Art is Hard

“Well this is interesting,” Vanderbrook says quietly to me.  Interesting.  His visage does not suggest intrigue.  Nonplussed is more appropriate.  He stands with his chin set in hand, rubbing his finger under the nose, eyes fixated on the girl before us: Jenna: sophomore from Indiana here on a full-ride.  Vanderbrook stares, eyes straining.  He tries to comprehend what is happening before him.  His finger continues to oscillate, as he remains indecisive.  Shoulders hunched over as his eyes flit, trying so hard.  He runs his hand through his feral, wiry jet-black hair.  He looks at me.  I smile.

Outside, in the courtyard, I ask, “So, what did you think?”  Vanderbrook tosses bits of gravel from the ground into the fountain.  He watches the ripples fade, follows the pieces of terra cotta falling toward the bottom of the bronze fountain—emerald and jade from years of neglect.  “Hmm,” he turns to face me, “oh, right.  Yeah, I—uh—thought it was… something.  That last girl we saw.  Wow.”  He chuckles.  “She’s one of yours?”  I nod.  “Jenna, yes.  She is a part of the Institute’s pride.  They recruited her.”  Vanderbrook looks at me.  “You recruit people.  For art?  You can do that?  You do that?”  I sit down on the edge of the fountain.  “Not me.  But, yes, the Institute does recruit students—just like any other university or college.”  He shuffles some gravel around with his feet, kicking up red gravel.  “Wild.”  He looks at the dispersing crowd, back to me.  “And she’s one of your students?”  I chuckle.  “Yes.”  That smirking grin forms on Vanderbrook’s face.  “Did you teach her how to do that?” Rolling my eyes, “No.  I didn’t teach her to do that.”  “I mean… all’s fair in love and war, I guess, but that.  I’ve never seen anything like that before.  I don’t know.  You’re the artist, not me.  You tell me.”  “So does this mean you did not like it?”  The smirk grows.  “Uh… well… you know me.”  “Yes.  I do.”  “I’d thought I’d just check out the modern crowd.  You know, see what’s hip, see what the cool kids are doing.  So this is in right now?  What—uh—Jessica is doing in there?”  I sigh, “Jenna.”  Vanderbrook nods.  “Right.  Gotcha.”  He hesitates.  I know what’s next.  “And this is art?”  I get up from the fountain.  Hands on my hips, I lean my head back and look up: a few cumulus clouds in the robin egg blue sky, the sun off somewhere in the distance just above the horizon.  “Does that not meet your requirements?”  He shrugs.  “I don’t know.  I guess I just don’t know what art is.  I suppose rubbing two chicken breasts all over your naked body still qualifies as art.  I don’t know.  Perhaps it’s a bit too conceptual for me.  I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, or just don’t get it.  I mean I think I do, but—uh—at the end of the day she was just rubbing two pieces of Colonel Sanders up against her.  I don’t know.  I guess I start to wonder what the hell art is anymore.”  I smile.  You’re not alone.

Right in the heart of Art Quarter, off Price Street, was where Paul lived.  On the weekends my peers and I visited him.  The Leader.  The Inspiration.  His studio was always full of unfinished sculptures, canvases, pieces of paper with blotches of paint, or ink, scribbled lines, the word fuck and piss written with scrupulous intensity.  Madness.  Genius.  Artist.  In Paul’s studio—breathing in the thick scent of acrylic paints, the rubber erasers being burnt, the wet clay—I felt as if I was witnessing the apical moment in art.  I was there in the center of the construct.  Paul was the paragon.  We would sit around him and listen as he chained smoked American Glamours and told us about art—broke it down to a near scientific level.  He stripped away the façade and showed us the intricacies, straightened the curves, cleared the morass.  We would come in droves to hear him speak for hours—mostly freshmen, the occasional sophomore or transferred junior. New faces every week, friends and roommates being brought along to witness Paul.  We were learning the Truth.  Subjects and concepts and angles our professors never bothered teaching, Paul did.  His word was infallible.  A few students brought in their work for him to critique.  This works.  This sucks.  We became attached to his every word.  As much as it was about his lessons, it was also about Paul.  He would discuss his next project—always in secrecy.  “It’s going to be something.  I’ve been working on it for a long time now.”  Weeks he kept us waiting to witness his “new direction” for art.  We were enthralled.  We could not escape.  I remember talking with my roommate, Kim, about it.  Some new sculpture, or design, something for an exhibition?  Pure conjecture.  Our minds flooded from the deluge of unkempt imagination.  “It’s going to, like, change the whole art scene,” Kim told a few of us while we walked up to Paul’s studio.  The day had come: Paul’s Revelation.  My partner in Human Anatomy, Raj, said he did not study for the exam because he was too excited for the announcement.  “This is going to be huge. I just know it,” Kim asseverated before we entered.

