The Winter War (5 page)

‘Male artists too,' added the skinny young woman.

‘I see,' said Eva.

She felt a slight tingling in her stomach, yet she was surprised at how comfortable the whole situation felt – sitting here with the other students and being able to say that she was studying art in London. Was it really that easy? She realised that she was the one who would have to give substance to that simple statement. She thought the others seemed very self-confident, and she had a hard time determining what they might think of her. Even though she didn't feel that she had her ‘own voice', did that really matter? Wasn't that why she was here? To find it?

The class had ended with a video of an art installation. It showed a glass of water sitting on a shelf on a wall. Nothing happened, and yet they watched it for close to ten minutes.

Afterwards Malik handed out a sort of Q & A form that apparently went with the video, with the artist answering questions about the work. He claimed that the glass of water actually represented an oak tree.

Q: Do you mean that the glass of water is a symbol of an oak tree?

A: No. It's not a symbol. I've changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree.

Eva thought the whole thing seemed like an exercise that might be presented in a secondary-school philosophy class. But she didn't say a word, hoping that someone else would do the talking.

‘So how would you interpret this? What do you think about it?' asked Malik. He was standing in the middle of the room, giving them an earnest, child-like look – the same look that Eva had seen on the faces of boyfriends when they played some new tune that they thought would impress her.

‘No opinions? Come on, people, you're not here to sit in silence, are you?'

A wiry guy with reddish-brown hair and freckles cautiously raised his hand. He was wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Lipstick Lesbian', and he was as thin as his shirt.

‘Yes, Mr Parr?'

‘I think it's brilliant. At first you just see the glass of water and you think, like, okay, it has to do with life, meaning it's deep symbolism, with the water as a basic element. But then the artist, like, comes in and just fucks you over, because it's not a glass of water, it's not a symbol, it's a tree. So this is just as much about our preconceived ideas about how to interpret a work of art as it is about the work itself.'

Malik Martin raised his eyebrows. ‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And what does that mean?'

‘I don't know, or rather, I assume it's what it says here on the paper. “That to understand the classification of oak as a specific oak is not the same as understanding and experiencing a glass of water as an oak.”'

‘What else? Anyone?'

Malik looked around at the other students.

When Eva had studied art history, they'd sometimes used this kind of exercise in class. They could spend several class hours discussing what art was, and who determined what it was.

She raised her hand.

‘Yes?' said Malik.

She looked around the room. ‘Well, as I see it, the idea behind this work of art is to show how art is about trust. The spectator's trust in the artist's perspective. If the artist says that the glass of water is an oak tree, we have to believe him or her.'

Malik's expression revealed nothing about what his reaction might be to what she'd said. Instead, he moved to the middle of the room and said, ‘Interesting. And what's your own opinion? Do you trust the artist?'

She hesitated. She'd learned that there was no right or wrong in this sort of discussion – and that resorting to personal preferences when it came to conceptual art was like using Hitler to win an argument. The point wasn't whether a specific work of art was good or bad. The point was whether it was interesting.

‘It makes me think about Descartes. I mean, it's dealing with similar questions, isn't it? “Does the table exist – in reality?” et cetera. Although I don't think this particular text is very well written.'

‘I'm sorry you don't think so,' said Malik Martin. ‘The critics had a completely different view when Michael Craig-Martin first showed this artwork in 1973. Later a theatre piece was even made from it.'

‘From this one work?' asked Eva.

‘Absolutely. Picture it: what's happening here is just like in the theatre. The transformation from one thing to another. It's exactly what you're saying. Theatre is totally based on trust. The actor transforms himself into a character in the play, and we believe it, because that's part of the contract. Descartes is an excellent comparison. He asked himself: how we can believe that the table actually exists? And what was his answer? That we can't. We can only trust in the subject. This work of art shows how strong the subject's power is over the perceived reality. If we choose to believe the artist, then anything is possible. It's about
surrendering yourself
, as some wise person once expressed it.'

Eva blushed. Her reply was brief. ‘But the actors don't just stand on the stage without doing anything. They move about and speak their lines. It's not the same with the glass of water, which is completely motionless.'

‘Don't be so sure about that,' said Malik.

Now one of the young women students turned to face the others in the room. She had an eighties-style Cyndi Lauper hairdo, and her arms were covered with tattoos.

‘Isn't it a little like the Duchamps pissoir? I mean, taking a totally ordinary object and calling it art?'

