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By Root 2254 0

for what seemed to be an event more in the style of a primitive stageshow than anything resembling an art exhibit. I could hear Mrs. Angela in one of the seats behind me saying over and over to those around her, “What the hell is this?” Finally she leaned forward and said to me, “What does Grossvogel think he’s doing? I’ve heard that he’s been medicated to the eyeballs ever since he came out of that hospital.” Yet the artist appeared lucid enough when a few moments later he made his way through the loosely arranged rows of folding chairs and stood beside the small table with the torn bedsheet draped over it and the low-watt lightbulb dangling above. In the confines of the art gallery’s back room the large-bodied Grossvogel seemed almost gigantic, just as he had when lying upon that institutional mattress in his private room at the hospital. Even his voice, which was usually quiet, even somewhat wispy, seemed to be enlarged when he began speaking to us.

“Thank you all for coming here tonight,” he began. “This shouldn’t take very long. I have only a few things to say to you and then something that I would like to show you. It’s really no less than a miracle that I’m able to stand here and speak to you in this way. Not too long ago, as some of you may recall, I suffered a terrible attack in this very art gallery. I hope you won’t mind if I tell you a few things about the nature of this attack and its consequences, things which I feel are essential to appreciating what I have to show you tonight.

“Well, then, let me start by saying that, on one level, the attack I suffered in this art gallery during the opening night of an exhibit of my works was in the nature of a simple gastrointestinal upheaval, even if it was a quite severe episode of its type. For some time this gastrointestinal upheaval, this disorder of my digestive system, had been making its progress within me. Over a period of many years this disorder had been progressively and insidiously developing, on one level, in the depths of my body and, on another level altogether, in the darkest aspect of my being. This period coincided with, and in fact was a direct consequence of, my intense desire with respect to the field of art—which is to say, my desire to do something, i.e., create artworks, and my desire to be something, i.e., an artist. I was attempting during this period I speak of—and for that matter throughout most of my life—to make something with my mind, specifically to create works of art by the only possible means I believed were available to me, which was by using my mind or using my imagination or creative faculties, by using, in brief, some force or function of what people would call a soul or a spirit or simply a personal self. But when I found myself collapsed upon the floor of this art gallery, and later at the hospital, experiencing the most acute abdominal agony, I was overwhelmed by the realization that I had no mind or imagination that I could use, that there was nothing I could call a soul or self—those things were all nonsense and dreams. I realized, in my severe gastrointestinal distress, that the only thing that had any existence at all was this larger-than-average physical body of mine. And I realized that there was nothing for this body to do except to function in physical pain and that there was nothing for it to be except what it was—not an artist or creator of any kind but solely a mass of flesh, a system of tissues and bones and so forth, suffering the agonies of a disorder of its digestive system, and that anything I did that did not directly stem from these facts, especially producing works of art, was profoundly and utterly false and unreal. At the same time I also became aware of the force that was behind my intense desire to do something and to be something, particularly my desire to create utterly false and unreal works of art. In other words, I became aware of what in reality was activating my body.”

Before continuing with the introductory talk that comprised the first part of his art exhibit, or artistic stageshow, as I thought