excerpted from a novel in progress
To understand the aesthetic terminus humanity has arrived at in the late twentieth century, as I am fond of telling my yet-attending students whose lingering educational capacities have not been fully extinguished within The Hotel California proverbial, is to cultivate an advance nostalgia, to have fond memories of an apocalypse yet before us.[1] Alone, I have more than what can be fully accounted here in a treatise. In the classroom, should one of those students ask me for my own mem-impressions (preferably after the lecture explaining this concept, I request to no avail), I must liken it to the academic institution where they both reside and take fear from, that which keeps and kills their interest in a building of brick and some paint, maybe a preponderance of doors as well I step through with books under my arms, while someone like or, better still, unlike myself speaks of a Time that belonged to no one, that no one bore witness, that left no history behind. Then the congregation, in whatever form, leaves. Everyone is gone, having learned what they came to learn (in theory) or what they were required to learn or what they could get from someone else later, though now they hover over the perusal of what will become their mem-impressions. They have no cause to raise their hands off their desks as they once did for my attention, as if to say, “I win!”, and then await my stubborn confirmation of their victory, never to arrive. Why should I bother, or anyone else who understands? The world, this universe, has come about-face upon its end that has already happened. A useless gesture is no gesture at all. This is perhaps the easiest way I can convey the notion to a first-term freshman from Sacramento or thereabouts.
We will never again need histories that never happened. Those we may think of as a simple house: a recorded rectangular perimeter apparatus of constituent material(s) and assorted fixative unguents located next to the archetypal pond selective of spiritual anchor or impediment to gross material existence, a prefabricated design of various consolidated myths and folklore shared to color the landscape settled. The venture may be, and has been, considered successful by its architects as long as no other sentience is around to witness the private enjoyment of its resulting indiscreetness, i.e., a collective of transparent eyeballs or a Universal Creator, the latter being also a sub-recorded rectangular perimeter apparatus of even greater (in)consistent material often demanding extended lubrication so that it may gently squeeze and locate itself within such a house, minimal vacillating exertion applied if possible. In all, then, a wasted effort. For the enumerations, economies and apertured ceilings shared between the vast number of artful encumbrances born in passing fancy—the language of Adam, the heavens of Botticelli and Michaelangelo, the many faces of Buddha—none have come from a Time not touched by apocalypse’s residual preparations conveyed retroactively. Thus, what has been made by humanity which is inherently true unto itself? What sound, form or language is not artifice down to an infinitesimal degree?
Not to say we should avoid worrying about anything. Even I have the infrequent skeptic, a student who will stay after class, for instance, feeling a bit mortally wounded and guilty, they tell me, mostly from my lecture in tandem with their not doing the required reading that day. How many participation points will they lose because of it? they ask. I think it is good that some of them worry about points despite I don’t think points are all that important anymore, least of all to others who are concerned with a house or a duck flying east alone and having its spirit burdened by the observing human on the ground, as though naked to Heaven itself. Then, on occasion, there may be a moment when I am seated after I finish my lecture, when I do not feel an overwhelming desire to leave the classroom as quickly as my students do, and I feel comfortable. Perhaps this is because they are leaving me or because I know one (or, so help me, two, three) will stay awhile and wait to follow up with me about something other than missed readings and lost participation points. Perhaps it is also because I wait, for instance, for one of them to kidnap me at gunpoint or unravel a fantastic tale of an extended absence that I am only now becoming aware of, the latter featuring a premise so mind-bogglingly incomprehensible that I must remain seated to show I can take as well as give, that I can let them play my role in unerring precision of sitting, listening, remembering the koan of the Japanese Zen master who told his acolytes that all the wisdom he could impart would be like throwing shit on their heads; whereupon I charge myself not to forget the many kinds of excrement this world gives form to, especially in the absence of history, since this student will not let me return to my home-in-theory, forcing me to provide further wisdom under duress, including:
At this point in the conversation, I would be on the verge of using an especially notable 18th century French prisoner to illustrate how apprehension can be delineated so, one such writer inclined to use his own excrement because he was deprived of formal ink because no one wanted him to write ever again. This prisoner, having already thrown too much literal and figurative shit upon other peoples’ heads (and arguably far more than what had been legally, socially, and educationally prescribed then), suffered the further indignation of a lackluster diet of meager bread and water in the hopes by his jailors, we can assume, of his producing an inferior quality of pickled writing material. One cannot be finicky of such things, however, I explain to my students, as I note smaller details among them, such as their wearing a sweatsuit ensemble proclaiming loyalty to a rival and / or former academic institution they likely transferred from.
Such is the transubstantiation of bread and water in its many forms. For many years I had wanted to teach at higher quality institutions in this sprawling metropolis to improve my diet and its subsequent results; in the interim, so to speak, I used different combinations of varieties of bread and water that the department chair and administration were not privy to admonishing any faculty about, especially those tenured professors who were recognized authorities in their respective field of study. Pro Tem and other non-tenured faculty, as is usually the case, bore the brunt of proclamations cast down with such detail and force that often it was forecasted weeks in advance with a sacrificial lamb incurring the displeasure of someone above; yet in this interim, I would be left to act on my own initiative which, soon enough, carried the unofficial imprimatur of excrement, the shit dribbling out in a thin, consistent stream which gave the appearance of moving furiously on its own, if one stared at it and recalled the birth of rivers and gorges eons ago which must have begun with a single drop of primordial something that none of us will ever know for certain.