The guy in the Lipstick Lesbian T-shirt protested. ‘We're not seriously going to talk about the Duchamps pissoir, are we? That was fucking ninety years ago.'

The young woman looked surprised, but Malik didn't reply. He abruptly clapped his hands and announced that the class was over. Eva stood up, noticing how stiff her joints were. Her brain also felt like it had gone numb, the same feeling she got if she hadn't eaten all day and just drank coffee – a huge echoing whiteness.

five

GRADUALLY, EVA'S STUDIES
gathered momentum. She enjoyed showing up at the university every day and spending half her time just talking about various topics. Malik was a strong supporter of the idea that discussions were the most important part of these study years, and he thought they ought to proceed organically, without being steered by any preconceived notions about how art criticism should be formulated. Each student was assigned a place in a studio and was allowed full use of the school's art supplies, which were included in the tuition fees.

Certain factions soon crystallised. Some students were skilled at drawing and often could produce remarkable results very quickly. Eva belonged to this group. She'd always been good at drawing, and she had developed her own style, which she stuck to faithfully, especially early in the autumn, when she wanted to impress the others without taking any big risks.

The problem with these skilful drawings was that they swiftly became quite repetitive. For instance, Eva soon learned that Laurie, a young woman with a freckled face and open expression that always reflected the mood of the group, liked to paint big, bright pictures that used a lot of paint and canvas. But almost all her paintings looked the same, flirting vaguely with the early modernist style, with everything blotchy and deliberately slapdash. Yet in places it was possible to
glimpse
a proper painting. This was the exact opposite of Ben's work. He spent his time making vector systems on Adobe Illustrator, which he then printed out and transformed into small, extremely detailed laser-printed pieces with titles like ‘Reasons My Girlfriend Won't Fuck Me' and ‘Experiences From My Four Years as an Involuntary Teenage Virgin'.

There were also sculptors, photographers and students who focussed on performance art. A quiet but interesting guy named Russ stood out from the others because he didn't shower his work with a bunch of conceptual bullshit but simply dedicated himself to his painting. Plus he painted in oils, which meant that he was always cloaked in a strong, but not entirely unpleasant, odour of oil and turpentine. His paintings were almost never done when they were supposed to be shown, so the discussions often ended with him promising to show more the next time it was his turn to present work to the class.

Malik Martin made an effort to offer everyone critiques, moving from one work of art to another, and sometimes handing out stern words. ‘Good God, Russ, is that your own pile of shit that you're trying to convey?' But the real core of his instruction was focussed on the weekly sessions when they all got together to discuss one another's work.

The first weeks were marked by a certain cautiousness in the group. No one dared criticise anyone else. Instead, they used adjectives like ‘interesting' or ‘exciting'. Another standard phrase was quickly adopted: ‘I understand it much better now that you've explained the actual process involved.' Eva thought this was just another way of saying that the artwork was more interesting as an idea than it was in reality.

She felt that they rarely had time to do anything properly. They were always scrambling to create the next work, but when she pointed this out to Malik, he merely said that they weren't there to ‘paint some fucking Renaissance masterpiece', but to form an initial, basic concept of themselves as artists.

During a recent class session they'd discussed Ben's small triptychs. He'd produced the actual pattern on the computer and then changed it into a screen print, which he highlighted using neon-pink and cyan-blue on three square canvases. When he talked about the work, he gave the impression that there was some sort of intricate numerological system behind the geometric figures in the painting, but the interpretation was made even more obscure by the fact that he'd titled the work ‘Afghanistan'.

‘I think it's exciting,' said Laurie, who was always generous with her comments and the one who broke the ice if no one else wanted to say anything. But her remarks were meaningless because she always liked everything the other students did.

The rest of the class sat in silence on their cushions and rugs. Most of them brought coffee and something to eat to these critique sessions. The student with the Cyndi Lauper hairdo – her name was Margot – had brought a bottle of wine, and since Malik didn't object when she opened it, some of the guys had asked her for a glass.

Now Malik was walking around the room, waiting for someone to say something. ‘Doesn't anybody have an opinion about Ben's work?'

Margot looked at it and decided to venture a remark. ‘I think it's nice. The colours are nice, and the composition is too. But I'm not really sure I understand the title. What does this have to do with Afghanistan?'

‘Ben, care to comment?' asked Malik.

Ben shook his head. ‘Preferably not. I don't want to steer the interpretation. Do I have to?'

‘You're entitled to refuse to comment. But what if I put the question like this: would you describe this as a political work of art?'

