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August 1991 ART UNTIL NOW was the first expression of this urge to make the museum a medium in itself. Opening in August of 1991 at O.K. Harris, the exhibition modeled itself after those ragged displays at the Trocadero in early century Paris. The show was the first use of a faked article and introduced a MANIFESTO FOR ANACHRONISTIC FUTURISM written by Cesar Marzetti, which later would become the model for the actual museum. Without letting him in on the joke, the mock review below was given to gallery owner Ivan Karp, who ordered back "written with a lot of verve, but don't dare set it out where anyone might see it!" Gunfight at the O.K. "corral" … no survivors! by Kay Burdell, staff writer A fraud has been thrown in the public's face. ART UNTIL NOW, through September 21 at O.K. Harris in Birmingham, is a hoax. Posing as a serious summary of modem art, ART UNTIL NOW is anything but. LOOK FIRST, LAUGH LATER! would be a title more fitting to its mean spirit. I guarantee nobody will dare but laugh. Yet, this is not really all that amusing. In the end, it is simply dismaying and disheartening. Only the totally ignorant would be taken in by the racism of these bogus African masks; Dogon rococo; the contempt for women in a piece like "Eve" (sweater form and douche bag); or in the celebration of war in 'War Games' . . . press the knob and experience the thrill of it! What does any of this have to do with the twentieth century anyway? This exhibit only glorifies the destructive gesture, those hostile ideas that kill art. Standing on the promontory of this century, what good is there in looking back if we have to bash in the doors of our glories. The function of art should not be to remind us of its deterioration, but to counter it. The exhibit's so‑called "manifesto" is less a letter‑of‑purpose, even less a post‑script to Post‑Modernism, than a post‑mortem declaring itself dead‑on‑arrival. "We must have the freedom and the will to understand a new language," Cesar Marzetti, its author, says with a straight face. But is there anything "new" here? And what "language" are we speaking? Someone please let me know and I'll be the first in line to buy my Berlitz tapes. ART UNTIL NOW would have us believe in the bankruptcy of today's art, its inability to shake off its past and to push forward. Can there be any future for art without a past? Exactly what has made our culture grand has been its increasing inability to create the new. The evolution of humanity has gone hand and hand with the object's moving away from embellishment. After all a non‑tattooed face is more beautiful than a tattooed one, even if the tattoo were done by Monet. . . . . . . .
The Manifesto and an interview with Cesar Marzetti were important components of ART UNTIL NOW. Bourgeau had discovered an artist's project that combined not only the elements of his background in writing, video, photography and painting but expanded beyond these with installation, performance, and theater,- which taken all together, more and more, blurred those boundaries between art and life. The museum, that he would next create in Pontiac, was a very real place, examining and critiquing the art and trends of its time, albeit in a Swiftian way. But it was also a living work of art, dependant as much on the moment, on the viewer/visitor as the artist himself.
MANIFESTO FOR AN ANACHRONISTIC‑FUTURISM: Trapped in the ever‑present past there is no future. 1. Anachronistic‑Futurism is the final art which will be the art of fact in the language of fact but it will be the art of fact not realized before. 2. Anchronistic‑Futurism will be art and at the same time a theory of art; beauty and at the same time the secret of beauty; art and at the same time an explanation of art. 3. Anachronistic‑Futurism will disavow interpretation. Rather, it would have us inquire into the notion of time, of time filled, not fulfilled, of not really going anywhere within a certain period of time, of the sense of time passing (slowly, rapidly) until the time is used up, quo pro quid, an inquiry into the very notion of human existence. 4. To capture the definitive by chance. 5. To snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a passing fragment of life, is only the beginning of the task. The task approached in tenderness and faith will be to hold up, unquestionably, without discrimination and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes.
