by Jonathan Dee
John was reminded by this speech that the casually dressed young man was at work, and that he himself was seen now as a prospective buyer, or at least assistant to a buyer. Unable to ask the questions he most wanted to ask, about technique – they seemed at once too simple and too intimate – he asked instead, “Tell me, how do you – if one buys the sculpture, say – how does one warehouse something made out of chocolate?”
The assistant smiled wickedly. “Well, that’s the genius of it, isn’t it? It becomes valuable, it becomes a work of art, simply by virtue of the great effort and expense necessary to maintain it, to keep it intact. A lovely bit of irony. You know, when Guernica last came to this country – in the seventies I think it was? Twenty years ago at least – it was shipped for flight in a special crate which was not only built to withstand the most enormous impact in case the plane crashed but had its own automatically inflated life raft, complete with radio signals and flares.” He laughed. “I find that the most heartwarming story. Though I wonder what the pilot felt about it!”
Suddenly Osbourne was ready to go. Heather, standing a step behind him, looked neither upset nor surprised – apparently she was used to his quick visits. “I’ll talk to Mary this week,” he said. At the door, he kissed her hand.
“It was a pleasure meeting you,” she said to John. “Please come back anytime.” He felt himself reddening.
Back on the landing, Osbourne said nothing to John and skipped down the steps ten feet ahead of him; then he stopped, on the ground floor, and held open the front door. The car was idling at the curb when they emerged from the building. The morning haze had begun to burn off. As they drove, Osbourne fell again into a private, unself-conscious silence, benignly antisocial, though it was clear from his face that his spirits were lifted somehow. John wondered if his boss had just bought anything; he kept waiting for some question about the work they had just seen. He wondered, too, if all the young artists they were visiting that morning would be as comely and familiar as Heather had been. That would explain a few things. Though it would also obscure more than ever Osbourne’s reasons for wanting John there in the first place.
“Pleasant woman,” John said finally. Osbourne just nodded, without any special enthusiasm that John could see.
The second studio they visited was more crowded with outsiders like themselves, though that may have been due merely to the later hour. An extroverted young man with a long goatee met them at the door; John could tell from Osbourne’s reserve that the two had not met before, though the young man behaved as if they knew everything about each other.
“So good to see you, Mal,” he said. “David is overjoyed you could make it.”
David? Osbourne saw the confusion on John’s face as he realized they were in the company of another personal assistant; lagging behind for a moment, he caught John’s gaze and discreetly inclined his head toward a perfectly miserable-looking man in his fifties, bald, sitting across the windowsill with one foot on the fire escape, holding a squeeze bottle of water, looking as if he were about to burst into tears of humiliation and worry. He did not glance their way.
They spent a few minutes circulating through the studio. The assistant stayed out of their sightline but was never more than six feet away. David’s latest work, as they saw, was concerned with the recontextualization of familiar images (whether from the history of art or from contemporary pop culture), shaking them up, violating their accepted meanings through juxtaposition. Some of these wall-mounted works were done with intentional crudity, using just scissors and paste (though one such collage of perhaps a thousand tiny images of celebrities’ faces, almost a pointillist work when seen from across the studio, must have taken a lot of effort); others employed some form of computer-printing technology to make the merger of the images perfectly seamless, as in a giant silkscreen reproduction of Vermeer’s Girl at Her Window holding a Diet Coke, or a photograph of the distinctive geometric patterns of a computer circuit board superimposed over a copy of Constable’s The Hay Wain.
Apparently the assistant didn’t know Osbourne’s reputation well enough not to be agitated by his silence. “David sees this reorientation of images as a way of empowering people,” he whispered to them. “In the age of mechanical reproduction, in a culture that’s absolutely drowning in images, it’s simply hubris to go out and create your own, to add to the static – it’s self-defeating. The only revenge is to appropriate what’s out there for your own purposes, to subvert the corporate mindset that anesthetizes these endless copies. Images, more than reality, are our true environment now, and hasn’t that always been the task of art – to skew representation just enough to get you to look at your environment in a new way?”
Listening to this in the wake of his experience at Heather’s, John understood that he was observing the practice of a specialized profession – the explainer, the pre-critic, whose task was central to the meaning of the work itself and not a commentary on it. In fact, maybe that was where the appeal of art like this – touched, at least, by David’s hands in some cases, but untouched by his own invention – was supposed to lie: in ceding to the interpreter the satisfaction of creation. After a while, John found, you couldn’t even look at these recombined pictures without hearing the goateed assistant’s voice in your head. Personally John didn’t have a lot of patience with this kind of work, but he kept his mouth shut and his expression thoughtful, not knowing how Osbourne felt about it. After all, some of the images drawn from advertising, some of the reproduced text, might even have been his.
“What’s this?” Osbourne said suddenly, pointing to the back of the studio, where several people were gathered. A full-scale reproduction of Rodin’s The Kiss, cast in some sort of lightweight orange polyurethane and evidently hollow, was suspended upside down by what looked like fishing line so that it hung about eight feet off the floor, wavering slightly. The familiar couple looked as though they were holding each other tightly as they plunged to their deaths. To leave the studio by its freight elevator, one had to walk under it.
