NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Boris Tarantula has a new exhibition at the Prestige University Arts Center. Artie Bliemisch, Steve Strether and I are driving out to the campus together in Steve’s new car. To meet Artie’s old friend Frank Vassari, and the artist, before the official opening next week. Bel Vionnet is staying home with Lambert who has had surgery to fix a broken ligament in his left hind leg.
“I am so happy for Frank this is a quite a coup for him as the arts center director.”
“He is really going to put that place on the cultural map with this.”
“It is important work, Steve.”
“Artie, do you really think Tarantula’s work is serious?”
“He’s a contender in national competitions. Remember Fred, he may yet replace the Washington monument with his memorial to great advertisements.”
“Oh no! How serious is that?”
“As you know Fred, that contentious issue is stuck in Congressional deadlock at the moment.”
“Oh yes Steve, Its Congressman Bean isn’t it? He has it all locked up in the Committee on Aesthetic Crime.”
“Besides, much depends on what you mean by serious Fred.”
“Artie, I mean serious work is work that will still be valued a hundred years from now.”
“Fred, I get it, but who can tell that now?”
“Well, I can’t predict the future of course but rusty I-beams don’t seem like lasting art, and I don’t mean because of the rust!”
“Think of it this way Fred. When Monet first exhibited his painting ‘Sunrise’ it was derided by the critic, Louis Leroy, as a ‘mere impression’”.
“Yup! I see what you mean. Now, more than a hundred years after 1874, Monet is highly regarded.”
“Fred, French impressionist works sell for millions. That is the measure of their acceptance.”
“What do you mean, ‘measure’?
“Fred we live in a commercial culture. The dollar value of art is the most important measure.”
“Yeah, right Artie! That is how rusty steel can be turned into art.”
“Fred, after Dada, anything can be turned into art!”
“The market makes things into art.”
“It makes art with a capital ‘F’ Steve.”
“Come on Fred, you are getting old before your time!”
“No, that’s my point Steve. The French impressionists were at least painting.”
The car jerks to a sudden stop along with all conversation.
“Signal would have been nice!”
A silver car cuts into the right turn lane ahead of us as we approach an intersection. Steve’s impatience grows as we stop at the light. The light is green but the silver car stays put at the cross walk. An old man with a blue baseball cap and small white dog on a red leash crosses slowly blocking right turns. The dog stops and sits down in the middle of its trip across the road. The light turns green and traffic moves across the intersection past us, and the car now in front. Old man and dog watch. Our light turns amber and the silver car blasts man and dog with its horn and the dog barks back, straining on its short leash towards the middle of the intersection. The old man drags it to the curb on the other side. We resume our journey behind the silver car that cut in front of us but stop again within yards, behind a bus letting off passengers. Steve lets out a long breath.
“So what happened to the debate?”
“I was about to say Fred, there is more to art than painting.”
“Well of course. I mean they were working within a tradition.”
What tradition is Boris, or is it Varlan? Anyway, what tradition is he part of?”
“Fred, Varlan was his father. You must know David Smith, Julio Gonzalez, or Mark di Suvero?”
“Gonzalez, Artie?”
“The Spanish guy who is said to have made the first welded sculptures.”
“Is their work old enough to be traditional Artie?”
“Fred, tradition is started at the second sale.”
“What do you mean Steve?”
“The first sale of a new kind of art establishes it. Especially the first sale to a big collector or museum.”
“That’s not tradition Steve. It is more like a fashion or a fad. It is commercial.”
“Okay Steve so after that, every new sale is part of a tradition or development in that art form.”
“That’s it Artie. Call it what you like Fred. The point is that styles proliferate.”
“Nah … don’t you think it is just commercial flash in the pan stuff? I mean the market creates and the market destroys. What happened to William Baziotes for example, a good abstract painter?”
“What do you mean Fred? His work is here in the National Gallery. He’s doesn’t fetch as much as De Kooning, but he is an established American artist.”
“Okay Steve, I am trying to get at the role of hype, and marketing that is so important in the commercial world, and Art is no exception.”
“So what’s wrong with marketing Fred? I mean I want to sell my work too.”
“What is wrong Artie, is the promotion of junk as if it is tried and tested quality work. Look in the art magazines, or on line and see the latest sensation in New York, or Zurich or wherever. Young artists promoted and fetching huge prices alongside old masters.”
“That’s just the market Fred.”
“Fred, you don’t like the art market.”
“Too true Steve.”
“Like I said Fred, in a commercial culture the market is all.”
“Don’t you think there is a problem with that?”
“Fred, there are lots of problems.”
“Yeah Steve! There’s no correlation between price and aesthetic quality for one thing.”
