Anthony David Jacques

Life is Shit : A Story About Beauty

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V

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I hammered out those final projects in a couple days. I didn’t care, and I figured most of the teachers wouldn’t have a clue whether I’d tried or not. Anything was art to them.

For my figure drawing class, I zoomed in so close in my reference photos that all I had to do was some mild shading and voila, it’s a square inch of the small of a woman’s back. And this one is an ass cheek. The inside of the curve of an elbow. That entirely black canvas? That’s a mole.

They were all done on standard 11 x 14 paper, but they were nothing more than smudges and a few hairs or wrinkles. That earned me a B plus.

For 3D Concepts, I’d just taken pictures of a handful of sculptures, four shots of each, then cut them out and pasted them to the outside of plexi-glass cubes. I called it ‘Cubism in the Twenty-First Century?’ as if even I wasn’t sure, because that’s oh-so artistic. I got an A minus.

The fact that I’d lost my syllabus for 3D Concepts didn’t even matter. Like I said, anything was art with this lot, and the requirements for their assignments were so open it was hard to believe anyone could fail.

Except with Mr. Geler. More than half that class had dropped by then because of his anal-retentive megalomania. Isn’t it funny how a God complex really means a person acts like a complete asshole? Anyway, I decided the rest of the class was right. Mr. Geler was about as evil as they come and it’d be a waste of time to even attempt making him happy.

So with the final projects thrown together, ready to turn in, all I had left was to come up with a concept for an exhibition. Keep in mind, this wasn’t supposed to be a real exhibit. We were just supposed to come up with a concept, write the proposal and jump through a few formalities, maybe have a piece or two of conceptual work to accompany it. The foul mood I’d been in probably had something to do with it, but it was Mr. Geler’s words I decided to throw back into the art program’s collective face.

“Life is shit, and then you die.”

Alright. How about an exhibition of nothing but shit? I dropped the bit about dying in order to focus on the here and now, to make it seem more ‘urgent’ or ‘relevant’. Artists love that sort of terminology.

My proposal was that I, the artistic genius, would fast for a day, then go to a fine restaurant. I’d take a picture of whatever I ate, I’d write down the menu items and later have that printed up in some nice, professional font. About eight hours later, the real art would happen with me taking a dump on a piece of fine china.

“Here’s your sixty dollar steak, and that splatter over there was a crème brulee. Sorry, I’m lactose intolerant.”

I’d eat anything and crap it back out onto an appropriate table setting. And it didn’t even have to be food. As an ongoing exhibit I even suggested we take this concept into other areas of life. Maybe I’d drop a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets into a blender and see how that came out.

My basic premise, the unspoken joke, was that since art had become whatever anyone wanted it to be, they were turning art into crap. With the exception of control freaks like Mr. Geler, who wasn’t doing fine art so much as commercial or consumer driven art anyway; just about anything you see in a gallery these days is senseless, emotionless, talentless junk. If art had become shit, then I may as well make that statement into a physical installation.

So I stood there for a good fifteen or twenty minutes in silence as they read through the proposal and paged through the sketches. I expected either of them, at any moment, to throw me out or shout in my face or, well, I don’t know what. I figured they’d get the joke. That the joke was on them.

The problem was, they loved it.

I wish I was kidding, but Miss Maloney and Miss Strop both liked the idea enough that they considered helping me refine the proposal to look for a gallery willing to show something so ‘edgy and controversial’ with ‘such a refreshing, gutsy take on social commentary’.

As I walked out of their gallery space, the place where we all had to give our presentations, for just a moment I wondered if I had the guts to go through with it. I wondered if I could serve up my distaste for everything those people stood for on little silver platters. I decided against it.

They’d each handed me a card, saying they’d be in touch, and I saved those numbers in my cell phone, which was a good idea. I keep the numbers of all the people I don’t like stored in my phone for two reasons. First, so that when they call, I know not to answer. Second, I get a small tinge of satisfaction when I hit that little red ‘reject’ button. It reminds me of all the little victories from my past.

Anyway, that day marked the moment I quit caring about other people’s opinions on art. Some things just aren’t beautiful. I’d been waiting all this time, paying all this money, hoping to finally get around to doing some real art. It finally hit me it wasn’t going to happen in a classroom. Art isn’t something you learn, and beauty isn’t something you can fake. You either have it in you or you don’t. Too many people don’t know what to do when real beauty is staring them in the face, or pinning them down on their roommate’s bed, as the case may be.

If you need a twenty thousand dollar piece of paper to convince people you’re an artist, well, you’ve already lost. So sure, I saved the numbers, but I threw those stupid professor/student gallery/art connoisseur business cards away. Cause it’s just like people have always said. Those who can’t, teach.

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© Anthony David Jacques MMX