This is usually the merciful point where I stand with a muted groan and tell my lingerers to not worry about the reading, they can catch up later, the suggestion of which—catching up, that odd colloquialism—sometimes affected my students as much as my lectures, if not more so (it is difficult to read the body language coming from those sweatsuit ensembles). This quiet insult I have laid before the feet of these students, belying my being aware it is now officially the weekend where very little catching up is done, in my well-honed experience, and where there is nothing but egress and regress for them, bounding in joy over possibly extolling to their financial benefactors, Look at the quality of my institutional studies where nothing terrible has happened to me, overzealous with their gesticulational trauma they feel compelled to show, assuring any concerned supervisors that funds are being depleted with little or no gain to show for it. Nothing can be lost upon them in such decrees when any losses have been deemed satisfactory in an institution inclined towards the general happiness of the future to come.
Except for this previous academic year. A miserable slog, when everyone, it seemed to me, did poorly, students, colleagues, administrators, all so poorly, capped by the Division III soccer team’s failure to repeat as the conference champions despite lofty prognostications by the newly installed Interim Provost who was brimming with optimism. Thus, all parties failing to find out for themselves the importance of consecutive anything, everything was left to change or chance between the extending circles of our collective educational wave where nothing improves (least of all, bread and water), where the changes or chances never get better, where my students keep amongst themselves in their miniature, perfect castles with bulwarks raised so high and inside no insult can lay waste to them. Such is the appropriative value of latent memories of the apocalypse which will inure them from the mysterious, indeterminate f) category of excrement they may be wary of because of my omitting it, if its existence has been predicated on something they have done, mostly out of convenience’s sake, or their hovering apprehension of the institution itself, a fairly common occurrence after the first year of studies, particularly when one withstands my lectures, when the sweatsuit ensembles begin to wear and fray to their essential meaningless components once held together under duress for the sake of esprit de corps. The collective unconsciousness may inhibit awareness of the different transcriptions of excrement from institution to institution, to be sure, though only a raucous cheer from the campus quad is needed for my students to buoy themselves with certain victory, which no amount of catching up could possibly thwart. Yet that cheer did not arrive for us this past year.
Not quite done. There was the remaining matter of the conspicuous terms left behind from the deathly secluded bookworm some of my students concerned themselves with, perhaps a gesture of self-punishment by catching up on the ineffectual lore of the single, solitary home in the woods which they already knew could not have existed since there has never been the corresponding substance comfort (not my concept, they somehow found this from another professor, which perturbs me) to manifest the physical forms of failure. I will keep reading and reading, they cried in unison, before the inescapable material reality of death renders me a loser with a house—thank you, professor! And away they scurried, before I had the opportunity to correct them on any level I could have possibly imagined for their benefit.
Abundant literary matter to consult aside, we may regard the posture of accepting timelessness in the complete absence of histories with the hypothetical of a demented Vermeer, who perhaps could suddenly decide to abandon painting that luminous girl with the pearl earring and instead park himself on a wooden bench in the middle of a public garden. There, while excavating what was left of his work clothes amongst the flowers and the unfortunate bushes not sculpted for both sitters and shitters, his mind races, Don’t have I accounts to tend to, don’t I—as a flugelhorn sounds from a nearby building which, in another few centuries or so, will become an office space no one visits because the public gardens are far too pleasant by the new standards, building codes enacted with new safety features against earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, landslides, chemical spills, nuclear fallout, shortages, outages, investigations, incompletions, consternations, reductions, redactions, fracking, and, most importantly, future legislation. Vermeer, whose affinity for suffering was kept secret from many, including himself, had warranted himself a painting of the girl with a pearl earring as a case study for the predilection of memory itself spanning an array of well-honed artistic techniques, to create one of many notions of the pre-apocalypse without realizing, up until that moment on the bench, he had been working from the post-apocalypse instead (along with his other Dutch contemporaries). A memory corrupted by its own imperfect sense of memory, thus leading, I argue, to false ends. Bowing to his godless ways leading him down the path of unassailable Time, he trapped the girl with a pearl earring long before casting his final brushstrokes. Yes, the painting is and remains to this day finished, as is said; however, this gives Vermeer no more authority over his subject than a writer quoting a book makes themselves available to the incoming doom.[2] Time does its perpetual process of ironing itself out into the smooth consistency that is memory which becomes history, though only when left to its own devices, while the unadulterated prick of consciousness in the artist forever obsesses over the last, best art they will have to show when company leaves them.
This brings me to the essential work of formerly famed Abstract Expressionist of The End, Dreyfus Lent. To find another living artist today who has been so casually dismissed as irrelevant despite having cultivated that irrelevance from the start and returning it ten-fold upon the public engaged in the dismissing is nearly impossible while the skyscrapers of the world remain standing. The circumspection and introspection of the current art world, often leading the public it supposedly serves to the fault lines of wars to come, and in their myriad forms, has consistently eschewed refined distillations of those disastrous epochs, whether through the routine (dis)figurations of yore or the latter-day techno-screeds of mechanical installations left to run amok on their own. The viewers of art, whether they realize it or not, have been cheated out of the fundamental practice of Time as a result: the hating of having to be here. As they are subverted from denying themselves, they are also left with no mem-impressions of the previous apocalypse, thus are given to the pejorative flights of fancy which render them outside this world. There is something that does not love a wall, says the punctual late-comer Frost; yet, instead of fully engaging in this universal truth by not speaking it, art today puts a wall in front of the viewer to reinforce the briefest of sentiment, the language of weeping, the same forbidden speech of love it confusedly sets out to ruin.
