We
got to Canal Street and Greg turned down the volume.
Roger remarked, "You
all are a pack of snobs. But of course I agree with you. That's why Elinor
and I get along so well." He gave her a tender pat on the shoulder.
"Maybe, though,"
Greg replied, "we get what we deserve when we run into someone like Kori.
Do we need to be brought down from our ivory towers and into reality?
Her kind challenges our claim and our ability to bring art to the people--since
that's what a museum is for, isn't it? 'Sweet are the uses of adversity
. . .'"
"'Which, like the
toad . . . wears yet a precious jewel in its head,'" I continued. "But
notice that tonight the rhinestones were on the poodle's collar, not its
head!"
"Do you think Mario
will invite her to his gallery sometime?" asked Elinor.
"Perhaps," Greg
answered, "and there are some tacky things there she might like. Maybe
he'll take on her aesthetic education." That would be something: he was
known for outlandish taste. "Then she'll tire of him, or he of her. She
might try to . . . seek me out again. For heaven's sake, warn me if you
ever see her again while we're at the Columns, or wandering around any
of our museum rooms!"
"Pearls before swine
. . . or dogs. But New Orleans wouldn't be the same without Kori and her
ilk. The city that taste forgot, you know."
"True," added Elinor;
"better bad taste than no taste at all. In fact, we need it; it sets off
finer things."
Later that evening,
after we'd had gumbo and poor-boys at a place on Frenchman Street, we
were again driving uptown. Greg put on a tape of Erik Satie's "Gymnopédies."
Their pure, spare lines and cool augmented chords flowed over us. I thought
of the man who been killed by a truck in front of his aunt. A feeling
of caritas made me feel a bit ashamed of our snobbery. Greg was
right to say that we needed to be brought down occasionally from our ivory
tower. After all, light does not belong under a bushel . . .
Three weeks later,
we learned by chance that Mario, promoted manager at the gallery, had
hired Kori as an assistant. Far from abandoning her aesthetic education,
he was, apparently, continuing it.
"Or maybe," suggested
Elinor, "she's taken on his! Can you imagine what they might cook up at
the gallery? Poodles on the walls, Pepto-Bismol pink on the stationery,
in the restrooms, maybe an Andy Warhol soup-can on her dress, or her face
made up like a Jackson Pollock canvas."
"If so," I added,
"the gallery scene in New Orleans will be shaken up a bit. Greg, are you
sure you don't want to sacrifice yourself and try to attract her to something
more tasteful?"
"God forbid," he
answered, "that I should interfere with Mario's lessons."
The irony is that,
some months afterward, a leaflet arrived at the museum announcing a coming
exhibit at Mario's gallery of work by a new artist named Korith. No last
name was given--as if the person were Michelangelo or Raffaello--but a
picture revealed that it was our Kori, her hair restyled and her name
altered to suggest seriousness. Her career, if that's what it would be,
was getting off to a meteoric start, certainly. The exhibit was titled
"Living Images: The Body as Art." What? Body as art--or at least body
in art, and you can't necessarily distinguish--is as ancient as art itself--Assyrian
and Egyptian bas-reliefs, Greek and Roman statues, pre-Columbian statuettes,
not to mention European painting and sculpture. So what did she have in
mind and what was new?
Greg, understandably,
refused to go see the show, but Elinor and I, motivated by both courtesy
and curiosity, went to the opening, albeit with some misgivings. Mario
and Kori were presiding jointly. Mario was in evening dress. There was
a crowd of extravagant people--for instance, a man wearing a velvet beret,
suit, and cape, rhinestone earrings, and pointed dancing shoes. Strains
of Wagner's "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" were playing in the background--Mario
must have made the selection, which struck me as incongruous--and strobe
lights cast blue, green, and red dyes on everything.
I am accustomed
to object lessons in the outlandish--bastard assemblies of elements from
high and low culture, the low always more abundant, being the dominant
gene. But this was the most gruesome I'd ever encountered. What "body
art" turned out to be was mostly anatomy, exteriorized. Except for cheap
pictures of the sacred heart of Jesus and medieval renditions of the torture
of Christian martyrs, including one whose intestines were pulled out and
rolled up on a wheel like a garden hose, I couldn't recall any previous
art that was so dependent upon interior organs of the body and some normally
thought of as "private parts." Kori, the prime exhibit, was clad in a
toga-like garment, with appliqués of organs: true-to-life pictures, in
full color, of heart, lungs, stomach, and liver. Her shoes, made of plastic,
had an x-ray picture of foot bones on the top. On her forehead was affixed
an anatomical drawing of the inside of the cranium.
On the walls were
silk-screen renditions of kidneys and other body parts, some of which
I didn't recognize, all dark and bloody-looking. One exhibit niche was
devoted to "Headgear Art"--including an arrangement of small bones affixed
to a cloche hat, and something called "Chapeau-Coeur," made of red plastic
and showing the valves and arteries. Displayed on stands were three-dimensional
organ models, distorted and surrealistic, including the "Lover's Liver,"
as well as feet and hands--I mean, plaster casts of the bones--and molded
imitations of other body parts. Suddenly I remembered the name Viagra,
as pronounced by Kori that night at the show. Good heavens--had she been
inspired by a prescription? Sex shops in the French Quarter not more than
two blocks from where we stood sold the same sort of things, made in China,
I supposed. No art collector would possibly purchase any of the stuff
I'd seen--it was too outrageous. As if in response to the objection, I
noticed some other items--painted silk, canvas, cotton, plastic--where
the organs were so stylized that they could pass for abstract designs;
they were the only ones that had prices listed.
Kori was a sensation,
to judge by the exclamations and the crowd of admirers surrounding her
like Secret Service men. Elinor and I, rather unnoticed, continued examining
the displays. Suddenly she saw us. "Harriett! Elinor!" she exclaimed,
breaking from her circle of admirers and rushing to our side. Art historians
have an advantage: we are the certifiers, even if most of those we certify
are dead. No matter that we were dressed conservatively, unlike most of
the others present: our opinion implicitly counts for something. "How
wonderful to see you!"
"Thank you, Kori,"
I managed to get out. "This is quite a show you have here!"
"Oh, do you like
it?"
"It is extraordinary,"
I replied. "You have a good crowd."
"Yes, Mario does
so well at getting out publicity--and he knows so many people. By the
way, where is Greg this evening?"
Elinor spoke for
us both. "Oh, he's home, writing his articles, as usual."
"Well, I'm so sorry
he isn't here. But I hope you will tell him. . ."
"Oh, yes," I assured
her; "and thank you for inviting us." We'd seen enough; we made our way
toward the door. Impulsively, as we walked down Chartres Street to Canal,
I clutched my stomach, as though to protect that vital organ from predatory
artists.
The next day, a
review appeared in the Times-Picayune. It turned out that Kori
Falgout, aka the suddenly-famous Korith, was, or had been, a free-lance
medical illustrator by profession. All through that season and the next,
she continued to be a sparkling success, having acquired the marketing
manager she'd always needed to put her training to new uses--more flamboyant
uses than illustrating medical textbooks and charts. She and Mario had
educated each other aplenty. As for me, I'd seen more than I wanted of
body art, that was certain. What did Cocteau say?--art is knowing how
far you can go too far. Alas, she did not. That evening I went home and
looked again at my still lifes and landscapes--God, they were beautiful.
