Interview with a Dead Artist

INTERVIEW with a DEAD ARTIST

Q: Whilst living did it ever occur to you that you might be wasting your time?
A: Yes. It struck me that a lot of time was on my hands. I scrubbed and scrubbed and that didn’t help but then I discovered oils. They’re impossible to get off! I think I found the very impossibility of that comforting. It somehow freed me up.
Q: Your paintings, beadwork and unpublished essays concerning all the insects that have never been named remain unread and/or unseen. How does that sit with you?
A: Really well! The thing is I never intended to make money doing these things because clearly I would be immediately compromised by The Man. I’d met him once and he made me shiver so uncontrollably I knew any further dealings with him would only kill me albeit slowly and not that painfully. Still, I made a choice and have stuck with it.
Q: Havn’t you come close to selling work in the past?
A: Yes but I saw my mistake before the private buyer even stepped through my door. He was a clever one. He’d expressed a willingness to buy a piece of my beadwork, sight unseen—did you ever hear of such a thing. Then again I suppose he had no choice…
Q:Yes, I gather one art critic found your work to be “unknowable” because seeing it in your opinion was “tantamount to picking it to pieces and taking the bits to the town dump!”
A; Well it is isn’t it? Think about it. You spend hours constructing a world that is unique and unusual and then the moment someone sees it it has in effect doubled! It is now in his head to!
Q: Your death was staged for public consumption. Given your resistance to all consumerism, in any of its forms…what got into you?
A: I suppose it was a last gasp. I was broke and had not realized the full implications of what that meant until I found myself starving to death. I had, according to the doctor who signed my death certificate, been eating myself and was beyond repair. That was when I decided to end my life by earning one penny.
I signed off on the rights to the filming of my last gasp with a local TV station managed by a friend in exchange for one penny. I still have it. I never spent it—the only penny I ever earned. Took it to the grave with me.
Q: You left no Will. Your works were all removed from the bedsit where you were living by a company that specialized in estate clearance. Nothing you made survives and yet you are a household name. The Modern’s most popular show last year was yours, attracting thousands. How do you explain that?
A: I don’t.