Dreyfus Lent presents no wall. He presents nothing made by human hands. There is much doubt in some art circles that any of his paintings are done by the conventional transmission of paint to (untreated) canvas, owing to his unique application fields method which has made him, sadly, both a source of public curiosity and indifference, an itch to be scratched, then promptly forgotten. While the cool, psychologically elaborate constructs of the Minimalists continue at present to wreak their understated havoc upon the major metropolitan art museums of the U.S., a flawed projection of a sanitizing zeitgeist that seems to spread across the country like bamboo or other invasive organic species, Lent’s charged, earthy relatives of that movement are being turned away from, spurned at the cultural doorway after an enthusiastic initial reception which saw his name mentioned among the other darlings of Abstract Expressionism during the 1950’s and 60’s. Perhaps that in of itself was the turning point for Lent, as such an inclusion with contemporaries can only be the submission to history which his work so forcibly seeks to efface. Too many hands doing their worthless business of creation, Lent’s paintings profess, and not nearly enough given to the end of culture, to the bowing down to forces well beyond the provenance of human control and comprehension. There is something that does not love a painting, Lent’s unspoken credo sings out for the barely invested gallery-walker, the suburban dilettante, the upper-echeloned scene-elites. Though these people and many others may be consciously aware of some nagging distaste of Lent (“I find his paintings to be terribly dry,” I recall one disappointed grandmother rendering her critique in front of me), discovering the true cause of his work is unavoidable nature folding Time back upon itself, a return to the very end that all have forgotten in the pleasant civilized realm of the art museum compartmentalizing the grand achievements of humanity, selling to the visitor ephemeral notions of progress, variety and, yes, fecundity which will always lay the foundation for the great works yet to be conceived, only dreamed of by those left behind. Such are the dreams Lent stamps out, the figurative smoldering cigarette butt left on the sidewalk, crushed under his heel. No more will be than this. If the paintings of Dreyfus Lent can be considered the last art of the twentieth century, then we must humbly accept these works as so, our own fate thrown into the balance along with them. What need of anything else, then, upon accepting this elliptical trajectory the universe has already sprung? And what does Lent himself do with the craft of his mysterious efforts, perpetually reminding him of what he does not know in history’s absence? My admiration for his prolific work, as well as the multiple reported instances of their undoing by him and others, is not without a tinge of regret, that perhaps the man, in his cumulative efforts by now, understands that neither himself nor his work should have existed on any plane.
For the longest period of ill-spent time, while sorting through the usual academic obligations at my office, it occurred to me: should I not reach out to Dreyfus Lent and convey these admiring thoughts of mine, and much more? Assuredly, I would not be the first local academic who wants to pay his way into the orgiastic hide-and-seek for this notoriously recalcitrant artist,[3] a man who has eschewed all interviews for over three decades all despite making the odd, infrequent cameo at a private party for some benefactor he has no regard for, likely wanting to prove the distaste for himself, or, stranger still, his appearances scattered across the desultory venues of Los Angeles that no artist of his stature (or age, for that matter) would consider showing his face at, many of which have become the fodder of gross rumor if not legend. He is, and was, someone who is seen out and about, albeit forgoing any semblance of approachability, should we believe word of mouth regarding his lack of conversational prowess and sense of current fashionable attire.[4] His work, now employed in a campaign of an extensive proliferation of replicas while his original paintings are either destroyed or disappear without his explanation, has found its way into seedier artistic enterprises, a veritable underground colony, as it were, of dead-end performers and musicians in southern California who treat his application fields as mere wallpaper, something to be wrapped up in and ignored altogether. The motive of inspiration and profundity of mem-impression has entirely stripped away of its cause célèbres; however, this development, I attest, has much in keeping with Lent’s patternless design for a city that has teetered on the edge of cataclysm for quite a while. Whether, too, such derelictions of his art are occurring at other U.S. cities remains something of an unknown to myself, though art historians have studied the trail of conspicuous interactions between the arrival of Lent’s paintings in a city which coincides with elevated paranoia of mass casualty events either before or after that arrival, the most well-known happening in Buffalo, New York a few years prior to a temporary exhibit of a few new original canvases put on display at the Albright-Knox Museum in 1956,[5] the curious choice of venue for Lent’s craggy aesthetics alongside the Lake Erie Canal notwithstanding. Regardless, between my professional curiosity and admittedly private interests in the man, the desire to face and, in a respectful manner, confront the architect about what he hath wrought had been the smallest possibility I would trace in my thoughts when my students allowed me the breathing room. With no agent, no known means of direct contact, and no schedule of appearances disseminated, the likelihood of such a meeting seemed bleak for obvious reasons. Should there be something to quote about crossing paths with a man who, I had thought, kept no friends for himself, I would happily do so here to underscore the universal predicament of obscurity’s rewards.
My true education into the ways and means of Dreyfus Lent, then, began with the note taped to my office door during the Fall 1984 term. No great event, at first glance. I am not unaccustomed to such hasty communiques left in a petitioning manner by both students and colleagues, given my distaste of the electronic mail apparatus of the institution. In addition, when I arrive at my office on campus early enough, my only morning reprieve is the coffee in my hand before the official wheelings and dealings begin, and that, I assure you, will be finished before those commence. Yet, on this morning, I awoke and went to my office with a premonition of a message taped to my door, as if it were an eviction notice written in a language I could not understand. Of course, all notes unto themselves are not particularly special considering the lack of formal standing between sender and recipient, especially as this variety is fulfilled by the modest seal of cheap cellophane tape, which implies only a modicum of concern over the potentially sensitive nature of the communique contained therein being transmitted to uninvolved third parties, i.e., custodial workers making their rounds off-schedule. What is referenced in the body of the note, or not referenced as is usually the case, grants the sender(s?) of it a certain privilege, I find, to influence directly or indirectly said wheelings and dealings which, in turn, interferes with my own dwindling privilege at this institution, in addition to promoting passive vandalism by the residual tape pieces left permanently clinging to my oaken door. This situation was also exacerbated at that time by the departmental mailroom being shut down for asbestos removal, despite my admiring the plastic shroud around it, reminding me that I, too, will be shrouded in such a way (as a previous note from one displeased student further pointed out). Otherwise, notes that were fun and enjoyable sometimes contained wonderful news of unexpected developments, of achievements independent of students themselves with no references to them contained therein—a real treat, my colleagues would say.
