Chapter 25

Art Mystery

 

So, I found out the first lousy thing about being an artist. You can’t tell if you’re making progress or if what you’re doing is any good. You can tell if you like something you’re doing, or if it feels satisfying after you’ve done it, but you can’t tell if anyone else will react the same way—and you can’t trust people to be honest and tell you if they actually like something, because they may try to be polite, or they’re confused and don’t know their own taste, or think they aren’t qualified to express an opinion about art. But other peoples’ opinions is not the lousiest part of it—it’s the fact that the artist himself is never sure.

For all I know, Rembrandt would say to himself, “This painting is turning out to be garbage, but I guess I’d better finish it so I can get paid,” and all the time he would be working on some monster masterpiece and not know it. And some of the artists around Old Town were extremely proud of stuff that a cat could have painted. In fact, there was one case known of a cat having better taste than a human.

It was this guy named Clark Gomez—he was a big hulking idiot, and a painter. Everybody agreed that he was the worst painter in the world. His stuff was not just bad, it was painful to look at. He was a good-natured fellow, and had lots of friends—of course, nobody ever told him his paintings were a disaster. He had a job in the produce department of a supermarket, and he would bring home peppers and carrots and paint them. Only the paintings didn’t look like peppers and carrots, or paintings. Maybe they looked like nightmares peppers and carrots would have if they could dream. And had no imagination.

One day a cat walked through his window. It was a big shaggy cat, and Clark Gomez decided to keep it. He got dented cans of cat food for free at his job, and the cat decided to stay with him. He named it King Kong. When Clark worked on paintings, King Kong would watch him attentively. He would look at him and the painting with a fixed stare. Clark said he could feel the cat’s eyes burning a hole in him. He said the cat made him nervous. When the painting was finished, Clark would lean it against the wall and have a look at it. The cat looked too. Then King Kong would react in one of two ways. Some paintings he would go behind, then curl up and go to sleep. Clark would slap white paint on these and use the canvas for another painting. Other paintings King Kong would attack and try to claw to death. These paintings Clark Gomez would put in a high rack attached to the ceiling where the cat could not reach them. He would crate up the paintings King Kong hated and ship them off to juried competitions all over the country. Every one of them won first prize, some of them were bought by museums and collectors, and articles were written about Clark Gomez in magazines—not mentioning the cat.

One day King Kong went out the window he had come in by, and never returned. Clark’s paintings went back to being lousy. He got another cat, but it wasn’t interested in art. He continued to paint, and was promoted to assistant manager of the produce section at the market.