Unknown: Posed For Pleasure

“Here we have fantasy, ladies and gentlemen,” Armand Fortuna says, writing the word on the green chalkboard, meticulously washed the night before in honor of his visit and lecture here at the university, “and here, we have reality.”

And the word REALITY appears beside FANTASY, distanced from it about a foot.

Armand pauses his lecture, just begun, to put a frame around each of the words.

“We merge the two supposed opposites into a third entity, which we call art.”

ART appears in a box above the two, arrows pointing to it from the two boxes below it.

“So then, art is the synthesis of fantasy and reality to produce an effect.

“But!”

Significant pause, chalk poised in the air, suspending time and focussing attention, piercing gaze from bearded, moustached visage seeming to transfix the students, individually and collectively, before he continues, “There is a contradiction, a fallacy at work here in this supposed reconciliation of opposites.

“Because-”

And he pauses again, putting a series of R’s beneath FANTASY, surrounding each with a circle, an arrow pointing from each toward the FANTASY box, before facing the amphitheater of entranced faces once more to say, “Fantasy is itself composed of reality.

“We can think only in terms of what lies within our experience, individually and collectively. Like matter, the range of imagery of which the human mind is capable can neither be enhanced nor diminished.

“It is as impossible for you to think of that which does not exist as it is to think of a color outside the visible spectrum.

“So that our wildest fantasies, our boldest imaginings are composed-in-their-entirety-of elements founded in reality, in the mundane, in the given.

“We have no choice! We cannot help ourselves! There is no escape, ladies and gentlemen, not for you, not for Armand Fortuna.

“So that art consists, then, of the rearrangement of the real, the juxtaposition, if you will, of the real elements to create an effect.”

And he draws an arrow from REALITY to FANTASY.

“Under these circumstances, then, you may well ask yourselves-or ask me, ‘How then, does one create a masterpiece’?”

“If, after all, we are as incapable of true creation as we are of creating or destroying matter-with apologies to the future nuclear physicists or future Jeopardy contestants in the crowd-then how is it possible to have a Mona Lisa, a Sistine Chapel, Michaelangelo’s David-in short, anything at all which we elevate in our sensibilities above the mundane? “The answer, ladies and gentlemen, lies in that which differentiates an art from a science.

“In science, we depend upon the fact of the whole of a quantity’s being equal to the sum of its parts.

“In art, a masterpiece is a work in which the whole of the quantity is far, far greater than the sum of its parts.

“It is the difference between a hot dog and a sausage lovingly prepared in accordance with the old secret family recipe, to cite a rather homely example.

“It is the difference between a sportscar and a steamroller, to cite an example of art applied to science in the case of the former, and the absence of such an effort’s being applied to the latter.

“Now, many of you were no doubt disappointed, after learning that I was to join you here for a series of lectures, to discover that, far from talking about drawing, painting, the other rendering techniques, I was instead to confine my disbursement of wisdom to this, this… thing we call aesthetics.

“Aesthetics, so the dictionary tells us-and I just happen to have one on me so I don’t forget what the hell I’m supposed to be doing here-is the THEORY of the fine arts and of people’s responses to them; the SCIENCE or that branch of philosopy which deals with the beautiful; the DOCTRINES of taste.

“Not to say that Noah Webster was not a brilliant, perhaps even a great man, ladies and gentlemen, but he did have his limitations. Suffice it to say that there are no Noah Websters hanging in art galleries.

“Note how he goes from theory to science to doctrine.

“Tell ya right now, boys and girls, the man is promising what I cannot deliver.

“I regret this, of course.

“Would that I could stand here and, over the course of nine weeks, propound a theory, demonstrate with absolute accuracy its unarguable facticity, and conclude by appearing before you with one or more stone tablets with the doctrine of art chiselled thereon, by either a divine or a divinely inspired hand.

“It ain’t gonna happen, folks, because I’m just not that good.”

“Did I uh, did I lose anybody on that?”

And he peers around his audience intently, eyes shielded as though from the lights, unnecessary of course since the lights are on in the auditorium to permit note-taking.

“Excellent! Nobody moved. I told ‘em those handcuffs on the arms of the seats would do the trick! “Very well, then, continuing my ego trip-”

This time he pauses for the laughter to subside, rather than over-riding it, before continuing, “We see before us on the screen there-above us, actually-my so-called masterpiece, ‘Irene I’.

“This is oil over acrylic on canvas, larger than life, done in a style reminiscent of what we might term billboard realism.

“Questions to be answered.

“Why this size? Why this mixture of media? Why this subject? Why this style, why this particular selection of elements from reality? Why not a photograph? “I am taking a great risk here tonight with you, ladies and gentlemen.

“They say that the dissection of a joke destroys the humor in it.

“Let us, then, hope that artistic representation does not suffer the same fate as comedy.

“First of all, there is the matter of the painting’s size.

“This particular canvas was stretched for me by my good and long-suffering friend…”

“You are a liar, Mr. Fortuna.”

“I beg your pardon, miss? Not to deny that I have in fact lied upon several occasions in the course of a long and checkered career, but I take it you are referring specifically to one or more points in tonight’s lecture.

“I may have been mistaken or might possibly have said things with which you might not agree, but I don’t recall having deliberately lied between seven and nine this evening.”

“Perhaps not in so many words, Mr. Fortuna, but you did lie.”

“So. Not only a liar, but a subtle liar, then, am I, according to, to… you are?”

“Jessica. Jessica Farnham.”

“Well now, Jessica Farnham, suppose you tell me wherein I have displayed my apparently subconscious tendency toward mendacity.”

“The part about when you fucked the girl.”

“What the hell-oh! President Collins! How very nice of you to come by. Did you catch my maiden lecture?”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, Armand! Just wanted to stop by and shake your hand to tell you how very pleased I am! “Got the fine arts faculty to thinking, I’m sure! “Not to mention the student body,” Collins adds, looking Jessica up and down.

“So it would seem,” Armand replies. “This is, I believe, one of your students, uh, Jessica, Jessica…”

“Famham,” Jessica completes. “Graduate student. Fine arts.”

“Yes, well, Miss Famham, what did you think of the world famous Armand Fortuna’s very first venture into the wonderful world of the academic lecture?”

“The same as yours, I would say, Mr. collins.”