Paul walked peripatetically in the circle, adorned in black.  His fingers massaging his cheeks before he halted.  He scanned the crowd.  “I think I have created the next step.”

We all looked at one another.  From the void someone asked: “What is it?”

“I have decided… that this next step, my next piece, will be on,” he paused for dramatic effect, eyeing the crowd, “thievery.”

Some looked around.  Others kept focus on him.  Kim stared vigilantly.  No one spoke.  Paul had crossed his arms and showcased his triumphant smile.  Everyone appeared to be in awe.  I looked to Raj.  He was nodding his head.  So was Kim.  Others followed.  This made sense to them.

“Thievery?” I asked, breaking the silence.  Kim and Raj looked at me, backing away slightly.  I noticed the attention of the entire studio.

Paul looked straight through me.  “Yes.  I plan on searching around the city and taking things, anything, and putting it on display.  Anything that moves me: that is art.”

The others started to nod again.  Paul observed the complacency.  He loved it.

“But isn’t that like—uh—stealing?” I asked.  Confused.  People were becoming agitated.

“No,” Paul said calmly.  “It’s art.  I’m pushing the boundaries… wait, no.”  He thought for a moment.  “I’m expanding the boundaries,” he motioned with his hands.  Paul walked over to a display and picked up an ovoid-shaped ball made from coat hangers.  “We are running out of places to go with this,” he tossed it to the floor.  “It’s either advance or retrograde.  I’m not prepared for that—turning back.  We need to move forward.  Ever forward.  That’s the only way.”

“But… like… you’re going to be taking stuff—like expensive things?”

“If it moves me, yes.  This is about the art, not about what is being stolen.  This is about expansion.  This is about the perpetuation of art.  If the only way to expand our boundaries is to start tearing down the separation between art and life, then so be it.  The lines are meaningless anyway.  Where do they exist?”  Paul looked for an answer.  The studio remained quiet.  “Nowhere.  The subject is the art.  The act is the art.  Life is art.  I’m not really stealing, just creating art.”

I was mystified.  Was this part of the Truth? 

“I’m trying to make art.  I’m trying to make something beautiful.  That’s what I want to do.  We have to expand the boundaries so everything exists within, so only one thing exists—and that’s beauty.  Beauty is the only thing that can exist.  Create beauty.  That is our responsibility.  That is our concern.  Our creed.  In a world of nothing, concepts are the only truth, the only way—concepts are beauty.  This is the new path, the new way.  We’ve reached the end.  I’ve done it.  You are all witness to this moment.  I solved art.”

“Wow.  That was amazing,” Kim said as we walked down Price, passing all the galleries displaying canvases with smeared paint and cubes and sculptures of emptied marshmallow and potato chip bags, a door that opened to a wall.  “I can’t believe it.  It’s so obvious now that I think about it.”  The group nodded.  “I know.  That was so worth it,” Raj said.  “What was with you in there?” he asked me.  They turned to me.  I had no answer.  I shrugged my shoulders and moved to the back of the posse.  Was that the Truth?  I could not make sense of anything.  He seemed so sure.  The others nodded obsequiously.  But I was left questioning the lesson.  What good would come from expanding boundaries if they were illusory in the first place?  And if any attempt at applying rules, or guidelines, or any structure whatsoever was ultimately absurd, or futile, then wasn’t his declaration per se pointless?  I had no answers.  No one did.  His lesson consisted of nothing more than a long sequence of koans for me to solve.  Was that his plan the whole time?  A didactic lesson I just did not comprehend.  Or was he just an idiot?  Years have passed and I’m still working on it.  One question in particular I continue to mull over is perhaps the most important, and most basic:

What justification is there for absolutisms cemented in such a construct?

“I just think it’s a load of bullshit, ya know?” Vanderbrook stands next to me.  “Don’t get me wrong, Vera.  I mean, I get it.  I do.  But that was total bullshit,” he chuckles.  “Starvin’ babies in Africa and she’s rubbing chicken all over her tits.  I don’t know.  That sounds mean.  I just…” he laughs, shrugging it off.  “What are they going to think of next?  Where do you go from here?”

I smile.  Just wait.