Compote

Paul Cézanne, Still Life with Apples, c.1878, © Estate of Paul Cezanne, oil on canvas, image by RISD Museum

 

December-January 2017/18

 

“I will astonish Paris with an apple!” Cézanne once declared with wonderful ballsiness, and then he pretty much did just that. But the apples I’m thinking of today, as this year finally winds down, are far humbler than the great Cézanne’s were. They were part of an installation by an artist whose name is lost in the year end haze, but just try and picture green apples, lots of them, piled into a corner on a gallery floor. Call it Félix González-Torres meets Cézanne.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA), aka “candy spill”, 1991, © Estate of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 175 lb of candy, photograph taken by rivershannon936.wordpress.com

The gallery is in Budapest’s Ludwig Múzeum. It’s the ‘90s and the capital is yet to open its very own 21st century contemporary art museum, so the atmosphere is decidedly more post-Red than post-modern. It’s summer, the windows are open, the air isn’t climate-controlled, the guards (mostly older women) aren’t uniformed, in fact they look more like your granny kicking around in her mumu on a hot day. I strike up a conversation with one of the guards. There’s no one around, she’s bored, I’m up for a chat with a stranger. What we talk about is also lost in this sub-tropical fug I’m in, but I know she tells me how well I speak Hungarian. The Magyars always say that no matter how poorly you speak it because nobody other than the natives really know this mysterious tongue. A few rooms on the same guard taps me on the shoulder and hands me three apples. A few more rooms on I understand about the apples. I understand better about the apples than I do about the installation because in that moment I see the art through her eyes. “Such a waste,” she thinks, “here, take them before they rot.”

What conclusion can one draw from my silly, little story? That this blogger is fagged from year end fatigue? That the guard is in the wrong job? That the guard doesn’t care for installation art? That it’s not right to vandalise art? That apples rot and that they rot even faster in the summer? That sooner or later all apples rot? Which brings me to my new year’s resolution: make more compote. ◊

See you in February for “Missing Pieces: Part One”. Thank you for reading in 2017 & Happy New Year!