This note left nothing of the sort for me to glean on the outside. Besides my earlier premonition, I had no interest or anticipation in opening it. Had another person been around watching me do so, they likely would have observed my resignation to the threat of my employing the rational faculties that allow me to survive opening constant notes, yet that abhorring vacuum of prelapsarian savagery is exceptional in its nature, and I failed to resist it. Why was that so? As an educational luxury here employs my symbolic philandering against an imaginary spouse I always keep coming home to, should I have avoided opening the note out of fear I already knew what it said? Perhaps it was a broadside from a younger departmental competitor over my unbending dominion of Dreyfus Lent research in a manuscript in progress as residing purely in a fictional state of mind, thus worth the attention of current and future administrators by publicly calling out my supposed transgressions to all the other professors of our department. Either way, the clarion call of my better angels held forth in consul: Do not open what is there. So, quite naturally, I opened the note anyway.
I found not the note nor any other variety of note I was expecting. Nothing was contained therein but a single word, one that I should never see again taped to my office door, and that I cannot divulge as well for confidential matters. What to do with this word, I thought. I turned the note over in my hands several times (the quality of the paper was quite lovely, no bargain loose leaf). A word can be many things to many people but never fully ascertain meaning itself, as I tell my students to blunt the deficiency of their lost learning when they are ignoring my lecture, not without some context; and the only context I had was the premonition when I woke up. This premonition in tandem with the word, I began a function of distant memory employed well beyond that morning, which soon took the form of a few stray musical notes hummed in silence that I did not immediately recognize. Such is the hazard when a word is set down somewhere for someone else to find it, and the finder may be inclined to say the word will be found so that, by the distinction of its being found, they will have more than poetry from its accidental achievement. Could this remonstration, contained in a foreign instruction manual, flicker on and off in the mind of the finder like a bit of neon flashing outside a window that those living closest to it cannot ignore? No, because the word is the name of something which once had meaning, but no longer does, a person long deceased, an idea trampled underneath, a flattened staircase that a foot goes through, and all leave caverns in their wake. In rental terms, if I may be more accessible, this becomes another hinderance to living for the tenant, as well as another excuse for the landlord to avoid the place, despite the necessity of repair now infiltrating the building when very little outside it is being attended to by other caretakers in the meanwhile. A hundred thousand gummed-up parking meters doing nothing but standing like dumb-faced poppies, and the word becomes less than a lament, something trivial, not a curse, but a grumble, a slap across the face for a minor offense. It must be fixed, then. Outside and inside. Someone must call the repair in.
So started my proper periodical maintenance of this word sent to me. Relying upon my myriad skills, no less effective than a dozen trained high-beam flashlights trained on a single nail needing to be hammered, the effort took on an almost religious zeal eventually that I was not accustomed to, in all honesty, soon finding that incantating amen is also meaning lost to most people who use it (or never did the way they thought they did), though I would find what I needed. To post a note on my office door, forcing me to consider the word in a discipline which approached an almost necessary spiritual passion while neglecting a pile of terribly written student papers I used as a coaster for the highball glass dispensing a fifth of good bourbon, the sender made me put the ambivalent parts of the skeleton together in front of my tired eyes, thus finally speaking in bony glee, You are cordially invited.
And the word, which sent my fingers walking across those always dependable Yellow Pages, became a building on the wrong side of the South Figueroa Corridor. It was drawing its dying breath on a faded signboard above the entrance, having apparently long been abandoned by legitimate tenants paying meager rent to a legitimate landlord, those who once invoked the word as their home and shuddered how they lived there. Perhaps, back in the day, it had been a decently attractive place to reside, fronting itself as an upscale haven, too, and placed at a fair walk away from the nearest bus stop for the would-be socially mobile working their way to the next opportunity while they dreamed of escape. Then it evidently became lost among the other squalor of this depressed neighborhood, survived by a tavern staking one corner and an indecipherably named bodega on the adjacent corner. The usual figures were camped out in languid poses on the sidewalk, too fatigued to bother me, impractical shadows haunting the afternoon until being dispersed by whatever need would move them out of the eternal sunlight. In short, nothing was ready to embrace me in welcome. The front door was ajar, however, its antiquated security system, assuming it still operated, bypassed with the main locks strapped down with an industrial adhesive material. Was this truly my destination? It had to be, I reasoned, since the lobby further suggested how badly recent contractors attempted to cover this building’s syphilitic sores instead of curing them, failing in the process to provide any thingness for those seeking refuge from this city, a meandering collection of apartments left in the wake where anyone could walk in through the front door, where the tile floor on the landings are missing copious amounts of tile which will never be replaced, where the stairwell creaks with worn planks among the missing ones, leaving both tenant and visitor to carefully navigate a path through six floors, lest they fall through to a certain doom that lies underneath, where nothing lives, nothing returns, and nothing emanates from its origins, not even a story to tell like the one I am attempting here. Yes, whoever taped the note to my office door understood how my attention is gleaned, of this I have no doubt; and, as I scanned the hastily penned-in names posted on the mailbox slots by corresponding apartment number, how could I have possibly missed the anonymous resident preferring the sanctuary of inconspicuous initials: DL.