CESAR MARZETTI
THE MAN IN MANIFESTO by PETER KRUG Peter Krug: I'm just going to start out with some really interviewy questions: How did you come to write the manifesto for ART UNTIL NOW? Cesar Marzetti: Very simple. Jef (Bourgeau) came to me and asked me to compose one for the show as a favor. I happened to have several already written. We agreed on one. That it was best. That, having described what he was trying to do, it suited the show the best. PK: But you hadn't seen the show? CM: I still haven' t. PK: Then how can you be sure what you wrote is right? CM: I don't have to see any of it because it just doesn't matter. Because I knew it would be right. Because art is universal and specific at the same time. Any of my other manifestos would have been equally right. At the time I think we had six or seven to choose from. Jef could've picked any just as well. PK: Will you ever see the show? CM: I don't need to see it. In fact, I refuse to see it. PK: If you refuse to see ART UNTIL NOW, how will you ever know if it met any of your criteria? CM: I will know when I hear that a person, any person shall have stood before it and had his voice quiver, his neck swell and his mouth drool. PK: You mean cry? CM: Exactly. But not me. I've wept enough. My art has been my tears. PK: The public? CM: The public must cry. No crocodile tears. Their eyes must get wet. PK: I've seen the show and I didn't cry. CM: Sometimes it may take a day or two. It's a delayed reaction. Especially to those of us living in this era. We see too much, so we are less aware of what we see. Then one day ‑‑‑ boom! So, you'll cry. I guarantee it. PK: Is it true that you don't paint anymore? CM: Nothing has changed. There is still only one true artist in the world, and it's me. PK: Isn't it true that you spend all your time now writing manifestos? CM: Today the art world is in chaos. Everything is too ill‑defined, so I give it definition. PK: Why did you choose the term Anachronistic‑ Futurism? CM: Because Anachronistic‑Futurism is a contradiction in terms. Because all art has become a contradiction. And, if you give me the time, I will contradict everything I've said to you here. PK: Why only five points to this manifesto? CM: There was a sixth, but my word processor crashed at that moment. Which left five again. PK: Do you remember what it was? This sixth? CM: Exactly. Anachronistic‑Futurism will ask twenty‑five questions to which there are no answers. PK: Would any of these questions or their answers help explain what you mean when you talk about a "new language" in art? CM: That is one of the twenty‑five questions without an answer. PK: You won't answer? CM: I can't. I can only tell you that every artist, as a child of this age, must express what is characteristic of his time. PK: You speak in terms of children. Does that mean next thing artists will be smearing their feces on walls? CM: I'm certain someday we'll return to the caves. And when we do, we'll draw with whatever is at hand. (Translated from the Italian by Lia Coro.) Peter Krug is the European editor of Smart Art
An actual review of the show follows:
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1991 THE DETROIT NEWS Coloring 20th‑century art in an entertaining hue by JOY HAKANSON COLBY Just thinking about the bad review of his one‑man exhibit at the O.K. Harris Gallery robs Jef Bourgeau of a good night's sleep. Or so the Rochester artist claims. Words like "fraud" and "hoax," "dismaying" and "disheartening," "destructive" and "hostile" beat on his brain and gnaw away at his self‑esteem. Or that's what Bourgeau would have you believe. Then, just as you're pitying this poor guy, whose art was lambasted in print, the wronged one confesses. Bourgeau wrote the scabrous review bylined Kay Burdell. What's more, he also penned the fake "Manifesto for an Anachronistic Futurism" and the ersatz interview between one Peter Krug, who is described as the European editor of a publication called Smart Art, and Cesar Marzetti, author of the manifesto. Now to the point of all this ghostwriting. The three papers ‑ review, manifesto and interview ‑ are part of Art Until Now, Bourgeau's keen, sometimes scathing, continuously entertaining look at 20th‑century art history from a gloriously biased perspective. The bulk of the show is made up of assemblages of found objects with audio and video elements. Although the individual pieces stand alone, they gain strength from each other as elements in an installation that occupies the entire front gallery at O.K. Harris. This is one show that needs plenty of time to absorb. Each piece requires a careful "reading" because it's easy to miss a historical peg or one of the artist's personal interpretations. At its best ‑ and that's most of the time ‑ the exhibit projects a cleanly honed visual intelligence. At its weakest, it capitalizes on inside jokes like, for instance, the name Marzetti, author of the fake manifesto. Bourgeau took Marzetti off the label of a commercial salad dressing and used it as a play on F.T. Marinetti, who wrote the real Italian Futurist Manifesto in 1909. A pile of old suitcases titled Baggage sums up the protean mark Picasso left on 20th‑century art and artists. Among the bags is an animal cage and peering through the bars is the face of Picasso. A soundtrack suggests that the artist is scratching and sniffing inside his carrying case like an aggressive beast. The suitcases, of course, represent Picasso's baggage that other artists are stuck with because of the way in which the Spaniard dominated the art of this century. He was always there first, inventing new ways of painting and seeing. He intimidated many of his contemporaries as well as the artists who came along later. Bourgeau also uses sound for The Artist and His Model. In this piece, a tape recorder attached to a space heater alternately moans, groans and mixes industrial noises with an auctioneer's voice chanting prices. In fact, auction records figure in a number of works such as Canned Clemente contained in a tin money box and Man In the Corner. Keith Haring, which suggests that the late graffiti artist painted himself into the corner of a wooden checkerboard labeled Christie's, New York. As for the 20th century's chief money‑maker among artists, Van Gogh appears in the person of the actor who played his life in Lust for Life. Bourgeau shows Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh on his deathbed. The image of the turn‑of‑the‑century expressionist and super neurotic Egon Schiele appears inside an antique camera lens. The artist's eyeball is isolated in another piece, which needs to be seen through a flashlight hanging from the frame. Bourgeau's installation is such a success that gallery director David Klein says he's setting aside every August and September as installation time at O.K. Harris in Birmingham. . . . . . . .
November, December 1992-January 1993 The next O.K. Harris exhibit, RENOVATIONS, takes those germinal ideas of ART UNTIL NOW and inflates them into an extravaganza that begins with the actual construction of a contemporary museum, both fresh and out of touch already, and, over the course of three exhibits and three months, ends with a "museum" exhibit that is both cold and iconographic to the extreme, but also a place of reverence, awe and so, ultimately, disconnection. In other words, the life of a contemporary museum. Although there are images of these shows, including a video encompassing all three, there is little to no written documentation that has been rediscovered as yet: except for this short but intriguing Marxist feminist reading of the first installment.
DETROIT FREE PRESS/WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1992 Art and Women, then and now By MARSHA MIRO Jef Bourgeau is attempting the difficult with his wonderful installation at the OK Harris Gallery. He's out to renovate old attitudes about gender, particularly female stereotyping, by setting up a contrast between past and present. In the space representing the old days, a woman's shoes spill out of the closet. A woman's face is fractured in a repainting of a Picasso. She is the object of picnic lunches by Proust. Bourgeau builds these themes into finely composed tableaux of found objects, videos and paintings. In the space for contemporary attitudes, a video plays images of a woman menstruating. Look through the window of a house made of Legos and you'll see a woman talking on television about proper articulation. Bourgeau has a deft touch. He doesn't bog down his aesthetics with his message. The two play intriguingly off one another. Whether he'll open any closed minds is another question.
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September-December 1996 MONA began as a commercial gallery on Lawrence Street in downtown Pontiac. This project lasted for three months, until enough funding from sales was collected to sustain a year's rent for a non-profit contemporary museum. The name of the gallery was JANE SPEAKS MODERN ART and was owned and operated by the fictitious Jane Speaks. This interview with Miss Jane was published in the art journal GROUND-UP with an accompanying photograph of the dealer (each issue, however, was published with a different photograph of a totally different woman representing Jane: i.e., one of a young person; another of an older, sterner looking woman; the next with an African-American; the next of a seated nude wearing a hat; and so on.)
