by Quim Monzó
•
Humbert wakes up when the rays of sunlight hit his face with such intensity that it hurts. He opens his eyes, looks at his watch (1:30), and jumps out of the lawn chair. He does some push-ups. He thinks, “I wouldn’t mind having an orange juice now.” He leans on the porch rail and looks toward the pool. “I would love to paint a pool. If only it hadn’t been done so often . . .” He puts on shorts and thin-soled shoes. He goes toward the kitchen. He peels an orange. He eats it. He takes out four more, turns on the squeezer, and prepares himself an orange juice.
In the bungalow where he has his studio, he sits down at the table. Against the long wall rests a row of eight half-painted canvases. He gathers up the newspaper clippings, organizes them, and he reads snatches from them as he files them in different folders. The Times says, “Rarely in the history of contemporary art has there been a more meteoric rise than that of Humbert Herrera. We have certainly become accustomed, of late, to more or less rapid ascensions—a case in point being that of Heribert Julià, whose unfortunate accident is responsible for our making the acquaintance of Herrera, who, as Julià’s replacement, has produced his first, and definitive, exhibition . . .” La Reppublica says: “With the exception of Miró, the most renowned Catalan artist to precede Julià and Herrera, perhaps not since Picasso’s death has an artist so exclusively captured the attention . . .” Another, from O Globo: “After two solid decades of artistic disarray, of wave upon wave of pictorial fads, each superimposed one upon the other, finally one young man—and his youth must be stressed, for it holds out great hope for the art world—seems at last to have taken up the challenge of art as a totality, and has responded with a cohesive body of work which—though written off as a hodge-podge by envious pens—manages to make eclectic and unselfconscious use of elements taken from all the artistic trends of these years of confusion, from conceptualism to the new expressionism, to build an articulated body of work—perhaps the most coherent oeuvre of the post-modern aesthetic. Herrera plays all the chords of human sentiment and ratiocination, from tenderness to irony, to cynicism, thus taking up where the extraordinary momentum of Heribert Julià’s appearance little more than a year ago left off. Needless to say, the art world hopes that this new direction will be consolidated and not turn out to be, as has occurred on so many recent occasions, a mere promise, frustrated in the end . . .”
He looks through his mail. A postcard from Tokyo: “Even before opening, almost everything is already sold. Ciao, Xano.” A package: the finished catalog for the Milan exhibition. He closes his eyes to daydream. He’d like to celebrate the opening of the exhibition by turning off all the lights in Milan for one night; the only lights on would be those of the gallery. On a white sheet of paper filled with notes he writes: “Speak with Milan City Hall.” And when they ask why? Humbert observes that the lack of a theoretical framework, common to all the latest generation of painters, while handy on occasions, is problematic at other times. He takes a notebook from the desk drawer and writes: “Smooth out the rough edges of the theoretical framework, particularly with regard to alterations in the routines of big cities.” Another postcard from Xano, dated two days after the previous one: “Paintings not sold before opening are now sold. Keep up the good work! Big hug, Xano.” A letter from an Australian museum requesting more paintings. He thinks: “Odd that I don’t have any in New Zealand yet.” On the sheet full of notes he writes: “Find out what’s going on with New Zealand.” He takes another notebook out of the drawer with the word paintings on the cover and jots down: “Do a totally disconcerting and false landscape and title it New Zealand.”
He feels happy. There’s so much to do! The notebook labeled paintings is full of notes. “So many paintings I’ll never get to . . . Life is too short for all the work one could do. I ought to hire people, find a team of collaborators to assist me.” He takes out a notebook, the one where he wrote about smoothing out the theoretical framework—labeled ideas—and writes: “Find team of collaborators. Or commission paintings to others? Commission other artists to paint them? Would they be offended? How about selling them the ideas so that they can develop them, or use them as is?” He shuts the notebook and drops it on top of another one that says environments.
Helena is turning the gold doorknob on the bungalow door. Humbert jumps up from his chair and goes over to hug her. They kiss. Helena carefully spreads the contents of the bag she is carrying on the floor: cheeses, pâtés, spinach salad and cole slaw, apples, frozen yogurt, and a bottle of vodka. Humbert looks at the label, takes the paintings notebook out of the drawer, and writes: “Do fake labels.” Then he thinks better of it: he crosses it out, puts the book in the drawer, and takes out another one, labeled objects. He writes: “Do fake wine labels, fake jars, fake wrappings. Do cardboard boxes for liquid products: soup, wine . . . Do plastic bottles with fine wine labels. Do tin cans for champagne.”
“I’m starved . . .” Humbert says.
They eat the cheese, the pâtés, the salad and slaw, the apples, and the frozen yogurt. They open the vodka, drink from the bottle, and have sex on the floor. When they are finished, Humbert gets up, opens the paintings notebook, and writes: “Couples having sex, in many colors and extravagant positions.” He thinks for a moment and adds another line: “Totally black painting titled Love in the Dark.” In the environments book he writes: “A boxing ring completely covered over with a white sheet. Audience in bleachers. In the ring boxers fight unseen by audience.” He opens another notebook, labeled concepts, and writes: “A dictionary with all the ‘obscene’ entries crossed out and replaced with ‘proper’ entries. And vice-versa. Two dictionaries, then. Possible variations: rewriting of political, urbanistic, botanical, and psychological terminologies . . .” He shuts the notebook and looks at it. Though Helena didn’t see eye to eye with him at all on this, and thought that he would be better off tossing notebooks titled concepts and environments into the fire, he believes that those, shall we say, “objectual” styles of the previous decade, done with a little bit of flair, would not have passed under the art-business radar without a trace.
“Don’t you think conceptualism would have been more fruitful if it had been done with a little more style and wit?”
Helena doesn’t answer. She’s fast asleep. He looks closely at her, stretched out face down on the floor of the studio, amid the salad bowls and wine glasses. Two men burst through the door and, just as she is lying, face down, they use her sexually (use her sexually?), like animals. Not two men, three. He takes out the paintings notebook and jots down: “Variation on the theme of the painter and his model, as done above all by Picasso: the model with two or three men, and the painter watching and painting, or with a video camera.” He takes out the videos notebook and “Reflect on pornography in video.” Then he does a couple of sketches of Helena in soft pencil on sheets of paper. He also takes out his camera and photographs her. He takes advantage of the time she is asleep to finish up three of the half-finished paintings, plan five new ones, and read a brief guide to Jamaican art that he had picked up at the airport when they landed. When Helena wakes up they have sex again, and afterwards he dashes right down to the swimming pool and dives in.
He 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 bet
ween 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.”