The last door at the end of the hallway on the sixth floor. Somehow, I did not die. I was also not accosted on the way, either. Perhaps this floor was mostly empty, avoided by would-be renters given the out of service elevator, yet I tiptoed across it all the same after ascending the stairwell and eavesdropping the inhospitable din at each landing until I arrived. Tenement buildings such as this one tend to bring out bladed paranoiacs, substance-addled or otherwise, who may resent a non-tenant, such as myself, having free range of the premises, thus it seemed prudent at that moment to keep a low sound-profile, advancing for a few minutes one cautious step at a time. The evident downside of this approach, my having to slowly ingest the fetid, urinetanical odors and decrepit shambalations, made the travel more excruciating that I had anticipated, I must confess, though I alleviated this with my own anti-intuitive habit of pretending I was on a balance beam which I stayed on-edge by staring directly down at what I believed was far below me, namely the basement that lurked somewhere under this building where, as I understood it, would be the very last place I wanted to fall into. But what was below that? Only the work of Dreyfus Lent could tell me such things, which meant arriving at the door at the end of the hallway was not marked with my relief over safe passage but the dread anticipation that I could be completely, utterly disappointed with what was behind it.
This is why I did not knock, and instead turned the knob. The door was open, unlocked. I remained in front of it slightly ajar, noting there was no light coming from inside. I waited a few seconds. Then I crossed the threshold, my hand reaching out to the side wall as I did so in the usual involuntary reaction of searching for the light switch, which I found. Closing the door behind me cautiously (I had made it this far, why should I lapse now?), I surmised my entry into a mostly vacuous studio layout, no windows, no furniture, no decorations, no kitchen with exception made for a plug-in hot plate, and, at most, a quarter bathroom off to the side. My attention to those were immediately diverted, however, by the large painting leaning against the back wall, its restrained opulence stealing my breath in the same manner of an old superstition regarding cats and newborn babies. There could be no doubt by whose hand it was created. Of greater curiosity was the partially full cannister of Pol-E-Clear that had been placed at the foot of it, with a familiar looking note paperweighted below, delaying my unbridled joy at this discovery as I released it into my possession and found myself confronted with yet another single handwritten word.
Had this been him communicating directly to me from the start? I admit, not without shame, having experienced the sort of vapid adolescent giddiness of possibly meeting the man stepping forth in dark-ringed flesh with his bony hand raised to shake mine, then offering a drink while he synoptically gleaned over my many accomplishments which brought his attention to orchestrating a chance meeting, finding myself a worthy benefactor of his work for this rare privilege. I suppose even I am subject to the passing whims of naivete in these situations. Regardless, it was not difficult for me to fabulate the hypothetical conversation he would have likely took painstaking care to draw my interest into the reason for this meeting. This was no courtesy call, of course, yet any such ulterior motives could not be dangled forever without insulting my intelligence, not while I had suspected for the longest time what his object of desire. He wanted me to build, he would have started while putting down his finished drink, a home that was not a home for his paintings, at least not of that bourgeoisie utopian value anyway, but a veritable domicile that would hold his replicas and, in its own predetermined way, destroy all the original works of his life after he was gone. Not a single Lent painting would be found anywhere in the world except for this place. To aid me in this undertaking, a bookkeeper’s record would be forwarded to me, carefully detailing every single item of Lent’s creation in existence in a coded numerical system: what was to be saved, what was to be consigned to the flames. This place would be where someone will walk into a room, see a painting they think is an original but is a replica, then walk into another room, find another replica they believe is an original, and so forth for many rooms on end. Before I would have the chance to confirm if he was asking for me, in all seriousness, to construct an actual labyrinthine art museum on a tenured professor’s salary, he alleviated my concerns. They must understand he had done all he could to help them prepare for “All This,” as he referred to this selective, oblique term from a rare early interview,[6] so that they no longer retreat to the usual cultural bunkers to escape this inevitability. What would be accomplished will never be covered up because this place will already be so. None will forget it because there will be nothing to remember afterwards. All will remain seated because his work will force them to finally bend in whole to the earth itself. And when this place serves no more purpose, one room at a time will be destroyed with the replicas in them, leaving nothing that could be recognized as a place behind, leaving no scrap of the work of Dreyfus Lent to be identified by those who had utterly forgotten his work. Only the bare cliffs which overlook all the other bare cliffs surround what was once this place, before the first word that humanity spoke not knowing what was said, before the first note on the lonely wind. Such a scene played out with amazing detail in my thoughts, down to the dramatic pause in Lent’s divulging confessional, that I regret it had not happened with any factual confirmation other than the learned verisimilitude I offer here as a reasonable substitute.
In which case: the painting in this apartment was undoubtedly mine. The second note left for me, conveyed in the rigidly sublimating manner as the first, gave Lent’s seal of approval for the transaction; and I was happy to see it through after the strenuous effort (physical and intellectual) further included the risking of my life to arrive here, in addition to what I now needed to accomplish in moving the painting out. My left foot pushing aside the Pol-E-Clear cannister, I commenced sizing up the canvas with arms outstretched, which mercifully fit well enough in their limited wingspan, finding in the process that its height was also comparable to mine. A minor hassle out the door, I determined, and a bit of a chore back down the stairwell. As I lifted the painting, one final surprise awaited in the form of a frayed tacked-up poster it had been concealing, a typically uninspired popular music iconography with two men standing in what I identified as the tertiary color palette of late 1980’s suitery, both with hands in droopy pockets, their laconic stares deliberately breaching the fourth wall of their tortured artist’s domain. With a Lent masterpiece in my literal possession, I attached no significance whatsoever to this poster, my next thoughts already given to escape without any attention brought to me. Unfortunately, I was not as successful in that venture as before. Halfway through the hall, likely having heard my initial struggles carrying the painting as I proceeded turned sideways, one earnest tenant stuck himself out and, apropos of nothing, loudly—and, I should add, insightfully—asked what I was doing with “that hunk of shit.” Quick improvisation allowed a story of my being a part of a maintenance crew cleaning out the abandoned apartment at the end of the hall, which I motioned towards with my head. Despite assistance being offered, I politely declined: my employer would surely relieve me of a hard-earned paycheck. Back inside he went with a huff. The stairwell, then, served as the last gauntlet, and soon I was out the front door, with no other confrontations, besides my own exhaustion, ready to secure the painting in my ample utility vehicle parked on the curb, backseat down.[7] Few sidewalk audience members took notice of my departure.