The assistant looked momentarily embarrassed. “It’s a reappropriation of Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss,” he said, “cast in—”
“No, I can see that,” Osbourne said, a little impatiently. “I mean that notepad there or whatever it is.”
The assistant beamed. John finally noticed a clipboard hung on a nail next to the elevator, underneath the suspended sculpture. “Part of the same piece,” the goateed young man said. “It’s a pad on which visitors, if they’re willing to linger underneath the sculpture itself, answer a series of printed questions about their impressions of the work. It’s really drawing a great deal of positive attention, this piece.”
And suddenly, Osbourne turned to look expectantly at John, the look that had been so long in coming John had stopped waiting for it. Alarmed, he tried to think of something perceptive to say about the upside-down Kiss, something astute but noncommittal. A few seconds crept by.
“Interactivity?” John said. The assistant nodded his head vigorously.
Back in the car, Osbourne appeared bothered by something; he sighed twice and kept tapping his fingertips on the knee of his jeans. John feared of course that the source of this displeasure was himself – that whatever Osbourne’s unfathomable hopes might have been in mandating the companionship of an unknown employee in the first place, they weren’t panning out. But in fairness to himself, John thought, not a word had yet passed between them on the subject of what exactly it was that John was supposed to do, what sort of aid he had been commissioned to provide. His exasperation was that much greater for being, under the circumstances, inexpressible. Another sort of person – Vanessa, certainly, and probably Rebecca as well – would have been indignant or curious or bored enough by this time to ask Osbourne straight out what the deal was; but John found this course of action too confrontational to think about seriously. His demurral went beyond the uncomfortable fact that Osbourne was his superior, with a power over his career which
may have been hard to define but couldn’t be entirely discounted; it just wasn’t in John’s makeup to be the one to break the compact of civility, especially not with a virtual stranger.
When they were dropped off at the next address, over toward Alphabet City, they found no one at home: at least no one answered the intercom. Osbourne looked at his watch and pressed the button again. Several business cards had been stuck in the door, presumably by other would-be visitors with similar appointments. The name above the intercom, printed and stuck there with one of those old blue label-tape guns familiar from John’s own childhood, was Jean-Claude Milo. John followed the fashions of the art world, as he came across them by chance in magazines or newspapers, more closely than the average person, even the average person in New York: still, not one of this morning’s names was remotely familiar to him. That was the rule, though, he supposed: by the time you heard of something, it was gone, divided up, absorbed. And therein lay much of the appeal of being a collector – not the buying or the speculating but the way the money permitted you to look for the source, to experience the art unmediated, or to try to.
In another minute Osbourne gave up on Mr Milo. They went back down the steps and waited for the car to circle around again. Osbourne’s mood, strangely enough, seemed improved by their having been stood up like that. He took a pair of sunglasses out of the pocket of his denim shirt, put them on, and turned to look at John, smiling.
“A shame you couldn’t meet Jean-Claude,” he said. “He’s doing some interesting work. The last time I was there, he was doing spin-paintings with his own blood.” He shook his head fondly.
“And you liked his work?” John said blandly. He didn’t want to let Osbourne’s burst of relative gregariousness pass him by.
“I liked him. Something very genuine about him. Even his pretensions are genuine, if that makes any sense. I really enjoy the company of artists, especially young artists. I find them all so …” He didn’t finish. The car reappeared around the narrow corner and slowed to a stop in front of them. “Determined,” Osbourne said. Max, his eyebrows registering concern, jumped out to open the rear door. Osbourne waited for him and then got in without a word; John followed suit.
It was nearing lunchtime when they made their next stop, this time at a gallery whose windows looked down on the Hudson River. The walls were white and empty; the works stood in a haphazard arrangement on the floor. Each one was enclosed in some sort of glass booth or tank. Within one booth was an empty suit of clothes, with shirt, tie, underwear, socks, shoes lying crumpled on the floor. Another contained a large pile of bricks. But there was something in a darkened back room, separated from the main gallery by a thick curtain, that seemed to be drawing the interest of most of the morning’s visitors. John parted the curtain for his boss, and they joined other strangers surrounding a large glass tank, lit from within in the otherwise dim room, which contained an actual tiger shark, suspended some six feet off the ground either by invisible wires or within some perfectly clear element, in a position to suggest swimming. It had been formaldehyded somehow, John supposed; its dull gray skin was unmarked. Everyone was very quiet as they circled around it. The power of the curled tail, the uneven, crowded rows of teeth in the slightly parted mouth, and the eyes – stone dead, and looking all the more alive because of it. At any point in one’s journey around the tank, of course, one could see through to the solemn faces of the viewers on the other side.
Later, while waiting for the elevator, Osbourne said genially, “I think that’s all I feel like seeing for today.”
