The Burnt Orange Heresy

"At first, as the viewer's eyes became adjusted to the murky natural light coming into the room from a single dirty window high on the opposite wall, all he could see was what appeared to be an ornate frame, without a picture in it, hanging on the wall. A closer inspection, with the aid of a match or cigarette lighter, revealed that the gilded frame with baroque scrollwork enclosed a fissure or crack in the gray plaster wall. The exposed wire, and the nail which had been driven into the wall to hold both the wire and the frame, were also visible. Within the frame, the wire, peaking to about twenty degrees at the apex-at the nail- resembled, if the viewer stood well back from the picture, a distant mountain range."

Berenice sighed. "I don't understand it. The whole thing doesn't make any sense to me."

"Exactly! No sense, but not nonsense. This was an irrational work in a rational setting. Debierue's Nihilistic Surrealism, like Dada and Surrealism, is irrational. That's the entire point of Dada, and of most of the other postwar art movements. Distortion, irrationality, and the unlikely juxtaposition of objects."

"What did the reviewers say about it?"

"What the reviewers said in the newspapers isn't important, Berenice. There's a distinction between a reviewer and a critic, as you should know. The reviewer deals with art as a commodity. He's got three or four shows a week to cover, and his treatment of them is superficial, at best. But the critic is interested in aesthetics, and in placing the work of art in the scheme of things-or even as a pattern of behavior."

"All right, then. What did the critics say about No. One?"

"A great many things. But criticism begins with the structure, and often ends there, especially for those critics who believe that every work of art is autotelic. Autotelic. That means-"

"I know what autotelic means. I studied literary criticism in college, and l've got a degree in English."

"Okay. What does it mean?"

"It means that a work of art is complete in itself."

"Right! And what else does it mean, or imply?"

"Just that. That the poem, or whatever, should be considered by itself, without reference to anything else."

"That's right, but there's more. It means that the artist himself should not be brought into the criticism of the work being considered. And although I'm a structuralist, I don't think that any work-poem, painting, novel-is autotelic. The personality of the artist is present in every work of art, and the critic has to dig it out as well as explicating the structure and form. Take pro football-"

"I'd love to. It's more interesting than painting."

"To you, yes, but I want to make an analogy. A good critic's like a good football announcer on television. We see the same play that he does, but he breaks it down for us, reveals the structure and the pattern of the play. He explains what went wrong and what was right about the play. He can also tell us what is likely to come next. Also, because of the instant tape replay, he can even break down the play into its component parts for us to see again in slow motion. We do the same thing in art criticism sometimes, when we blow up details of a painting in slides."

"Your analogy doesn't explain the 'personality' in the football play."

"Yes it does. This is the quarterback, who caused the play in the first place. That is, if the quarterback called the play. Sometimes the coach calls every play, sending in the new play every time with a substitute. If the announcer doesn't know what the coach is like, what he has done before, or the quarterback, I'll say, his explanation of the structure of the play is going to be shaky, and any prediction he makes won't be valid. Do you follow me?"

"I follow you."

"Good. Then you shouldn't have any trouble in understanding the success of No. One. Only one person at a time was allowed to examine the picture. But there was no time limit set by the artist. Some visitors came downstairs immediately. Others remained for an hour or more, inconveniencing those waiting below. The average viewer was satisfied by a cursory inspection. But according to Hauptmann, there were a great many repeats.

"One old Spanish nobleman from Sevilla visited Paris a half-dozen times for the sole purpose of taking another look at No. One. No visitor's log was kept, but the fact that a vast number of people visited Debierue's shop to see the picture is a matter of public record. Every Parisian artist of the time made the pilgrimage, usually bringing along some friends. And No. One was widely discussed.

"Sporadic newspaper publicity, the critical attention Debierue provoked in European art reviews, and word-ofmouth discussion of the exhibit, brought a steady stream of visitors to his gallery until May 25, 1925, when he sold his shop for the purpose of painting full time.