Gasoline (10 page)

H
e
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
.”

“A Barcelona daily, very establishment.”

“It did occur to him, though, that if he sent the photocopies
tout court
, they might reject the entry, as it was clearly stipulated that the award was for drawing, so no matter how open they were to modern materials and attitudes, there always had to be a minimum of drawing. Rather than take a chance, he added a few light strokes with Faber Castell pastels and Alpino pencils. For the first time he had had to face the question of the purity of the artist, and for the first time had decided that if a bit of self-corruption (vis-à-vis the aesthetic ideas he was under the sway of at the time) in the use of pencils and pastel meant that his work was to be contemplated by thousands and perhaps even receive an honorable mention (he didn’t so much as dream of an award), then a bit of corruption was worth his while. He ended up in eighteenth place, which he considered something of a success, despite the repetition of the frustration of the previous year, not even receiving a mention. Fortunately, he was able to show a series of his photocopies in the Granollers Art Show.”

“Granollers is a city close to Barcelona with an outstanding country inn and restaurant:
La Fonda Europa
. . .
”

“As a result of his participation in that Art Show, his name appeared (along with those of the other thirty-eight participants) in the review that appeared on the art news page of
Serra d’Or
. He immediately bought a plastic folder with transparent compartments, labeled it
press clippings
, and filed the article away in it, taking great care to make note of the name of the magazine, the number of the issue, and the date on which it had appeared. Right about then he learned about a series of scholarships for art students sponsored by a well-known brand of sparkling wine from the Penedès region. He applied. Doing this had entailed composing a resumé, a primordial step in the life of an artist, the successful completion of which required both a great command of the written word (to shore up weak spots and gloss them over) as well as considerable restraint (so as not to appear self-important). The years proved him to be a master.”

“He sent it off, with great anticipation, together with a year-long project to study art in New York. He had vacillated between New York or Paris because, despite his realization that New York had been the center of the art world for decades now, Paris had, shall we way, sentimental appeal for him. As his mother said, ‘We Catalans think of Paris as our second home.’ In the meantime, he continued working in photocopies and extended his field of interest to photography (non-realistic photography, of course). He had been particularly interested in Polaroids, which obviated the whole bothersome development process, and which seemed to him—in a certain sense, regrettably—to be one-of-a-kind pieces. Unexpectedly, one day they notified him that he had received the grant, and that the official award ceremony would take place at the Barcelona headquarters of the renowned brand of sparkling wine. He was so overcome with joy that he got drunk that night (for the first time in his life) with the friend whose father had a bar in La Sagrera, with whom he still maintained a solid friendship. Not everything was a bed of roses, though: Humbert’s mother was disconsolate at her son’s imminent parting, which (in conjunction with the recent decision of her daughter, Humbert’s only sister, to live with a group of friends in a commune) was the partial cause, it would seem, of her having a nervous breakdown. Despite his attempts to convince her of the benefits for his career of a sojourn in the capital city of contemporary art, the woman would suffer a relapse every time she was reminded that his destination was, of all places, New York! (Her notion of which had been formed by the films of the forties and fifties—which was when she had gone to the movies—and, more recently, by television.) What’s more, she couldn’t quite get it through her head that he could have preferred New York to Paris, Paris being, as it was, a second home to Catalans. Despite all these obstacles, at the age of twenty-three the young man had landed at an airport which he had had a good deal of trouble discovering how to leave. He had jettisoned his job, his studies, his family, and a girlfriend he had been sharing with a classmate ever since his year at the Llotja.”

“Before he knew it, the year was over. He had studied a little, met few people, and mostly spent his time wandering around the city. When his scholarship was about to run out, he thought about his next step. After long sleepless nights weighing the pros and cons, he decided to stay, not only because since his move to New York they had cited him twice on the arts page of the aforementioned
Serra d’Or
without his having done a thing, but also because he knew—and he wrote a letter to this effect to his sister—that if he went back to Barcelona he would miss New York very,
very
much. When the scholarship was down to nothing, he found a job as a dishwasher in a Greenwich Village restaurant. The mental confusion that his collision with American art had produced was so great that, ever since his student visa had expired (and he had joined the ranks of the illegal aliens), he had stopped painting. How could he—a stranger in the metropolis—make a place for himself? And how would he know what one ought to be doing at any given moment? From one year to the next, ideas changed, and one pattern of behavior was exchanged for another
. . .
One day, up in arms, a painter friend of his (an ex-conceptualist who was currently a hyperrealist) told him about a book he had read on the so-called modern arts by the most prestigious practitioner of New Journalism. Humbert bought it and devoured it. He found it extraordinary. Where his friend had seen only a sterile send-up, Humbert discovered a critique of a variety of errors; where his friend had found ‘facile ironies without alternative proposals,’ Humbert saw a healthy study of certain excesses, laudable for opening the way for others—perhaps himself?—to correct them. It was apparent to him that if, from the early seventies on, galleries had ceased to sell as they had in the sixties, and if Americans had been basically unimpressed by the whole minimalist thing, the next step was to break away from all that. Confusion notwithstanding, he hadn’t shrunk from the task, and only once (after consuming a whole bottle of Kentucky bourbon with a stranger on the Bowery) had he considered abandoning painting and devoting himself to the jazz trumpet.”