Patron of the Arts
by William Rotsler
Part of this novel first appeared in Vertex, © 1973
Mankind Publishing Co.
Copyright © 1974 by William Rotsler
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
1
She stares out at you from her cube of near blackness, calm, quiet, breathing easily, just looking at you. She is naked to the hips, where a jeweled girdle encircles her, and she sits regally on a pile of luxurious pillows. Her long white hair cascades down over her apricot-colored shoulders and is made to shimmer slightly by some hidden light.
As you come closer to the life-size sensatron the vibrations get to you. The startling reality of the three-dimensional image cannot be overstated, for Michael Cilento’s portrait of one of history’s greatest society courtesans is a great work of art.
As you view the cube the image of Diana Snowdragon stops being quite so calm and in some subtle way becomes predatory, commanding, compelling. She is naked, not nude. The drifting bell sounds of melora musicians are heard . . . almost. The power of her unique personality is overwhelming, as it is in person, but in this artist’s interpretation there are many other facets exposed.
Diana’s sensatron cube portrait is universally hailed as a masterpiece. The subject was delighted.
The artist was disgusted and told me that the ego of the subject prevented her from seeing the reality he had constructed. But it was this cube that gave Michael Benton Cilento the fame he wanted, needed, and hated. This was his first major sensatron cube and cubes were just then beginning to be used by artists, instead of scientists. It was becoming “fashionable” to be working in sensatrons then and everywhere there was shop talk of electron brushes, cilli nets, multilayer screens, broadcast areas, blankers, and junction symmetry. Sensatrons are the ultimate marriage of art and science. At least so far. The sciences are constantly supplying tools to the artists, whether it be fade-safe paint that will be bright a thousand years from now, or an electron brush to make meticulous changes in a scan pattern. Already the quiver groups are exploring the new brain-wave instruments that create music only in the brain itself.
But the sensatrons are the rage of the moment. Just as the shimmercloth fashions of the quiver generation were seized by the media and exploited, the advertising world is impatient for immense sensatrons to be made possible, building-size product replicas with “Buy me!”
shouting in your forebrain. In anticipation I have started one of my research labs on a blanker device to shut out the anticipated electronic noise.
The cubes can be so eerily lifelike that the rumors of them taking a piece of your soul persist. Perhaps they are right. Not only do the cameras capture the exterior, providing the basis from which the sensatron artist works, but the alpha and beta recorders, the EEG
machines, the subtle heartbeat repeaters, all record what is going on within. Many artists use a blending of many recordings taken over a period of sittings. Some use single specific moments or moods, each recorded and then projected by the differentiated sonic cones and alpha-beta projectors. Along with these projections the artist adds his own interpretation, creating an almost musical concerto of waves, working upon any human brain within the area of reception. It is still the prerogative of the artist to select, eliminate, diminish, or whatever he desires. Some sensatron portrait artists put in the emotional warts as well as the strengths, and others are flatterers. Some artists are experimenting with switched recordings, woman for man, animal for subject, pure abstracts substituting for reality. Every one that attempts it brings to it a new point of view.
All Mike Cilento wanted to do is project the truth as he saw it. Perhaps he did peel off a layer of soul. I have stood next to the living model of a sensatron portrait and found the cube much more interesting than the person, but only when the artist was greater than the subject. Mike’s
portrait
of
society’s
most
infamous—and
richest—wanton made him famous overnight. Even the repro cubes you can buy today are impressive, but the original, with its original subtle circuits and focused broadcasts, is staggering.
A collector in Rome brought Cilento to my attention and when I had seen the Snowdragon cube I managed an introduction. We met at Santini’s villa in Ostia. Like most young artists he had heard of me. We met by a pool and his first words were, “You sponsored Wiesenthal for years, didn’t you?” I nodded, wary now, for with every artist you help there are ten who demand it.
“His Montezuma opera was trash.”
I smiled. “It was well received.”
“He did not understand that Aztec anymore than he understood Cortez.” He looked at me with a challenge.
“I agree, but by the time I heard it, it was too late.” He relaxed and kicked his foot in the water and squinted at two nearly nude daughters of a lunar mineral baron who were walking by. He seemed to have made his point and had nothing more to say.
Cilento intrigued me. In the course of a number of years of
“discovering” artists I had met all types, from the shy ones who hide to the burly ones who demand my patronage. And I had met the kind who seem indifferent to me, as Cilento seemed to be. But many others had acted that way and I had learned to disregard everything but finished work and the potential for work.
“Your Snowdragon cube was superb,” I said.
He nodded and squinted in another direction. “Yeah,” he said. Then as an afterthought he added, “Thank you.” We spoke for a moment of the cube and he told me what he thought of its subject.
“But it made you famous,” I said.
He squinted at me and after a moment he said, “Is that what art is about?”
I laughed. “Fame is very useful. It opens doors. It makes things possible. It makes it easier to be even more famous.”
“It gets you laid,” Cilento said with a smile.
“It can get you killed, too,” I added.
“It’s a tool, Mr. Thorne, just like molecular circuits or dynamic integration or a screwdriver. But it can give you freedom. I want that freedom; every artist needs it.”
“That’s why you picked Diana?”
He grinned and nodded. “Besides, that female was a great challenge.”
“I imagine so,” I said and laughed, thinking of Diana at seventeen, beautiful and predatory, clawing her way up the monolithic walls of society.
We had a drink together, then shared a psychedelic in the ruins of a temple of Vesta, and became Mike and Brian to each other. We sat on old stones and leaned against the stub of a crumbling column and looked down at the lights of Santini’s villa.
“An artist needs freedom,” Mike said, “more than he needs paint or electricity or cube diagrams or stone. Or food. You can always get the materials, but the freedom to use them is precious. There is only so much time.”
“What about money? That’s freedom, too,” I said.
“Sometimes. You can have money and no freedom, though. But usually fame brings money.” I nodded, thinking that in my case it was the other way around.