“That’s it Artie.”
“Fred who’s to say what is good and what is not but the market?”
“Well Steve, aside from private personal judgments …”
“Don’t forget buyers Fred. They may not comment but the purchase speaks for itself.”
“Right Steve, it keeps the artist going.”
“Steve, suppose a business invests in a painting and sticks it in a vault. What does that say about quality?”
“Fred, you must be talking about that Van Gogh right?”
“Yes Artie, I think it was a Van Gogh, bought by a Japanese bank.”
“No, it was Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance. They bought Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, for $38 million.”
“What ever Steve, I think it was back in the eighties and I wish they would put a few million into my work!”
“I would be glad for you personally Artie, but it would be a test for you.”
“You mean of my integrity right?”
“Artie, I know you could deal with it.”
“Thanks Steve, I would like the opportunity to try!”
“Artie, suppose you knew. May be it would be suggested to you. That if you produce three more in your completed series of “Rembrandt Commentaries”, as you called them, you could make another three million?”
“Well Fred, if I already had three million, I could laugh!”
“Great! But, you see what I am getting at Artie?”
“Fred I do, and can only hope that it would sound like a joke.”
“Arty that joke could be inspirational itself.”
“Once again Steve, you have given me something to chew on.”
We are now waiting in a line of cars to park at the Arts Center. Steve is looking frantically at his mirrors and out of the side window.”
“This Prius has terrible visibility.”
He moves a few feet and stops with a jerk at a blast from some one’s horn.
“Sorry about that!”
It doesn’t involve Steve after all. The car moves forward again in electronic silence, no exhaust, no stench. He finds a place to park facing the long wide swathe of grass between the administration building and the arts center. The engine starts up as we pull in.
“How odd Steve, this thing starts up just as you are going to shut it down!”
“Battery must have drained a little in all that congestion Artie.” He presses a button in the dash and the car shuts down, engine and all.
The trucks and cranes used to bring Tarantula’s huge sculptures in have left deep tracks in the lawn where they are installed. The grounds crew is chatting in Spanish as they fill in the depressions and put in new sod.
Frank Vasari is strolling towards us along the avenue of twenty steel I-beams, arranged ten on each side of the paved walk that crosses the grass. The sculptures look like steel trees that might have grown in a rolling mill rather than a nursery. Boris walks next to Frank, short and wide, with white denims and a blue work shirt. He has shaved his head, which is globular. His exaggerated gate is due to the accident that crushed his pelvis two years ago while building the pieces on show. He tends to lean heavily to the left where Frank keeps enough distance to avoid a bump, and also Boris’s gesticulations. He regularly takes off his dark glasses with a flourish of his left had and waves them about for emphasis, before putting them on again in a simple movement. He doesn’t have to open them or place them carefully on his ears. Everything lands in place at once.
The I-beam sculptures are chrome plated at ground level and dazzling in the evening sun. The chrome fades out at about ten feet up and the rest of the metal is rust red for perhaps another twenty feet. They look ragged at the top with odd shaped bits of rusty steel of various sizes and thicknesses attached at different angles, some with bolts some riveted. They look as if they might be scraps from a demolished high-rise. Each is topped with a length of neon light looping around it in a colorful flashing entanglement. One spirals up in green and white like a candy cane of glass tube. Another is spiky like a colorful sea urchin living on top of steel seaweed. The spikes flash oranges and greens at random.
Artie introduces Steve and me to Frank, though we have met before, and Frank introduces us all to Boris. He speaks fluent vernacular English with a heavy accent.
“Thanks for coming out. So good to meet Frank’s friends!”
“So Boris, are you happy with the installation?”
“Well, I still got a week to move them around some … and Steve, we got to hide those wires on that one … see .” Boris is pointing with his glasses in hand.
“Boris, that will be taken care of … Artie, he’s got four more pieces that don’t fit.”
“Frank, I got more than that back upstate.”
“Leave them there Boris!”
“Okay Frank, okay, but you know I don’t want the lady to get the wrong idea.”
“I am Artemisia, call me Artie.”
‘Sure, Artie, sure. Have you seen the Coke sign and that old Burma-Shave thing?”
“No we just got here.”
“Okay Artie, come on Frank, come on Artie, Fred, come on, I’ll show you. This is very important!”
Boris leads us over to point out the letters from an old Coca Cola sign incorporated into the top of one of his electronic I-beam trees. We move on and I can’t see the neon letters spelling ‘Burma-Shave’ in the second piece he leads us to, though he points them out. “Fred, Fred, look, just look carefully up there … see it, see?”
“Sorry Boris, I can’t see anything like a word up there.”
“Frank, what you bringing your friend here for if he can’t see?”