To this day, in lieu of my recalling a personal encounter with the artist himself, his painting rests above the mantle in my home study, carefully snug into the Spanish Mission style décor I have grown to appreciate more over the years, along with it.[8] I think not an evening goes by where I fail to pour myself a drink, to comfortably sit in an upholstered chair positioned in the right spot, and to admire Lent’s work, which I consider a vintage piece despite not being able to identify its title.[9] It certainly falls into form with other Lent canvases: no matter how long I stare at it, the painting reminds me of an absolute nothing. This nothing is strongest when set across the field of an expanse begun by the artist’s sense of nothing, already well honed by the time he painted this, I am certain, and fed by a city he probably detests as much as I do. By placing himself outside it, so am I in front of this painting. I take the absolute nothing into myself. I grow nervous, apprehensive. The complete absence of image, an accidental effect or not, precipitates the abandonment of experience with all other art that I have because that experience cannot belong to humanity, not upon my realizing it as false allegory. Once a human form begins to delineate the surface of my potential mem-impressions, all is lost, fallen into a history that never was or will be. A face satisfied with its own deformity. This would be nothing less than a betrayal of Lent’s work in consideration of it. I have been entrusted with a small piece of an expanse which is unconscious of an abject reckoning by virtue of the distraction I engage in its interrogation of my worthless knowledge (the drink I have poured also does its (small) part). I must save it in the best possible ways I can surmount Lent’s expectations.
About here, I imagine the reader may have a pertinent question. Do I think the painting belongs to me, in the conventional sense? At present, yes, since I am the only one who has access to my private study. Someday that will change.[10] Or maybe it will not change, assuming I plan for all possible contingencies, including the very last one of my demise. Such preparations are difficult. The museum that Lent undoubtedly would want for his works is well beyond my grasp on any number of levels, too.
This has led me to consider, during certain quiet nights tending to this endless dilemma of mortality and ownership, whether my residence could serve as a possible cornerstone to the project, if not an appreciable Ground Zero itself, which Lent had intended by seeing the painting into my possession. What if I were to begin expanding the effective field of influence the painting contained to the other residences surrounding me, beginning with my nearest neighbors who, admittedly, may know nothing of Lent or his work based on my previous interactions with them yet show a savoir faire when it comes to self-destructive tendencies in the interest of home improvement? The flung dirt, splattered painting, shedding plaster and mangled concrete I have witnessed over the years in this block alone could be further illustrated by the disguised mytheme of this painting; and, with a carefully orchestrated viewing period on my part, ready at the fore to provide insight, I am not without some confidence that my neighbors would grasp the unspoken lore of prehistory, embrace Lent’s ex cathedra pronouncement. In what this project encompasses, then, I do not have possession of the painting. If anything, the painting may have legal rights to assume control of this property I sit upon, should skillful legal representation be found on my part anywhere in the near future.[11] In this scenario, the painting engages a sort of social contract bound by public trust, as I consider it, not that it conveys and preserves the location of its placement as a site of historical importance (the hypocrisy of such a maneuver is too absurd to consider here) but serves as hallowed ground which the state must be compelled to not only preserve but accentuate as well. I find this favorable for any number of reasons, not the least of which entails the hiring of professional architects, either subsidized in part or in full by the deep treasure chest of taxpayer monies which the golden state of California undoubtedly could provide. A glorious first step of many to achieving the worthy terminus of Lent’s work, then. From my perspective, I could comfortably expire in the light of this achievement, even if it means shooing off unwelcome guests at night, or letting what could charitably be called “new tenants” squat the premises, or being observed unceremoniously while I lay in my deathbed as my fading mental faculties in delirium construct new identities for myself. Why should I consider the painting as an object with substantial value in the clutches of Sotheby’s? Such riches have no reward to me, particularly as the academy has already spent my best years into bankruptcy, leaving me no inclination to enjoy the finer things in life, to say nothing of leaving a legacy behind, either, which I doubt my name will attach much attention to in futile ascertainments to come.
In the end, the ministrations of all rigors come down to art, whether high or low, good or bad, worthy or insignificant. I have done what I can at present, and I will continue doing so while Lent’s painting remains above my mantle. It occurs to me, considering what I have previously mentioned, that perhaps the best course of action should involve my students in some way. Could I share in the glory of this rare work which, for whatever can be known about, may have never been seen by eyes other than its creator’s? The proposition is not without its charms, I admit, for what better confirmation of my lectures do I have at my disposal than an echo of Pangaea recorded by the only living artist[12] in the United States capable of such abnegating mastery of the newborn world-as-was? Based on the paltry treatises I have received over the years from them, I sometimes wonder if they believe him a fictional creation on my part, constructed to provide my tenured residence at the university, despite the substantial body of Lent studies available to this day confirming his prolific existence, if not his true intents. Such is one of many prices paid for effacing his own work, I suppose. I am heartened, then, with this one painting that will survive a while longer; so why wouldn’t I wish to share with them? Admittedly, it has been a long time since students have graced these premises in affable cheer,[13] and, in the absence of domesticated company of tiny beasts, the silence shared by these walls with each other has become my own to tend without reprieve. Other than my formal, tangible work, it is not too forward of me to suggest this silence is my own art cultivating the finer aspects of who I am which will disappear soon enough. If nothing else, Dreyfus Lent and I share that much.