AN INTERVIEW W/JANE SPEAKS
Richard Mann: Is Speaks your real name? Jane Speaks: Yes.
RM: Is it short for something? JS: Jane Will Speak. When I was growing up I went by Jane Will Speak.
RM: Is it Native American? JS: Not at all.
RM: Will Jane Speaks retain a large stable of artists? JS: There is great safety in numbers, don't you think? I'm going to start small. I'll show one, maybe two artists. We'll see.
RM: What will you say to all those good artists you turn away and who remain unrepresented? JS: When there are too many artists, all possible, all good, then nothing is good.
RM: Using that logic, you dare to be bad. JS: Good heavens. yes. Running a gallery for me means failing like nobody else dares to fall
RM: And would Jane Speaks have us believe this failure is a metaphor for our universe, not hers JS: It's the universe we all inhabit, but have lost the art of recognizing.
RM: So Jane Speaks presumes to offer us this lost vision? JS: I only presume to offer my visitors the chance to see again with all five senses, so that the installations here both shout and whisper, laugh and cry, bleed and heal.
RM: Big talk nonetheless. JS: Small talk really. The real voice will be in the art I choose.
RM: Choosing this art will you attempt to compete with or emulate some of the more au courant galleries in New York or abroad? JS: If you want to talk trends or fashions, compare Jane Speaks to the cannibal lying naked in the sun, a far cry from the vegetarianism of New York, with my gallery eating the flesh to reveal the soul.
RM: Actually, I'm a big meat eater. Cut to the bone and what really remains? JS: What remains are the things we really don't care to see anymore: those things which are essential to any vision. . . . . . . . December 1996 Once the funding for a museum had been achieved, Jane was no longer necessary and she quickly and conveniently passed from the scene - but in such a way that she might be brought back at a moment's notice, if necessary. And also, with her presumed death, the revelation was made of an endowment to fund a contemporary museum. The following obituary was embedded in the Oakland Press and spread as a copy. With so much of the art world thriving on gossip, the director of a prominent gallery was heard to say what a horrible loss Jane's passing was for the community. If you notice, the museum is first mentioned as the Institute of Contemporary Art. The project developed organically, reacting to and with the art and the life around it.
DECEMBER 10 1996 THE OAKLAND PRESS SPEAKS LOST AT SEA Jane Speaks was recently involved in a boating mishap off the Cape Verde Islands. Although her body has not been recovered, she is presumed dead. In her short but rigorous tenure as director of JANE SPEAKS MODERN ART, Jane garnered respect and admiration in art circles as diverse as New York, London and Paris. Her quick success and audacious facility at keeping just one step ahead helped coin the phrase: When Jane Speaks, the art world listens. Now, sadly chiseled into her cemetery marker is the lone epitaph: Jane Has Spoken. A fitting tribute to a true visionary. Perhaps, but the silence left by her loss will quickly be filled thanks to her estate's generous endowment to establish Detroit's first contemporary art museum in Pontiac. The Institute of Contemporary Art will be housed at 23 West Lawrence Street until a more permanent site can be found. This vibrant space will doubtlessly provide Jane with a continuing voice in art for some time. The family suggests memorials to Hospice of Aging Mariners.
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January 1997 This next interview introduces the new players. Richard Mann had been the name used to interview Jane Speaks earlier. He has been given a history now, the widower of Jane Speaks and entrusted with the endowment for a new museum. He is the more grounded of the two, but sinister at the same time. Cesar Marzetti is an old character, who had appeared five years earlier to write the manifesto for an exhibition at OK Harris Works of Art. This manifesto is in fact revived to become that of the new museum. Cesar is unbridled and quite free in his thought process. Again, this "article" for VIEW magazine was faxed, emailed and circulated by hand and regular mail. Richard conveniently becomes the museum director, and Cesar its curator. The museum is given the official title, Museum of Contemporary Art.
