On Guard: II of II

There are fewer pieces on display than hours in the workweek and fewer visitors in a workweek than pieces on display. The main gallery is 8,000 square feet by my measurements. A Men's 11 shoe is the foot the foot must have been named after. The gold standard, feetwise. I wear Men’s 11s.

I never cared much for art. I never cared much for corporate offices either, and I used to guard those. Naturally, I was open to switching. This place held the prospect of growing on me. There would be more to see. At least it would house a more interesting population. Office buildings during the second shift tend to be empty except for custodians and the occasional workaholic. I thought guarding a contemporary art museum could refine me, sophisticate me, engage me in a way I hadn’t been engaged since college. (I did attend college for three years, thank you.) When Hadley retired, I threw my name in a hat and literally won the lottery. Such is the way coveted assignments are delegated at Vanguard Security.

What I knew of art was the old kind you find in high school history textbooks, the representational kind where subject matter was obvious. Back when I started here, there was a minor exhibit by a Frenchman named Gustave Herbert in one of the alcove galleries. Those pieces were my first acquaintance with contemporary art. Three large canvases, 5' x 3', one for each wall. The first was blank, stark white, with maybe a foot wide tear in the canvas from top to bottom, exposing the framing. The title: Marie wishes she could drink milk like everyone else. I continued to the second work, a canvas of the same size with its inner structure completely exposed due to its being hung on the wall backwards. The title:  About Face! The third work escapes me.

I remember going back and spending a great deal of time with Marie. I viewed it from all vantages—far away, diminished and broken; up close, the rough grain of the frame and the loose threads of torn canvas; the standard viewing distance of four feet, lifeless and drab.  Nothing. The whole time I was asking myself questions because my mind was wandering. I was dumbstruck and trying to find something to latch on to. I pretty quickly thought I was doing something wrong. Art is visual not verbal. Be quiet. Don’t think this through. Explanation will only obscure, impede. Just look. I gave it my best, but it was not pleasing to look at. More anesthetic than aesthetic. Lifeless. She was absolutely foreign. Not the exotic sort of foreign, the foreign you want to visit and see for yourself because its reminds you of the variety beyond your humdrum surroundings. No. The unrelateable sort of foreign, like binary code or that weird wingdings font, an object of confusion and indifference.


What else could it be for? What was I missing? I considered all the clues at my disposal. I tried to square the work with the title. Note the shared color between canvas and milk. Note the correlation between the violent nausea associated with lactose intolerance and the violent destruction of the canvas. I read and reread the blurb about Herbert in the show's pamphlet looking for a key. I could only guess she was hung up for us to see because of his “playfulness.” I was stumped. From the looks of it, everyone else was, too. None of the visitors spent more than a couple minutes with the three works. And that experience was par for the course. The museum specializes in the baffling.

Children’s toys are a popular medium. Last fall, there was a Swedish—maybe Danish—photographer who took pictures of teddy bears in sexually explicit poses. (The bears were decked out in BDSM garb.) Last spring, we featured a pile of scalped baby dolls, roped off with a Do Not Touch sign. I heard it was conceptual. I didn't hear what the concept was.

The summer before there was the Redaction Series. Twenty-two semi-gloss black 2’ x 3’ paintings on the walls. A painter supposedly created photorealistic portraits of homeless people he’d met in his travels and then spray painted them completely black. People did not know what to do. Still don’t. Some mutter to themselves. Others just scratch their heads.

My confusion is not for lack of education. I've spent more time with more works than the average visitor, even the connoisseurs. I've eavesdropped on plenty of presumably informed conversations. I’ve read all the plaques and prefaces stenciled on the gallery walls. They're  especially no help. At first the language struck me as vague. After thirty readings, it proved itself completely unintelligible. The worst sort of poetry. Like what it’s speaking about, the literature isn’t trying to communicate. It’s the hit-and-run approach to interaction. Poke you in the brain through your eye sockets and hide behind a curtain of distance. I write my favorite lines down in my otherwise empty incident report log. ‘bridges the gap between ennui and melancholia’ ‘unveils the schismatic abyss of capitalism’ ‘explores the hatred inherent in love’ ‘resounds with the adagio of everydayness’ ‘limns the edges of consciousness’

Watching people digest the prefaces is the best. Couples walk in and stop at the explanatory introductions out of obligation, the environmental pressure to be initiated into the space. One will skim it but the other will stand there, really trying to decipher the meaning. The second one, the reader, will spend more time with the commentary on the works than the works themselves. I think this is because the prefaces speak in recognizable terms. The reader spends a lot of time squinting during the rest of her visit. She’s struggling to square the images with what was just said about them, with her expectations. She expected a vision of the grandiose or gut-wrenching, an picture of ineffable problems, a symbol of soul-level pain or delight. What she sees is rushed and slightly antagonistic. A big blank canvas with a sloppy yellow diagonal line and a cut-out label from an advertisement for Depends shellacked on.

And this is what I protect. What I am paid to preserve. Highly-regarded art is big business apparently. Full-time surveillance is required to meet the terms of the museum's insurance policies. Insurance has so far been a needless expense. No one has come close to harming any of the works, at least intentionally. A sneeze or two maybe have been direct hits. A man once tripped over the protective chain surrounding the dolls, but they were unharmed in the fall. No one noticed the rearrangement anyway.

