As an interviewer, I quickly grasped that the key was to ingratiate myself with the subject, to be admiring, even humble, but not Heepish. (In an article, even Heepish would not be allowed to stand without explanation.) And then, after becoming suitably flattered and flaccid, the VIP might disgorge a verbal gem, a meaty indiscretion that could be used as a headline or a focus for my article, a word-for-word, wholly accurate quotation that caged the beast. I was a hunter for the media zoo. These techniques served me exceptionally well, and I found a niche for myself. I did my detective work, kept my sensitive auditory canals open and quivering, and familiarized myself with names, who was who and who was who to whom, and with my Crawler days long behind me, I found myself recognized as a cognoscente of the arts.
Culture in the big city is private business and much of its funding is in the hands of wealthy white women who, although they may not always have the dough themselves, vie for rising status as supporters of the arts. They gleam at benefit dinners, coiffed and perfumed and oiled and lifted, while their hubbies, exhausted from the rigors of deal-making, glance around them in confusion and snore through the rubber chicken. The worst must be the annual PEN dinner, where gloomy writers and gloomier publishers don ill-fitting, frayed tuxedos or dumpy dresses and hideous shoes to eye one another suspiciously as they mingle with the money. Whatever my circumstances, and, rest assured, they have often been close to dire, I am never anything less than well turned out. Hadn’t Mrs. Case, daughter of a plumber in Milwaukee, had a sharp eye for the “right” clothes and good grammar? Hadn’t she sacrificed to send her boy to the “right” schools? Had I been a scholarship runt at Yale for nothing?
And then, through my contacts (and hard work, I might add), I landed the plum, writing articles for The Gothamite on salary. They never would have hired me in the WASPy days of reliably dull but oh-so-clubby self-congratulation, but those days had passed, and they wanted a writer with a squirt of venom when needed. I was their man. The positively nubile, fresh-from-his-undergraduate-studies Anton Tish had made a splash at the Clark Gallery with his installation, The History of Western Art, and I was asked to write a “What’s On About Town” piece, a nod to the buzz. Jeff Koons had unveiled his Puppy a few years earlier, and I was expecting yet another silky huckster — not that I have anything against Koons. He is the American Dream.
Like every good reporter, I did my research. As it turned out, the excitement had been caused not by “Flashbulb! Giant topiary dog!” but by the kid’s supposedly prodigious brain. He had made a puzzle that art wonks were trying to solve, and furthermore, he was mum about it, a buff little boy-genius, who insisted that all people had to do was look and read “a little.” Yes, he admitted the gigantic sculpture of a woman spread out in the gallery was an overblown, three-dimensional allusion to Giorgione’s painting of Venus, finished by Titian; she was in the same position, asleep, one hand behind her head, another at her crotch, red bolster, ochre draperies swimming beneath her nudity. The gimmick: Illustrated Woman. Her creamy body was covered with hundreds of minute reproductions, photographs and texts, some framed, some not, each one “a thought”: Greek vase with the classical male porno themes, erestes and eromenos, Madonna and Child, crucifixions, still lifes, a note that said “Just the West, please.” RESTRICTED was etched on her thumb. PRIMITIVE was scrawled on her forehead. Some smart-ass from Art Assembly had written that the picture of a Brillo box on Venus’s left buttock referred to the philosopher Arthur Danto, who had claimed that art came to an end with Warhol’s Brillo. Quotes from Vasari and Diderot had been uncovered, as well as fragments of Goya’s and Van Gogh’s letters. The all-too-predictable feminist critics had zeroed in on a reproduction of a self-portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola, a Renaissance painter (whom, they claimed, Michelangelo had admired), in Venus’s exposed armpit — a ha-ha about the dumped-on and ignored, women in art history. A photograph of the artist taking a piss in what looked like Duchamp’s urinal, Fountain, complete with R. Mutt inscription, amused some. All this amounted to a tour de force.
There was lots of esoteric yammering about another sculpture in the room, a male mannequin dressed in a navy two-piece suit and red tie with his hands behind his back eyeing said naked lady. Deeply meaningful? Deeply unmeaningful? And what were those seven large wooden boxes scattered around her? The square crates were all numbered and had small barred windows, so curious visitors had to kneel and cut past one another to get a glimpse. Each “story” was lit from the inside to create an “eerie” light.
Story 1. Small girl figure stands on a chair looking out a window in a miniature bedroom with her arms raised and mouth open. On the floor is a nasty arrangement of dirty paper towels, rags, bits of lace, and yarn. Ugly brown, green, and yellow stains cover all. From under the bed a man’s arm protrudes, its hand clenched in a fist.
Story 2. Another room with sofa, two chairs, coffee table, bookshelves. On the table is a torn piece of paper with Don’t printed on it. Beside it: small wooden coffin with more words: she/he/it. Tiny painting hangs on wall. Portrait of figure looking much like girl in story 1 but boyish — arms raised, mouth open.
Story 3. Same room as story 2. Female figure, disproportionately large for room, must bend head to fit under ceiling, stares down at chair. Message?
Story 4. Disturbing fuzzy mammal, something like a rabbit, but not a rabbit, with two heads, lies on floor of bedroom in story 1. Loose letters cut from construction paper are scattered on the bed: G R A T E L O O T Y.
Story 5. Bathroom. Disproportionately large figure from story 3 huddled on floor clutching portrait of child from story 2 to her chest. One leg sticks out doorway and through wall of box. Bathtub filled with mucky brown water. Aargh!
Story 6. Bathroom again. Tub drained but with dark ring. Floor piled with tiny books. One marked “M.S. 1818” appears to be leaking unidentifiable embryonic gelatinous something.
Story 7. Bedroom, living room, bathroom from stories 1–6, with extra room, a study lined with books. The two-dimensional figures of a smiling man and a smiling woman that appear to have been cut out from the same old black-and-white photograph lie beside each other on a rug. Boy child stands in open doorway looking in, holding portrait of girl child up over his head.
And who was this enfant terrible, born and bred in Youngstown, Ohio, attended Chaney High, liked his parents, met lots of “cool people” at the School of Visual Arts, thought New York was “great”? He played the naïf perfectly, the Forrest Gump of visual art, befuddled by sudden success, but he knew enough to carry it off. Large brown eyes darting off here and there as he considered the question. Big grin when asked about influences. Mentions Goya, Malevich, Cindy Sherman. “Basically, it’s a conceptual thing, you know.” A boy who looked as if he had started shaving last week became an instant hit. Then, after that single show, he disappeared. Like Cady Noland before him, he stopped showing art.