This time John was aware of the stares their car drew, as they retraced their path past City Hall and across the bridge. He was very hungry, but grateful just the same that Osbourne had not extended his trial by asking him along to lunch. He still had no better idea why he had been drafted for this excursion than he had had yesterday. At the same time, he had a rising sense of vague failure. He felt he had to try again to say something, that perhaps his very capacity for acquiescence was what was being tested here. This in spite of the fact that Osbourne had never once even alluded to the fact that they had a weekday, working life in common, that they were anything but friends, as if friends were like prospective jurors, who could abruptly be summoned to appear. The silence between them was indeed, John thought squeamishly, like the silence between old friends. It was inappropriate and perverse.
“So,” John said – maybe a little too loudly, for his boss seemed startled. “Did you see anything you liked today?”
Osbourne cocked his head. “I saw some people I wanted to help,” he said. Then, halfheartedly, as if rousing himself to converse, he said, “And what about you?”
John took a deep breath. He was mad at himself now for having stifled his real opinions all morning, when he didn’t even know for sure why he was doing it: that’s just like me, he thought. “I have to admit,” he said, “I liked the shark.” Osbourne smiled. “Even though – well, maybe I shouldn’t say it.”
“Even though what?”
“Well, a dead shark in a tank: what is that? It’s a canvas for clever interpretation. And so reacting to it at all makes me feel a little foolish. Do you suppose that’s the intent of it? Does everything have to be ironic?”
Osbourne said nothing.
“And who caught that shark?” John went on animatedly, forgetting, for once, to worry about the impression he was making. “Who preserved it? Who built that tank? Who installed the lighting? I don’t know for sure but I’d be willing to bet that the artist’s own hands have never been anywhere near it. I apologize if he’s a friend of yours or anything. But this whole premise that the work of creation should consist of putting your name next to something: I just keep getting hung up on that. I still have a bias about … I still think of art as making something. Not causing it to be made. I know I shouldn’t admit that, I know it’s totally reactionary of me.”
“And yet,” Osbourne said, interested, “you liked the shark.”
“And yet I liked the shark. However it got there. When I was in that little room, I felt I was in the presence of something powerful.”
Osbourne laid his head back against the leather seat. “Me too,” he said, just audibly.
They were turning on to John’s block in Cobble Hill, the sidewalks alive now with children and dogs and sunlight, when Osbourne said suddenly, terrifyingly, “So John: are you happy working at CLO?”
John silently cursed his own uncontrollable blush. “Yes,” he said, straining to sound sincere even though he was in fact telling the truth. “Yes, I like it very much.”
Osbourne nodded thoughtfully. He looked out his window again, and then rested his forehead against it.
“I hate it,” he said.
All the verbal pleasantries of goodbye were left to John; Osbourne remained in the back seat, listening with interest as John labored to thank him, but not saying a word. He took John’s hand when it was offered. The limo disappeared around the corner and John still stood there, listening to the traffic sounds and the screams from the playground over on Kane Street. He didn’t want to go inside yet. He hoped Rebecca wasn’t watching him from the window, insane with curiosity, wondering what was the matter with him. It was just that, once he went in, he was going to have to start talking about everything he had seen and heard that morning – the odd rift between the artists and their art – and about Osbourne himself, his appearance, his cryptic ignorance of John’s desire for any sort of explanatory remark, his strange and somehow charismatic uneasiness around those who only wanted to please him. And maybe it was just a matter of his own poverty of expression, but John found that anything truly interesting usually became less interesting, even to him, when he heard himself trying to explain it.
IN A LIFE such as Molly’s – in the life of a place such as Ulster, unwatched, forgetting itself, animated now mostly by the remote hand of late-century technology – the world outside the world you knew reached into your life now and then in a way that wa
s not imaginary. These points of contact were a mixed blessing, for they served both to connect you to the larger vitality you dreamed of and to remind you at the same time how cut off from it you were. For Molly, the tool of this insinuation was music. Music was as private as it was international. It was everywhere you went but at some point around the age of twelve or thirteen it suddenly began speaking to you directly.
The Howes owned a fancy Bang & Olufsen stereo, seldom used except at parties, which was wired into a large cabinet beneath some built-in bookshelves in the living room. After dinner, when her father read the newspaper in front of the TV, her mother sat at the kitchen table with a cigarette and a stack of magazines, and her brother Richard had shut himself like a lodger in his room for the evening, Molly would drag a chair from the dinner table and listen to the radio for hours with the headphones on. The reception was sometimes poor because they lived in the valley, but she could pick up a college station from Albany if the night was clear. She sat with her back to the room, the cabinet door open and her feet propped on the shelf inside it, her head on her hand, her eyes closed. Gay boys in London, scarified New York City punks, patiently righteous black men in Jamaica: on the one hand she believed she understood their feelings, felt their feelings, with an unimprovable clarity; but then the lives they lived were so improbably romantic, so taken up with the painful drama of themselves, that when the song was over and she opened her eyes she couldn’t believe she lived where she was living. Every few weeks she would ask her father if she could just move the stereo into her room, since no one else ever used it, but he was helplessly mindful of the value of the thing and couldn’t stand the thought of damage to it. To salve his guilt over saying no to her he wired the radio to the rooftop antenna, so that her reception was no longer dependent on wind or the weather.
