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Humbert wakes up when the rays of sunlight hit his face with such intensity that it hurts. He opens his eyes, looks at his watch (1:30), and jumps out of the lawn chair. He does some push-ups. He thinks, “I wouldn’t mind having an orange juice now.” He leans on the porch rail and looks toward the pool. “I would love to paint a pool. If only it hadn’t been done so often. .” He puts on shorts and thin-soled shoes. He goes toward the kitchen. He peels an orange. He eats it. He takes out four more, turns on the squeezer, and prepares himself an orange juice.
In the bungalow where he has his studio, he sits down at the table. Against the long wall rests a row of eight half-painted canvases. He gathers up the newspaper clippings, organizes them, and he reads snatches from them as he files them in different folders. The Times says, “Rarely in the history of contemporary art has there been a more meteoric rise than that of Humbert Herrera. We have certainly become accustomed, of late, to more or less rapid ascensions — a case in point being that of Heribert Julià, whose unfortunate accident is responsible for our making the acquaintance of Herrera, who, as Julià’s replacement, has produced his first, and definitive, exhibition. .” La Reppublica says: “With the exception of Miró, the most renowned Catalan artist to precede Julià and Herrera, perhaps not since Picasso’s death has an artist so exclusively captured the attention. .” Another, from O Globo: “After two solid decades of artistic disarray, of wave upon wave of pictorial fads, each superimposed one upon the other, finally one young man — and his youth must be stressed, for it holds out great hope for the art world — seems at last to have taken up the challenge of art as a totality, and has responded with a cohesive body of work which — though written off as a hodge-podge by envious pens — manages to make eclectic and unselfconscious use of elements taken from all the artistic trends of these years of confusion, from conceptualism to the new expressionism, to build an articulated body of work — perhaps the most coherent oeuvre of the post-modern aesthetic. Herrera plays all the chords of human sentiment and ratiocination, from tenderness to irony, to cynicism, thus taking up where the extraordinary momentum of Heribert Julià’s appearance little more than a year ago left off. Needless to say, the art world hopes that this new direction will be consolidated and not turn out to be, as has occurred on so many recent occasions, a mere promise, frustrated in the end. .”
He looks through his mail. A postcard from Tokyo: “Even before opening, almost everything is already sold. Ciao, Xano.” A package: the finished catalog for the Milan exhibition. He closes his eyes to daydream. He’d like to celebrate the opening of the exhibition by turning off all the lights in Milan for one night; the only lights on would be those of the gallery. On a white sheet of paper filled with notes he writes: “Speak with Milan City Hall.” And when they ask why? Humbert observes that the lack of a theoretical framework, common to all the latest generation of painters, while handy on occasions, is problematic at other times. He takes a notebook from the desk drawer and writes: “Smooth out the rough edges of the theoretical framework, particularly with regard to alterations in the routines of big cities.” Another postcard from Xano, dated two days after the previous one: “Paintings not sold before opening are now sold. Keep up the good work! Big hug, Xano.” A letter from an Australian museum requesting more paintings. He thinks: “Odd that I don’t have any in New Zealand yet.” On the sheet full of notes he writes: “Find out what’s going on with New Zealand.” He takes another notebook out of the drawer with the word paintings on the cover and jots down: “Do a totally disconcerting and false landscape and title it New Zealand.”
He feels happy. There’s so much to do! The notebook labeled paintings is full of notes. “So many paintings I’ll never get to. . Life is too short for all the work one could do. I ought to hire people, find a team of collaborators to assist me.” He takes out a notebook, the one where he wrote about smoothing out the theoretical framework — labeled ideas — and writes: “Find team of collaborators. Or commission paintings to others? Commission other artists to paint them? Would they be offended? How about selling them the ideas so that they can develop them, or use them as is?” He shuts the notebook and drops it on top of another one that says environments.
Helena is turning the gold doorknob on the bungalow door. Humbert jumps up from his chair and goes over to hug her. They kiss. Helena carefully spreads the contents of the bag she is carrying on the floor: cheeses, pâtés, spinach salad and cole slaw, apples, frozen yogurt, and a bottle of vodka. Humbert looks at the label, takes the paintings notebook out of the drawer, and writes: “Do fake labels.” Then he thinks better of it: he crosses it out, puts the book in the drawer, and takes out another one, labeled objects. He writes: “Do fake wine labels, fake jars, fake wrappings. Do cardboard boxes for liquid products: soup, wine. . Do plastic bottles with fine wine labels. Do tin cans for champagne.”
“I’m starved. .” Humbert says.
They eat the cheese, the pâtés, the salad and slaw, the apples, and the frozen yogurt. They open the vodka, drink from the bottle, and have sex on the floor. When they are finished, Humbert gets up, opens the paintings notebook, and writes: “Couples having sex, in many colors and extravagant positions.” He thinks for a moment and adds another line: “Totally black painting titled Love in the Dark.” In the environments book he writes: “A boxing ring completely covered over with a white sheet. Audience in bleachers. In the ring boxers fight unseen by audience.” He opens another notebook, labeled concepts, and writes: “A dictionary with all the ‘obscene’ entries crossed out and replaced with ‘proper’ entries. And vice-versa. Two dictionaries, then. Possible variations: rewriting of political, urbanistic, botanical, and psychological terminologies. .” He shuts the notebook and looks at it. Though Helena didn’t see eye to eye with him at all on this, and thought that he would be better off tossing notebooks titled concepts and environments into the fire, he believes that those, shall we say, “objectual” styles of the previous decade, done with a little bit of flair, would not have passed under the art-business radar without a trace.