Business as Usual
Forum > Artbashby william blake 29 Jan 2010 6:07 pm
13 Comments
Article of the Month January 2010
Leonard Fox paused in his writing to scan the horizon; aquamarine became azure rising to cerulean, a grey lizard crabbed from the shade of a stone to stare at him; it was 30 degrees in the shade. Leonard flipped the postcard over and it showed a remarkably similar horizon, except with dozens of small white plastered cubes, stepping down to the sea; the cubes all had identical cerulean blue windows. The postcard was to send to his mother in New Zealand.
It was another postcard that had set Leonard on the path that found him lying by the pool and owning the luxury modernist villa on the Greek Island of Spanakopita.
After a spectacularly modest career as a landscape painter, Leonard had hit upon the postcard plan. It was a simple plan and all that it needed was courage and time and nothing to loose. He sent postcards to MOMA, the Tate, and various Guggenheims and to all of the top galleries. He sent postcards to all of the big art magazines and the best dealers and then included them in his curriculum vitae.
With this magnificent CV Leonard was a shoe in for a CNZ ‘just let loose- 100% pure Kiwi’ travel grant; which produced more carefully chosen postcards from around the world. Soon anyone who considered themselves important in the art world hungered for a Leonard Fox postcard.
Now Leonard was rich and was living in exile from his Porrirua roots. It was a burgeoning exile managed by his gravel voiced agent Nigel Healy. Nigel had turned the postcards into cash and then into real estate or as he explained to the tax man the ‘manufactories of the raw production’ and grudgingly secured a fine concession from the revenue. Leonard and Nigel now owned thirteen deluxe properties around the world.
Leonard picked up his Mont Blanc and put his mothers address in the allocated space below the stamp and wondered about a beginning. Just then Nigel appeared, clinking with drinks.
“Who’s the postcard for Len?” he asked casually handing Leonard a tall, icy faintly blue drink.
“My mother back in New Zealand” he replied.
“What?” Nigel choked slightly while sipping on his gin. “You can’t fucking do that!” he coughed,” don’t you understand what an unproductive work like that could do to your stock?”
“…But its to my Mum” he replied weakly in a squeaky voice, as Healy took the card.
“No…no…no” scolded Nigel and flicked the card casually but accurately over the marble terrace into the azure.
Paul Gibbon had just made the breakthrough: it was a small lozenge of paint in the bottom corner of a giant striped painting. The stripes were in tones of grey: yellow grey, blue grey and light grey. The major passages were applied with house painting brushes and rollers but the finishing detail was worked up in glazes using the biggest kolinsky sable brush that money could buy. Gibbon had long ago dispensed with canvass had worked through plywood, then aluminium panel and now painted exclusively on titanium sheet which floated exactly 5mm from the wall and was custom made in Finland. The who
Way like, but time to change the picture...
Hyperventilating into a paper bag of promise. The obstruction and the perilous folly settles upon thee. Not to mention these idle wings that follow, inevitably sending for one little green light on a makeshift radar. So much a warning as a savior as it flashes like a fire tower in the fog. It is Hermes fast approaching on the horizon, his purpose like the vicissitudes of time is as clear as the waters he arrives in on.
To confiscate thou vessel.
And so he does with a tortoise in one hand and a cock in the other. He takes it sailing on a joyride, spinning, laughing, into a glorious pink sunset. It is sincere he sweats for thee on these rainy nights of truth, like the necessary priest set to marry thou thoughts and verses together. And all is for the greater good.
We went to the estuary where Hone Heke saw out his days and we got bushed. When we made it to the flats the tide was way out and a strong sea breeze was blowing. At the tide line we saw kahu kiting in the wind, fishing. I said to the dog that's unusual. Lil' dog said she must be pretty hungry and ran away and barked at some oyster catchers and made them fly.
If it is our problems that guide us, then is it likewise a problem that a carcass floats to the surface after three or four days of sinking. Kahu knows this and so does the Lil' dog, but he doesn't let on because he wishes to roll in it, once your back is turned.
So far art must reach to temple the forces beyond these moments of obstruction. And it wouldn't be difficult now if it were not for the moments cursed by the rhapsodies that give way to it. Ironically the anticipation of a floating cadaver is a challenge no artist could do without, and I think an experience no artist has ever or will ever fail to comprehend.
Floating cadaver? laura Palmer?
Truth.
"I have to make what I see, whether it's a painting, a table, or a movie, or it's like a death and what would be the point of that?" - David Lynch