I work openings for the overtime. The similarity of these junkets is astounding. The museum flies in the artists (domestic artists don’t get the same buzz) and they sit at a long table with a pitcher of water, usually an interpreter, and a backdrop with the museum’s logo repeating on diagonals. They give glib answers to complex, esoteric, ass-kissy questions posed by the curator, who smiles politely and a little uncomfortably during the responses. The curator suggests at some point in the QA, which is attended by a couple journalists and maybe twenty hipsters who came for the free drinks (bribery is required to draw big crowds), that perhaps something has been lost in translation. That Mr. Stevkosk is probably quite tired from his transcontinental flight and that after all the pieces really speak for themselves. The hipsters, who are on their fourth plastic cups of complimentary wine less than twenty minutes in, mumble and suppress chuckles. The QA session ends with an intern pushing play on his amped up MacBook and the party portion of the night begins.

I’m convinced the curator is right. The pieces do speak for themselves. When no one is around, all you hear is the distant hiss of the AC. Just a blower spinning in the maintenance penthouse. The pieces say it all with their silence. They simply have nothing  at all to say. This is why my favorite visitors are the ones who insist they Get It. After nearly three years of study, I don’t think there’s anything to get besides annoyed or disappointed. The prefaces are written for the people who want to Get It, who want to believe that ugliness and nothingness are heady and complicated and require a great, discerning intellect and an acute eye to even begin to unpack. They're written to appease the would-be donors. But the artists know it’s all a big joke—the press, the galas, the auctions, the eyeglass legs to lips and contemplative poses before really crude stick figures—it’s all a joke. An industry as much as the fashion one. An expensive, exclusive club that wants the hint of substance rather than substance. A club whose forerunners are audacious enough to lasso the refuse of the postmodern world and drag it into your field of vision, corral you into a concrete pen with it. A club whose followers gloat over all the money they throw around just to eat hor d’Oeuvres in tuxes or evening gowns.

My judgment is probably tainted by my employment. Guarding is both easy and not when there's no one threatening. I'll grant the pain of solitude affects my higher cognitive functions. Maybe my aesthetic sense is anemic. Maybe I just don’t understand new art. But my problem is I can’t even understand how I’d ever be able to understand. If you've checked everywhere you could begin from and haven't found it, the question of where to begin is meaningless.


I often wonder why. Why is this place even here? Why do the artists want to show people what they made? Why do they think it needs to be seen by the general public? Is it just a given, a convention of the artworld that whatever its members make should be on display? Normal, average, three-dimensional people like myself can't be the intended audience. It hit me a while back that the art is like advertising. They're directed at a little part of people. That’s what I feel when I’m in here. Wildly neglected or misunderstood. It's like I went someplace for a meal and after ordering the server puts a podiatrist’s card on my plate and walks away. I want to say, "Um excuse me, I do have feet, but I didn't come here for them specifically." It seems to me people come to art museums or galleries because we're tired and in need of a pick me up. Not that we need idyllic landscapes or satin drapes and flowing wigs or baskets of exotic fruit, but we need to see something that reminds us of the basic beauty of life we miss when we're running around doing what we have to do in order to take a break to come here in the first place.

A troop of college-aged young men disturbs my musing. One of them rattles. A chain wallet. Sounds play tricks here. The hard surfaces and right angles clutter the soundscape as much as they cleanse the landscape. They enter from my left but make noise from my right. Three males, all in tight jeans, step out from behind the first enclave. Mud on one’s black lace-up boots. Long asymmetrical hair on the one in the middle. The last wears a vest, navy with angled strips of yellow and orange along the chest. I hold my ground, face them coldly, confidently. I am watching you.

They take in the expanse. One points and together they head in that direction, the pointer leading the way to the west wall. Boots shoves Vest moderately on the shoulder. Vest’s grimy tennis shoes squeak as he stumbles. One of the toes is wrapped with duct tape. I saunter in their direction, trodding heavily. The thuds reverberate nicely. Imposing. Hair eyes me over his shoulder. I see his mouth move but can’t hear what he’s saying. I station myself by the railing to the three steps to get to the main gallery level. Arms crossed, I stare.

Hair is the only one who lingers at the pieces. Boots and Vest treat the space more like an amusement park queue. Not really paying attention. Shuffling through and talking.

“It’s just a total waste of time. For like everyone involved, you know? He's an absolute crank. I mean the dude just basically rambles about whatever he wants. The other day he seriously started talking about how much music on the radio sucks nowadays. He said 'rock and roll is dead'. I'm quoting. It's supposed to be an english class... He doesn't care anymore. He's dialing it in.”

“Yeah I hear you but don't be fooled. He’s not an easy grader. Trust me on that. You can’t skate on by and expect a C. Care or not, Butler fails people. Seriously. You've got to get him to like you somehow. Tell him the Beatles were really something after class.”

Boots and Vest walk side by side, but Hair is still. Transfixed before one of the spattered ones emoting on him. He’s getting closer. Lost in the glops, his head swivels on his neck following the colors. I watch his feet. They inch closer and closer as though he's being reeled in. I take a few weighty strides towards him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Then he crosses the line.

“Sir, step back please,” I command sternly on approach. The bubble is burst. His shoulders flinch upward and his neck contracts like a turtle pulling in for safety. He retreats without looking back. Harmless. I stop at this point, my presence being established.

I move to an opposite corner where I can see nearly everything. His friends are halfway through the main gallery, hanging out more in the center of the space. They must have come for him. Roommates probably. A couple communications majors and a 2D art. Or maybe art history.

The other two have stopped feigning interest and are standing in the center talking. Most visitors gravitate to the center like moths to lamplight. Vest checks his cell phone.

“Come on, already. I told you, Todd, I've got work at noon.”

Hair turns. He shouts at me from an awkward distance how late we're open,

“Nine to five, Tuesday through Saturday,” I say with extra gusto. From the echoes, it sounds like four of me answered.

The three recollect and depart together, Vest and Boots in the lead.