My hope for seeing this great artist of our time wanes steadily, upon each passing day. That I may yet fulfill his desire is no paltry consolation for this; however, I question if I, too, have those desires which someone else must carry through for them to happen, without my being cognizant of it as well.[14] I would like to explain all this obliteration and more to my students, no matter how much their eagerness vanishes upon that stubborn learning of theirs. I understand its useless gesture. It is not just what I speak of which becomes the aforementioned excrescence I have granted to them in instruction, but what I will never speak of which takes the hideous toll of a fouler waste relieved without fair warning.
[1] This essay was originally published in 1985 by American Art Record, vol. 1, issue 4, a fine little academic journal which, sadly, did not rise above its obscurity and failed to find its readership for a second volume. In retrospect, the masthead should have listened more closely to my detailed suggestions for them regarding the bland, monohued cover designs to improve its reception towards the inspired contents therein. Because of the journal’s demise and this essay’s evident importance in shedding light on recent events connected to the paintings of Dreyfus Lent, then, I have decided to re-print it in this overdue anthology of my other essays with Ex Nihilo Press, a venture of my own undertaking that I have great hopes for in introducing future work connected to my studies of Lent and other Cali-coastal Abstract Expressionists deemed lesser sorts by his ascendant positioning. Potential submitters for future projects may contact me through the Department of Liberal Arts at Western Ridge University’s main campus in Glendale. Donations gladly accepted. For those devotees who read and championed my essay the first time, you may be relieved to find the primary text here more or less intact, save a handful of necessary footnotes I am obliged to add because of incidents and discoveries following its original publication, some correction of inexplicable errors which occurred during the previous editing process, and the occasional stylistic re-polishing for happy measure.
[2] “There are no more books to be written, thank God.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 1934.
[3] I would be inclined to name the individual in question here, since I assuredly could do no further harm to his reputation given his dismissal three years ago from a competing institution across the SoCal way from mine. The fracas in question was due to, as a personal contact there who prefers to remain anonymous informed me, a host of unsavory complaints registered against him by the student body. It is unfortunate what the noble, albeit demanding quest for greater knowledge makes some of us resort to in private time, yet professionals must we remain, both in and out of the classroom. Wherever he may have landed, then, I wish him well in his future academic endeavors.
[4] Tawnee Holcomb, “Around Town,” L.A. Strike!, May 1984, no. 59. For the formal record, I found this well-used periodical draped across the back of a chair used by a student who attended one of my lectures with small fanfare.
[5] “A-BOMB DESTROYS DOWNTOWN BUFFALO; 40,000 KILLED,” Buffalo Evening News, 27 September 1952. What was meant to be a well-meaning civic exercise in nuclear holocaust awareness on the part of this paper’s editorial board understandably took something of a detour with the unprepared local populace. An inadvertent point made, then. It is hardly difficult for me imagining Lent looking down upon this scene with grim approval, hence his throwing a painting or two into the bargain before professional footballing arrived there in 1959 to begin settling those steely, blue-collared people’s attention back towards more pleasant diversions wrapped in tanned pigskin.
[6] “Plain Destruction: An Interview with Dreyfus Lent,” Oceanside Arts Review, April 1953, vol. 5, no. 17. What Lent meant by this coinage and its origins remain elusive to this day since the interviewer here foolishly conducts no further inquiry. Following the youthful fervor of my Ph.D. dissertation and subsequent lectures, however, I have speculated and refined that speculation over the years to ascertain how Lent is likely referring to how quantifiable experience can be conventionally rendered, expressed, etc., but never fully explained to the artist’s own satisfaction, hence encouraging the experience’s repetition, its reliving for those doing the actual quantifying. The resulting unrealism causes the viewer to regard it as a fiction which threatens its manifestation as a would-be phenomenon, thus entering the world of appearances (but only that world—it can never attain a state of being). At that point, the experience can only be dispersed by controlling the appearance, civilizing or cultivating it, such as hanging a painting in a museum of national reputation alongside comparable works with sufficient explanations attached as a buffering mechanism. Biography and autobiography, then, become apocrypha of sorts, yet only in fragments at a time, not all at once (an impossibility). This may also be subject to reprise and revision, professional facsimile, or plain copying by an amateur. I am certain this all happened upon my seeing a Lent painting for the first time in 1966 at a gallery in San Luis Obispo, as the event caused me to completely reevaluate my childhood memories and educational disciplining at a Lasallian preparatory school while simultaneously not categorizing this as trauma in a sentimental fashion. Instead, it was a detached reckoning of Art and its various methods, whereupon I received my true autobiography by beyonding the systems I had passed through up until then, losing a sense of my former self-identity in the process, and thereby rightfully earning natural kinship with Lent himself. My periodic teaching of literature since then has helped alleviate the strain of this, I’ve found, while my students continually fail to understand that the end of the world affords its worthiest disguises, no matter any ridicule involved.