INTERVIEWS TWO MEN AND A MUSEUM: Kay Burdell talks with Richard Mann and Cesar Marzetti
QUESTION: First I would like to ask you why and how you decided to open Detroit's first contemporary museum in Pontiac? RICHARD: We wanted to start fresh. We chose a city nearby Detroit that would have a fresh atmosphere. A small enough community where we could create an art scene which would be new and innovative. Pontiac fits that bill perfectly.
Q: Richard, as director of the Jane Speaks Foundation and now the museum, perhaps you can best answer why you've chosen to opt for this idea of a "small" museum as well? RICHARD: I've never thought in small terms. CESAR: I don't accept this notion of small either. Small town, small museum! It's a museum on the human scale. I would say that is the ideal scale.
Q: At any scale, how would you describe the position of a contemporary museum in the larger community? RICHARD: As a place for showing art that is currently under discussion but without taking risks. That is and will never be our position. The museum of modern art is something of the past. We must create an alternative space for the future. CESAR: Today, there are no more risks to be taken. Before the paint is even dry on the avant‑garde it's already mainstream. So suddenly everything has to be redefined, reinvented. A contemporary museum must refuse to simply be a repository or showcase for these instant artifacts.
Q: How will you make your institution different and innovative? RICHARD: I would hope to develop a system of special curators or committees to advise us on our decisions. I would include in these other museum directors and respected gallerists from New York. Perhaps even world famous artists. But as head curator, Cesar can speak better to these issues. CESAR: All this is very ambitious. But still just another way of perpetuating the old way. Another pile of shit!
Q: How do you see the role of curatorial decision making? CESAR: I think the times dictate the role of a single curator. He will be the one, true artist going into the new millennium. We can already see it happening at the level of commercial galleries. Deitch, Hirst. Theme shows. Like Bad Girls and Vertigo.
Q: So how exactly do you see your role as head curator in a contemporary institution? CESAR: The public doesn't come back each month to see a specific work of art. That piece will have moved on with something to replace it. Month to month, only the museum remains constant. The role of the contemporary curator then is to act in such a way that the art becomes invisible. His role is to make the museum all the more visible.
Q: For your first show you're bringing in names like Matisse and Picasso, all the way to Warhol and Koons. Do you really think you can make such giants of modern art invisible? RICHARD: The art business is about believing. There is no value without belief. Cesar and I want to make non‑believers of the world. After our first show, this should be an easy enough task. CESAR: The rest will be downhill.
Q: Opening a contemporary museum you can't hesitate. You have to start on top of everything. You seem to be doing this with your first show. But how and where do you go from here? I guess I'm really asking what is the best source for direction in the art world? Where do you go for such information? RICHARD: Art magazines. It's not a complex system. But Cesar has convinced me of its effectiveness. CESAR: It's all about whose face is on this month's cover. It's a hit parade. Success comes about that quickly.
Q: Isn't that a rather facile way of deciding things? CESAR: Pragmatic for me. RICHARD: At the and of the eighties, Cesar was diagnosed with a spastic colon. Needless to say, he spends a lot of time on the crapper reading. That's where he experienced this particular epiphany. CESAR: It was like Saul an the road to Damascus. One day I was suddenly enlightened.
Q: From our conversation, I would guess it was an easy decision for you to give up being an artist and to take on the role as head curator? CESAR: Not at all! I'm an artist to the death! In fact, here and now, I want to declare myself the greatest living artist! Why? Because now I not only have the power of making art, but also that power of being able to make art history itself.
Q: And what exactly is your vision of art history? CESAR: I don't know if mine is a hopelessly romantic idea but I have a vision of the world where there are no more images, nothing but desert.
Q: What does that leave? CESAR: The sky above! This is the moment we no longer have to gaze down into the dust at our feet. To move into a new age, you must preclude the existence of a past.
