nightmare of immortality!” hissed
Gnilovsky. We sat the old man down in a chair next to
the sarcophagus and, after promising to return, ran to
the stairs.
In two small rooms documentaries were playing
about torture.
For a moment, I remembered a brief episode from
my childhood, when my parents and I went on a
short trip to a medieval castle. My father often quoted
the tour guidebook sarcastically: “A tour of the castle,
and in particular the Museum of Torture, will be great
fun for your children and will get them interested in
history.”
“But paintings have always depicted Christ on the
cross, martyrs with their eyes torn out and demons
in hell. So art hasn’t changed since that time,” said
Gnilovsky.
“I’ve had enough for today.”
But that was not the end. In the next room, floored
with rough planks, an installation of torture devices
awaited us. On a small, low table were brochures with
political slogans. Then came a room showcasing the
Chapman brothers, British artists whose work concerned
concentration camps.
Straight at us, almost knocking me down,
leaped the same blond who crawled under the arrows
with us. Her clothes were ripped, her hair a mess, her
eyes rolling. The black snake of a microphone was
suddenly thrust over my shoulder.
“Are you a college student? Do you work? What
can you tell us about the future of feminism?”
The girl pushed the reporter away and threw herself
on me, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
”Where’s your friend?” Gnilovsky asked grimly.
”I don’t know, he got scared. He stayed outside.”
She nodded her head toward the door, and only
then did I see the sign: “Women Only.”
“They’re raping people in there, understand. I
was raped! They threatened me with a knife. I was
terrified. I work at a savings bank. Eight-to-six, every
day. I’m very interested in modern art. I read everything
I can, trying to understand. I respect art. I’m no
cynic, no prude, I go to all the exhibitions, but it’s the
first time something like this happened to me! I want
to sue the organizers. At least get some money for
59

emotional damage!”
“Could you have entered the exhibition and not
read the instructions?” a reporter interrupted, tearing
her from my shoulder.
Then an attendant approached.
“The law is on the side of the curators. You were
warned. There are signs everywhere. You’re not blind,
my dear!” The girl resumed weeping and her sobs
grew louder.
“Downstairs, on the first floor, there’s a team of
psychologists,” the attendant told me. “She should go
on down. They’ll speak with her, get her settled so she
can get home. Can you make it yourself?”
”Take me, please,” begged the girl and grabbed
me by the elbow.
“What else is there on the top floor?” I said, turning
to the reporter. To tell the truth, I wanted to be finished
with this exhibition. My nerves already were on edge.
“It’s interesting enough,” he mumbled. “Upstairs
they have some Russian artist’s mine field. His name’s
a bit hard to pronounce, but it’s great work. Then they
have predators. On the top floor, a window is open,
and you can jump from a springboard directly onto
the tramway. But no one has done it yet today.”
He grinned. Gnilovsky looked at him with undisguised
contempt.
The girl glanced helplessly from me to the reporter,
and then at Gnilovsky. Without help, it seemed, she
couldn’t budge.
“All right, we’ll take you down. That’s it,” Gnilovsky
said, taking her by the hand. “Let’s go down.
Where’s the exit?”
It turned out that the exit stairs were coated with
artificial ice. We somehow slipped our way to the
bottom, drenching our
clothes. I painfully
banged my shoulder
against the wall, but it
was nothing compared
with the
others’ trauma and
losses.
At the exit we were met by a medical team. Those
with broken bones were treated immediately. The
girl’s boyfriend, with a huge black eye, threw himself
on her and they shook with sobs.
“Do you need a psychotherapist or perhaps a
priest?” a kind-faced nurse asked as she hurriedly ran
over to me.
“Thank you. We’ve gotten used to modern art.”
“The museum gift shop sells beautiful catalogs,”
she shouted when we turned our backs to her.
Returning home on the tram, we heard the
screech of brakes and the blast of a collision. Two
cars had crashed at the corner near the bridge. A tin
can spun twice in the air. Our tram braked hard and
stopped. We had to continue on foot because, as the
conductor explained, someone had lost a leg and traffic
was blocked. After such a stimulating exhibition I
just didn’t have the strength to listen to the details.
Outside my building, right in front of my nose, a
brick fell on the sidewalk and smashed to bits.
“We were awfully lucky today,” Gnilovsky said as
we looked into each other’s eyes, nervously smiling.
“On Thursday, identification procedures commenced
for bodies recovered from the crash site of a
Moroccan airliner. Yesterday, blood relatives, 125 in
all, provided samples should DNA testing be required
... British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that
a ‘barbaric terrorist attack has been committed, which
it is now quite clear, was timed to coincide with the
opening of the G-8 summit,’” the radio sounded as we
went upstairs.
I pulled the cord from the outlet sharply, not
wanting to hear about any more catastrophes, and
I thought, looking at the newly-empty
plug socket: no way would fingers fit in
there after all.
n
Translated from Russian by Brendan Kiernan
and the author. From the book
This is art! (2006).
60
FALL 2016

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