Again, Ben shook his head. ‘I don't think it makes any difference what I say. I'm not the one who determines that.'

Eva had a feeling that a lot of students in the class were making art that looked like art – meaning they had a definite idea about how art should look and function. Certain ideas and topics were considered to be ‘important', and a proper interpretation was supposed to sound a certain way. So that was what served as the starting point for their work. Ben seemed totally uninterested in participating in the expected discussion.

No one said a word.

‘I could tell you what I think, but what I think doesn't matter. Come on, folks!' said Malik.

It occurred to Eva how ridiculous this was – they were all forced to come up with an opinion that functioned in synthesis with the work of art. The whole field of art was like that. Everyone was striving towards an ideal of consensus. But what existed beyond that? Or was this merely a way to role-play, an approach to art that they had learned? The same way that young people who were politically active spoke of politics the way they imagined that politics should sound.

Finally, Eva decided to speak. She thought she might as well contribute to the discussion.

‘At first I didn't really get it. I mean, it's the same thing that you've done the last few times, Ben. Now you've just come up with a whole new title instead of the usual ones that have to do with sex. But then I started thinking, maybe it's an allegory. Maybe you see Afghanistan as an image for your love life.'

Ben started fidgeting. His painting, which was a metre and a half square, was displayed on an easel at the front of the room. He made no attempt to explain anything. Silence descended over the class once again. A few people were drinking wine. Finally, Malik clapped his hands.

‘Okay, it doesn't look as if we're going to get any further today. We'll continue on Monday. But that was an interesting theory, Eva,' he said as he went to the back of the room and opened the door. Everyone stood up, a few patted Ben on the shoulder, and the room emptied.

Half an hour later, Eva was waiting for Malik outside the university district, at a café where they often met.

She was thinking about how she longed for clear, sharp insights – the kind that you couldn't make up, the kind that you discovered, as if they had always been there, just waiting for you to find them.

When they were in the car, heading towards town, Malik began talking about the work of the other students as he lit a cigarette.

‘The problem with Ben is that he's so emotionally blocked that all he can do is sit in front of a computer and calculate formulas, telling himself that it's art. And then – as if to give the whole thing some sort of framework – he goes and calls the work “Afghanistan” so that he'll seem deeper than he really is. Where's the fucking risk-taking?'

Eva nodded. Malik went on, flicking the ash from his cigarette out of the car window. ‘To be perfectly honest, sometimes I just want to shoot myself in the head. Like when the boys start bullshitting about Bourdieu and those damned cultural assets, and they turn to look at the girls' – here, Malik turned towards Eva – ‘and their faces are all lit up. And I think to myself what a fucking waste. Boys, there are thousands of other people all around the world right now talking about Bourdieu and thinking that they're the only ones …'

When Malik got going like this, nothing could stop him. He loved the sound of his own voice. And Eva refused to admit it, but she actually enjoyed hearing Malik criticise the other students. Whenever he mocked Laurie, he did it with the greatest intensity – and Eva suspected this was because he was pissed off that she treated him with such indifference.

‘All her work is extremely narcissistic. Have you ever thought about that? It's like she can only see her own point of view, and she always thinks that she's kicking below the belt, when in reality her work has to do with inflating her own ego. But of course it doesn't matter – she'll do fine. People love that kind of shit. Come here,' said Malik, and Eva leaned towards him.

When they got to Eva's flat, Malik wanted to get high. He claimed to have an inexhaustible supply of Ritalin pills because his doctor had diagnosed him as having ADHD. He'd tried several times to offer some to Eva, but she had a mental block about taking drugs in the middle of the day. She'd tried cocaine at parties, and the first time she'd felt so hyper that she almost chewed her cheeks to shreds. But after a while she started liking the effect it had on her – she felt sharp and smart, and she enjoyed talking to people, without getting into those sorts of embarrassing conversations that often happened if she was drunk.

Malik crushed up a pill and snorted it off the cover of one of Eva's art books, an expensive volume about the Pre-Raphaelites that she'd bought at the National Gallery. Soon afterwards, he wanted to have sex with her. And since he was high, he'd want to spend a long time at it – the drugs seemed to increase his sexual appetite. She didn't mind. Eva thought there was something in the physical act that seemed more comprehensible and pure than the art she'd been trying to create during the past two months. When he entered her from behind, she couldn't help feeling a certain ecstatic pride that she'd made it this far – none of her friends back home in Finland had ever moved further away than to Stockholm.