Q: Richard, if you let Cesar destroy any referencing to a past, how can you plan or judge future art? RICHARD: On this one, I have to agree with Cesar. Because too many references have led to no references at all. To a visual bankruptcy. Where references no longer have weight because of their sheer bulk. This has happened to art. It has been transformed into something which doesn't have any value except mercenary.
Q: How will you establish the value of this new world art, then, if you throw out the value of the old? RICHARD: The value of any art relates exclusively to how many people have bought into it. By every definition. It's about status and consumption. CESAR: It's also about a star system. And I will be the new millennium's first impresario. I will provide and organize its first entertainments. Moving to a system where the artist is no longer the star, I will be the one to fill its sky with new constellations..
Q: Richard, how exactly do you see your role as director? RICHARD: Essentially, I'll work at the administrative end of it all. Carefully handling and distributing Jane's endowment funds for the museum. Very, very carefully. Despite appearances to the contrary, Jane was not very well endowed. CESAR: It was all in the carriage. People thought she was rich just by the way she stood. RICHARD: She knew how to arch her back just so.
Q: What does all this mean for the museum in the long term? RICHARD: That there will be no long term. We'll go bankrupt. The banks will walk in and take over almost immediately. The permanent collection will be put up for auction. And once the banks take over, everything is sold for very, very low prices.
Q: How does this fit with the museum's agenda as an alternative space for the future? RICHARD: Ultimately it will help in the mistrust of contemporary art. CESAR: Most important of all, the artists won't get anything from the whole experience but a bad reputation. . . . . . . .
January 1997 The museum opened in January 1997 with ART UNTIL NOW. It consisted of black and white prints of artists' signature logos. Each artist, famous and not, are recognized by a certain type used by their gallery for their name: these fonts were isolated from their original exhibition invitations, matted, framed, and exhibited. . . . . . . . April-May 1997 The next show we have located information on was THE LAST PICASSO, which opened in April and consisted of wall text annotations only, explaining the major elements from Picasso's GUERNICA - which were placed in approximately accurate positions on an empty wall comprising the exact measurements of the original painting. The following texts deal in a satiric way with the whole process of deciding and presenting art, using the idea of a colorized GUERNICA as its springboard. They were released separately over the course of the exhibition. There was also a contest to coincide with the exhibition's opening. The winner of the BUT-I-DON'T-LOOK-ANYTHING-LIKE-GERTRUDE-STEIN contest was a rather burly fellow with a full beard. He took home a fake Picasso. As well as many other fake Picasso's in the show, there was one lost Picasso (glaringly absent from its easel), and several censored Picasso's - that were locked in the back gallery and refused access.
FOR: IMMEDIATE RELEASE FROM: The Museum of Contemporary Art "The Last Picasso" has recently been rediscovered and is believed to be the last completed painting by Pablo Picasso. A full‑color rendering of his earlier "Guernica," this long-lost masterpiece stands as proof to why the great master of 20th century art was never fully satisfied with the b&w original. On exclusive loan from the Prado Salon in Toledo, the painting will make its North American debut at the MCA February 28, 7‑10pm. Museum Hours: 12‑5pm, Tuesday‑Saturday.
FOR: IMMEDIATE RELEASE RE: Censored Picasso THE LIE OF THE CENTURY! The Horrible Truth Revealed! The Secret hidden in a Vatican vault for Fifty Years! Now smuggled out of Italy by the Picasso Society and showing exclusively at the MCA, "The Censored Masterpieces." HELD OVER, "The Last Picasso." PLUS, a But‑I‑Don't‑Look‑Anything‑Like Gertrude-Stein Look‑Alike Contest. First prize: An authentic fake Picasso, complete with forged documents. OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday April 5, 7‑10pm. MUSEUM HOURS: 1‑5pm, Tuesday‑ Saturday.