[7] Of all that I have written of in this essay, it is curious this detail would be of the most intrigue to my colleagues at Western Ridge, stemming from, in their exact words, how I’m “not the sports utility vehicle type,” an evaluation that leaves me at a loss to discern how people are equated to specific automobile frame aesthetics, especially those of us entrenched in Higher Education who do not drive around for the sake of merely being seen. That said, since I’m tending to some house cleaning here, I will note this urbanized truck substitute in question, a white 1983 Ford Bronco, was strictly what is called a “loaner” at the time from a garage while my usual periwinkle 1974 Volvo 240 GL was being serviced for lackadaisical engine performance. Given the task at hand, I consider this a fortunate circumstance, or at least I did up until the work on my Volvo stretched out longer than anticipated, then ceased altogether when the proprietor duly informed me of “unforeseen problems” which concluded our business arrangement. Besides that sad development, the only indignation I suffered was quizzical stares and mirthful opprobrium from the student body as I exited and entered this Bronco in the faculty parking lot. Eventually I found myself relieved for no particular reason as another Volvo came into my life. Yet several years later, watching a recent make of this same “loaner” of mine partake in the most extraordinary low-speed highway police chase ever recorded in the annals of Los Angeles history, I was left uneasy over how Fate shows her lascivious gaze in incremental turns far too small to notice until her eyes fall dead-set upon the hapless victim. That could have been me, I thought with grim recognition of the terminus to follow.
[8] I confess how this statement, which I have decided to let remain as-is, belies an evident paradox of when Time and Place intersect neatly and satisfactorily for those initiated into the aforementioned “All This.” I may have been unaware of certain things at that moment that I now know of at present writing. The proximity of this intersection to the interior of my private residence then was also likely necessary, that having my inaccurate description in the original publication of the essay would avoid maudlin tendencies given the fate of this painting tied to this study, as shall be explained soon.
[9] The few guests I did invite to behold the painting speculated it was “ND-Upof1969,” admittedly an odd-presenting relic from a relatively less successful series when compared to its bold precursors, now that I have the benefit of hindsight and the clarity of unaffected perspective. Others had decidedly stronger reactions to its occluded identity. One thankfully former colleague, who I believe never held my work in high regard or was possibly jealous of my acquisition, chortled offhand at my underhanded attempt to impress him with such a blatant facsimile, then walked straight out of my study, leaving his drink on my well-kept mantle. Upon closer inspection, however, I was unable to confirm this verdict. Lent’s propensity to paint multiple near-perfect duplicates of his own canvases, which my research suggests was commenced sometime around April 1970, does put this possibility into play, as much as it is troublesome to think he had me risk limb and life for the salvaging of a copy. I will spare the reader further thoughts on the matter, as future offerings from Ex Nihilo to revive my back catalogue of out-of-print titles will provide more than sufficient explanation for Lent’s often and brutally misunderstood undertaking of the replica enterprise, in addition to his campaign of ritual canvas mutilations which soon followed. Until those titles reappear, it may be worth noting in brief that perhaps Lent, ever the wily provocateur, sought to have his audience expand themselves past their entrenched Western notions of authenticity in the Fine Arts, shifting their nearsighted privilege instead towards a more democratic view of its public consumption away from the stifling museum system, an endeavor which I am proud to be a part of, whether I was conscious of it or not at the time. M. Pabst Battin’s “Exact Replication in the Visual Arts,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Winter 1979, vol. 38, no. 2, is recommended light reading in the meanwhile.
[10] It did during the Fall 1994 term, much to my eternal regret. Returning home from an undergraduate Shakespeare night class that I had been assigned to on short notice from the Department Chair and, on that particular evening, had already gone longer than its prescribed duration due to, if I may put it charitably, intentional student malfeasance in preparing the correct assigned tragic play for discussion, a police cordon around the block and the battalion of firemen winding up their hoses presaged the great disaster of my life. Everything in the study was a total loss, and the rest of my home did not fare much better. The subsequent report by authorities placed the origin of the fire there, and that it involved accelerants used on the painting itself. While a dutiful neighbor across the street, well on his way to finishing a second six-pack on his porch in vigilance, reported some shadowy figure possibly entering through a side window, no suspect was ever identified. The case has gone nowhere since, if I interpret correctly the number of times L.A.P.D. Arson Division has put my calls on hold. As a final kick to the shin, I was forced to retreat temporarily to the nearby La Brea Motel on Hollywood Boulevard and deal with yet another police scene that same week, this one in the too-early morning, tending to a deceased man in, I was told by elderly long-termer there, an unfortunate videographic blue trade succumbing to his baser addictions with other predisposed men. How this city often gets the better of us, I mused to her while clutching my stained pillow as I would a consoling friend in need.
[11] Such an interpretation of the law was, in fact, later supported by the diligent attorneys at Martinez, Martinez & Husqvarna, LLC. I soon dropped their services when the matter became a moot point. See previous note.
[12] Of course, I need not cite the Times or any other public record regarding the widely reported death of Dreyfus Lent on 7 December 1993. It was truly a day when Los Angeles stood still, as I am sure we Angelinos remember.
[13] A piece of advice for those decent university gentlemen pursuing the legal settlement of “irrevocable differences” with the missus: best not to hold any graduate night seminars at your home for a light-hearted change of venue to get students out of the stifling classroom for a few hours, as the employment of a private investigator keeping quiet surveillance may bolster any additional requests for alimony under deliberately misconstruing its purpose as an illicit co-ed frolic presided over by a crafty satyr.
[14] If I were to amend the worthy sentiment of Imagine a painter crucified by his subject! from John Ashbery’s “The Painter” (1955), it would be that we should also imagine the devoted and capable academic who has, in turn, been crucified by the same subject that the artist presents.
Forrest Roth is the author of a novel, Gary Oldman Is a Building You Must Walk Through (2017), and a flash fiction / prose poetry collection, Skeletal Lights from Afar (2022), both from What Books Press of Los Angeles. His stories have appeared in a variety of print and online journals, including NOON, Denver Quarterly, Columbia Journal, Juked, TRNSFR, Guesthouse, and The Rupture. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Dickinson State University in North Dakota.