by I. Bismuth

As an academic at the forefront of social and cultural transformation I like to keep abreast of the latest developments in the visual arts, and I am a regular visitor to the Shooting Gallery, an exciting little space not far from the university. It presents a new exhibition of contemporary works every couple of months. I never trouble to find out beforehand what I am going to see, being confident I can rely on the gallery’s board of trustees to keep pushing the boundaries of artistic expression, but always the same boundaries and always in the same direction. That, at any rate, was my fond belief. So last week, when I picked up the catalogue and entered the main room, I was totally unprepared for the experience I was about to undergo.

The first thing with which I was confronted was a full-length standing nude, a female with pearly skin, not an over-eater, not a starveling, and with no obvious abnormalities, amputations or signs of substance abuse. The painting was beautiful. There was proportion, order, balance, harmony, rhythm, and unity, for God’s sake. The model was beautiful, too. There was the blueness of her left eye and there was the blueness her right eye, and, as if that were not enough, there was the blackness of her hair, the same hair, mind you, that reached down to caress the whiteness of her shoulders, damn them. What was going on here? I was in the Shooting Gallery ... the same Shooting Gallery. I could not be seeing what I thought I was seeing.

Perhaps I was being invited to jump to conclusions and fall flat on my face. Perhaps games were being played with my expectations. You know, I saw beauty and assumed health and happiness, but what I didn’t see was the disease and the anguish under the surface. That wistful expression of hers was not a fleeting mood caught by the skill of the artist - it was the manifestation of some life-threatening metabolic disorder. However, when I referred to the catalogue, there was no information about her medical record or her mental turmoil, only the possibly ironical title Nice Girl and with it the post-modern wink by which I was to understand she posed for the picture by popping into the artist’s studio between clients.

But I had to face the disturbing truth. All the evidence suggested she was healthy and White, was indeed a nice girl, and was painted because she made an attractive subject. That was all there was to it. And there, of course, was the problem. In the twenty-first century, Whiteness plus beauty plus art plus or minus nothing else equals Nazi propaganda.

Now, I am far from being an intractable critic. In some cases, we can make allowances when a foreigner produces imitations of forbidden forms of White beauty. But foreigners hoping to buy special political dispensation need to know what they are worth. And though the name of the artist responsible for this show was Albert Maindsin, which did not immediately condemn him as English, his likely non-Englishness was the best that could be said for him. His photograph in the catalogue revealed him to be a fungible European. Now, before the Second World War, when we were on the gold standard of foreignness, any Continental was accepted in all transactions as having full foreignness value, but since then a dizzying inflation rate has diminished the value of the Continental to a small fraction of that pre-War high. This Maindsin might have been foreign, but he was not foreign enough to have allowances made for him.

Still, perhaps Nice Girl was an aberration. Anyone can make a mistake. And if he had already been told about his, a contrite Maindsin might have thought better of it and even now be working on an Anti-Racist artist’s practical creative reply to just criticism.

The message of the next painting (for the show consisted entirely of paintings) seemed much less obscure. It was a magnificent landscape with a grassy foreground which led back to autumnal woodland. Grass and autumnal woodland - what could be more natural than to assume this scene represented the pregnantly Anti-Racist countryside near Auschwitz? That would justify the painting as a contemporary piece and give it an unimpeachable frisson. But again, normal expectations were dashed. According to the catalogue, the scene was not near Auschwitz at all, but near Scotch Corner. Scotch Corner? What was Maindsin playing at? What was the Anti-Racist significance of the countryside near Scotch Corner? There must be some. Everywhere has some. But Maindsin should have used the catalogue entry to clarify the role of the environs of a northern road junction in the iconography of guilt. Given that he did not, the outrageous possibility that this painting of his was merely a striking landscape could not be dismissed.

The next painting was a portrait of a fortyish man and woman, sitting together at a cafe table.  Neither was a contributor to vibrancy. They were healthy-looking and, of all things, prosperously middle-class. They were about to tuck in to some horribly irresistible dessert. What could it possibly mean?  I frowned publicly over her flowery summer dress and his casual jacket and trousers. I chewed my fingernails over their beaming contentment. Here were two Whites without a care in the world, in the latter stages of a meal they, frankly, did not need, and apparently entirely happy both with that and with each other’s company. It was deeply troubling.

Again the catalogue was no help, offering only the title, Dining Out. All I could suppose was that the man must once have been a woman or the woman once have been a man and this was a celebration of transsexual love, an allusion to appetites made equal in the public mind by the onward march of liberty and progress. That would at least give the picture a point that would be unexceptionable back in the department. But I was getting to know this Maindsin, and I suspected the worst.

With a mounting sense of disbelief I moved through his other exhibited works. There were seascapes, street scenes, lakes, dancing girls, clouds, aircraft, valleys, faces, figures, harbours, oyster-catchers, glaciers, lunar craters, conjurers, bridges, ballrooms. By the time I had seen them all, it was clear that something was terribly wrong, and my spirit was soaring.

This was not contemporary art. This was a fraud. Contemporary art should make me see my breakfast again. It should be the apotheosis of the landfill. It should make me curse the day I was born. It should indict the White. It should unWest me. It should, well ... this stuff of Maindsin’s didn’t do any of that. It wasn’t contemporary art at all. It was art.

Something had to be done.

Naturally, I resolved to see every canvas burn ... burn soon, I tell you, before somebody could actually buy one and take it home, and yet more damage would be done to the fabric of society. But then I was brought up short by a sign pointing to the adjacent room. It seemed that Maindsin did not have the place to himself.

The other exhibition was a scrupulously correct and comprehensive collection of tribal loincloths. This called for a change of plan.

There was no reason why any loincloth should make the ultimate sacrifice for Maindsin’s extremism. It was already after five o’clock and the gallery closed at six, so I left the room of intolerance to wait among the blameless loincloths. I hid myself behind a particularly commodious West African example, though evidently one that had not been washed prior to its arrival. The last member of staff took an inordinately long time to lock up and go home, I can tell you. But then I emerged free and fully prepared to have my way with Maindsin’s obscenities.

I unhung every one and wedged open a fire exit, a fire exit that would shortly be exiting to a fire - it had the symmetry of justice. It was an artistic triumph. I made a pile in the yard at the back. The alarm I had set off by opening the door was for a conflagration that had not yet started, but nothing was going to stop. For political reasons I am not a smoker. But also for political reasons I carry a lighter, in fact for just such an occasion as this. Once I was satisfied that the blaze was healthy, I strolled away as casually as possible.

Turning back to watch the thick plume of unacceptability rise over the gallery, I telephoned the police and named Albert Maindsin together with all the members of the board of trustees who had so badly lost their way, stressing that I expected to see arrests within twenty-four hours. As long as we remain vigilant, our social and cultural progress will never be reversed.

I Bismuth will be signing copies of his new book Why Aren’t We Doing More to Destroy Ourselves? Is Racism to Blame at the vegan stall in Portobello Market next saturday, providing he gets bail.