FOR: IMMEDIATE RELEASE RE: LAST PICASSO VANDALIZED In the process of being installed at Detroit's new MCA, Pablo Picasso's last known painting was attacked by a short‑order cook delivering lunch to the museum work crew. Wielding several squirt‑bottles of an unknown substance, Christopher "Crisco" Hausman was stopped short of doing any real damage to the priceless canvas by a wary guard. Despite readily confessing he was not driven by any artistic ambitions, the museum still refused to press charges, and Hausman, twenty‑eight, was released from police custody.
as published in SPLASH magazine: MUSEUM TALK THE LAST PICASSO
KAY POLK: You've removed the Picasso. RICHARD MANN: It hardly made it to the wall. CESAR MARZETTI: Sure, it was his last painting. But the paint was so fresh, it was still wet. RICHARD: That raised a few eyebrows. So, we took a sample and sent it to the chemist. Initial lab tests proved the suspicious substance was red. CESAR: We already knew that. RICHARD: Cesar couldn't wait for further tests, so he acted. CESAR: I acted.
KAY: What did you do? CESAR: I'm Italian. I tasted it. It was just too tangy for cadmium or vermillion. And the medium was vinegar, not oil. RICHARD: We immediately thought "FAKE!" So we called in the insurance detective this time. And he dated and traced it to a bottle of cocktail sauce in Teaneck New Jersey Oct 95. It had expired on top of it.
KAY: What did you do next? RICHARD: Cesar had his stomach pumped. CESAR: Just to be safe. I never had any symptoms to speak of. RICHARD: Come to find out the painting had hung over a salad bar for the last six years. CESAR: It was a big stupid circle. In the end we were left with a beautiful painting that had been splashed with shrimp sauce. So what? That still didn't prove it was fake.
KAY: Yet you've physically removed it from the show. RICHARD: Controversy became the issue. For god's sake, it was Picasso's GUERNICA colorized! It was a magnet for militants. CESAR: Almost immediately, our security caught someone with two squirt bottles of tartar sauce. RICHARD: Things were getting out of hand.
KAY: A separatist from Spain? CESAR: Everything pointed to that. He kept screaming "Toro! Toro! Toro!" as he ran toward the painting. RICHARD: I still say it sounded more like "Tora, tora, tora!"
KAY: Basque then? CESAR: A vegan. Who believed shrimp had no place in a salad bar.
KAY: What now? RICHARD: It's gone. It's safe. It's home again in Ohio.
KAY: I thought it was on loan from the Prado in Spain? RICHARD: There was a typo in the press release. It should've read the Prado Saloon in Toledo, Ohio. Not the Prado Salon in Toledo. CESAR: Needless to say, we fired our publicist. RICHARD: Still, we don't think the exhibit has suffered. CESAR: We've kept all the validations hanging. The listings. The historical references. Ucello, Goya. Antecedents. It was comprehensively annotated, you know. And all that has stayed. RICHARD: There's been a more direct impact on our visitors without the painting. Don't you think, Cesar? CESAR: The painting would've become a huge distraction for the people who came to read the wall tags. RICHARD: The lines have only gotten longer since. CESAR: As far as numbers, it's destined to be our best show to date. Richard Mann is Director of the museum of Contemporary Art. Cesar Marzetti is Chief Curator. Kay Polk is a critic and writer who has had occasional sex with both Marzetti and Mann.
Once THE LAST PICASSO closed, a letter of apology was sent to the press and museum friends admitting to the clumsily-staged hoax.
Dear Museum Friend, In a clumsy attempt to take advantage of current headlines on art vandalism, the museum’s publicist recently leaked some misleading and incomplete information to the media. The MCA’s recent incident involving Picasso’s Last Painting was duly sensationalized in an interview published in the museum quarterly, ARTVIEW. We can see no further value in exploiting now, what has already become little more than old news and shredded memos. The MCA prides itself on drawing attention to innovation and controversy without having to lower its lack of standards to such obvious depths. Needless to say, the responsible staff has been both chastised and promoted. Further, I am enclosing a copy of that earlier press packet with the hope of putting this entire issue, finally, to better use. Sincerely, Richard Mann Director
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