“Don’t you think conceptualism would have been more fruitful if it had been done with a little more style and wit?”
Helena doesn’t answer. She’s fast asleep. He looks closely at her, stretched out face down on the floor of the studio, amid the salad bowls and wine glasses. Two men burst through the door and, just as she is lying, face down, they use her sexually (use her sexually?), like animals. Not two men, three. He takes out the paintings notebook and jots down: “Variation on the theme of the painter and his model, as done above all by Picasso: the model with two or three men, and the painter watching and painting, or with a video camera.” He takes out the videos notebook and “Reflect on pornography in video.” Then he does a couple of sketches of Helena in soft pencil on sheets of paper. He also takes out his camera and photographs her. He takes advantage of the time she is asleep to finish up three of the half-finished paintings, plan five new ones, and read a brief guide to Jamaican art that he had picked up at the airport when they landed. When Helena wakes up they have sex again, and afterwards he dashes right down to the swimming pool and dives in.
He puts on a pair of shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He combs his hair in front of the mirror. He walks slowly down the steps. The reporter is waiting for him next to the pool. He is disappointed that he is not wearing a fedora with a press card sticking out of the hatband. His showing up in that Texan shirt, those dark glasses, and that can-do attitude were all annoying details that denoted a certain disregard. The reporter gets up from the lawn chair he’s been sitting on, comes over with his hand stretched out, and thanks him for agreeing to the interview. Ms. Sorrenti already informed them that he turned down other interviews. He is aware, he says, that the artist can ill afford to waste time. They think it will be better to do the interview there instead of waiting for him to get back, because, at poolside, in that gorgeous Caribbean sun a stone’s throw from the beach and the palm trees, the photographs will come out much better. From behind the palm trees, a bearded guy is approaching, wearing a khaki safari jacket; a couple of cameras dangle from his neck. He waves with one hand and buttons the last button of his fly with the other.
“This is the photographer. Would you mind sitting here in this lawn chair? Would you mind just wearing your swimming trunks? What made you choose Jamaica for your vacation?
•
“. . Ever since he was a child, he had known he would be an artist. When he was four years old they used to find him drawing in every nook and cranny of the house. In the dark, on any old scrap of paper. He would draw chairs, tables, stacks of dirty dishes, his father, his mother, the maid, and then he would show it all to his sister. At school he would draw (out of the teachers’ sight, in the back of his notebooks) medieval battles, or scenes from World War II, or aliens. Once a teacher had caught him sketching a Martian instead of following his math class. When he was fourteen, he had registered at the Escola Massana. .”
“The municipal art school, in Barcelona.”
“He did two years there. Then he took a year off from studying. On Sunday he would go to town squares and to spots around Montjuïc to paint, with a folding easel and a box of oil paints. He worked in a technical studio, as a draughtsman. The following year, when he came back from vacation, he tried to register at the Massana, but he was too late and couldn’t get in. He went to the Llotja. .”
“Another school. Picasso went there as a young man.”
“Picasso!”
“He studied there for a year. He painted still lifes, plaster sculptures, live models. He dreamed of having a show. He sent a drawing, which was rejected, to the Ynglada-Guillot competition, and another to the Joan Miró competition, with the same result.”
“Those are two drawing awards. You’ve never heard of them?”
“The following year, he continued studying, but now on his own. He submitted another entry for the Joan Miró award and, this time, he came out forty-second on the list of entries. This had delighted and frustrated him at the same time: so close to an honorable mention, and yet not quite there. . In desperation, he convinced a friend (whose father had a bar in La Sagrera). .”
“A neighborhood in Barcelona.”
“He convinced a friend (whose father had a bar in La Sagrera) to talk the man into letting him hang his paintings on the walls of the bar. They did the show, which no one but the habitués of the bar attended (and all they noticed and mentioned to the proprietor of the establishment was that they didn’t care for those somewhat stylized paintings of nudes; they preferred the girls on the Damm beer calendars). .”
“Damm is a brand name.”
“The shows he saw at the gallery of the Architects’ Guild, across from the Barcelona cathedral, led him to ponder the issue of the artist in relation to his surroundings at length. He then went through a fervent period of abstraction. Thanks to the articles Alexandre Cirici Pellicer wrote in. .”
“Alexandre Cirici Pellicer was an art critic. Serra d’Or is a monthly magazine, published by the monks at the monastery of Montserrat. .”
“?”
“No. Not the Caribbean island. The mountain outside Barcelona. .”
“Thanks to the articles Alexandre Cirici Pellicer wrote in the section on art in Serra d’Or he learned about the existence of minimalism, conceptualism, happenings, earth art, arte povera. He went through a radical transformation. He abandoned abstraction, canvas, and acrylic (in his latter abstract period he had finally, not without regrets, switched from oil to acrylic) and, in light of the sheer expense of other media, had opted for photocopies. His first photocopy was of a package of Avecrem Chicken Soup, which he titled Homage to Andy Warhol.”
“Avecrem is a brand of instant soup mix. .”
“Pleased with that experiment, he had done photocopies of a package of Maggi garden vegetable soup, and of a package of Knorr chicken noodle soup, titling them respectively, Homage to Andy Warhol 2 and Homage to Andy Warhol 3. He cut out a strip from El Capitan Trueno. .”
“El Capitan Trueno means ‘Captain Thunder’. It was a very popular comic book. .”
“He cut out a strip from El Capitan Trueno and enlarged it on the sly in the photo lab of the advertising firm he worked at (a subsection, as a matter of fact, of the most important printing house in the city, which specialized in labels). Then he stuck a one-pesseta stamp with Franco’s face on it in a corner, made photocopies of it, and titled it Homage to Lichtenstein. Just as he had done on feeling so pleased with the result of the photocopy of the concentrated soup package, he now repeated the operation with a strip from Roberto Alcázar y Pedrín and another from Pequeño Pantera Negra (likewise enlarged at the photo lab of the studio where he worked).”
“Two more comic books: Roberto Alcázar y Pedrín were the names of the characters, like a local Batman and Robin, and the other one means Little Black Panther (no relation to the American Black Panthers). .”
“He christened them Homage to Lichtenstein 2 and Homage to Lichtenstein 3. Having done these photocopies with the stamp in one corner, he repeated the Roberto Alcázar y Pedrín one but now placing the stamp over Alcázar’s face in such a way that this time it appeared to be Franco who was slugging the evildoer. He considered the work original enough not to warrant the ‘Homage’ epigraph and (after much back and forth between Good Guys and Bad Guys, Comic Book Heroes, and even Comic Book Hero) he decided on the latter. All that year he devoted himself to producing photocopies following this new plasticity (becoming ever more conscious of the value of art as a political tool), and the next time the Joan Miró award period was announced, he submitted a photocopy of a drawing by Joan Miró, juxtaposed with a photocopy of the ‘Help Wanted’ section of La Vanguardia Española.”