How to distinguish humans from machines
Allow me to borrow from the now immortal Vonnegut, as he explains in the novel Breakfast of Champions (1973) the motivation behind abstract expressionism. He's talking about a painting by the fictional artist Rabo Karabekian, entitled The Temptation of Saint Anthony. The painting was twenty feet wide and sixteen feet high. It was simple: a field of "Hawaiian Avocado" with a single vertical stripe of dayglo orange reflecting tape.
As the story goes, the painting was sold to an arts center for a whopping price tag of $50,000. The towns people were outraged. They were pissed that the chairman of the center paid so much for such a simple piece of art.
Karabekian was in a cocktail lounge and made some remark that a waitress found offensive. She replied: "Well, we don't think much of your painting. I've seen better pictures done by a five-year-old."
And here is Karabekian's brilliant response, from the book:
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"I have read the editorial against my painting in your wonderful newspaper. I have read every word of the hate mail you have been thoughtful enough to send to New York."
This embarrassed people some.
"The painting did not exist until I made it," Karabekian went on. "Now that it does exist, nothing would make me happier than to have it reproduced again and again, and vastly improved upon, by all the five-year-olds in town. I would love for your children to find pleasantly and playfully what it took me many angry years to find.
"I now give you my word of honor," he went on, "that the picture your city owns shows everything about life which truly matters, with nothing left out. It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of every animal -- the 'I am' to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us -- in a mouse, in a deer, in a cocktail waitress. It is unwavering and pure, no matter what preposterous adventure may befall us. A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would show two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.
"I have just heard from this cocktail waitress here, this vertical band of light, a story about her husband and an idiot who was about to be executed at Shepherdstown. Very well -- let a five-year-old paint a sacred interpretation of that encounter. Let a five-year-old strip away the idiocy, the bars, the waiting electric chair, the uniform of the guard, the gun of the guard, the bones and the meat of the guard. What is that perfect picture which any five-year-old can paint? Two unwavering bands of light."
------------
-Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast Of Champions
20 x 16 foot canvas with avocado paint and a strip of dayglo orange tape: $50,000
Illustrating the awareness in individuals that distinguish them from machines: Priceless
As the story goes, the painting was sold to an arts center for a whopping price tag of $50,000. The towns people were outraged. They were pissed that the chairman of the center paid so much for such a simple piece of art.
Karabekian was in a cocktail lounge and made some remark that a waitress found offensive. She replied: "Well, we don't think much of your painting. I've seen better pictures done by a five-year-old."
And here is Karabekian's brilliant response, from the book:
------------
"I have read the editorial against my painting in your wonderful newspaper. I have read every word of the hate mail you have been thoughtful enough to send to New York."
This embarrassed people some.
"The painting did not exist until I made it," Karabekian went on. "Now that it does exist, nothing would make me happier than to have it reproduced again and again, and vastly improved upon, by all the five-year-olds in town. I would love for your children to find pleasantly and playfully what it took me many angry years to find.
"I now give you my word of honor," he went on, "that the picture your city owns shows everything about life which truly matters, with nothing left out. It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of every animal -- the 'I am' to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us -- in a mouse, in a deer, in a cocktail waitress. It is unwavering and pure, no matter what preposterous adventure may befall us. A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would show two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.
"I have just heard from this cocktail waitress here, this vertical band of light, a story about her husband and an idiot who was about to be executed at Shepherdstown. Very well -- let a five-year-old paint a sacred interpretation of that encounter. Let a five-year-old strip away the idiocy, the bars, the waiting electric chair, the uniform of the guard, the gun of the guard, the bones and the meat of the guard. What is that perfect picture which any five-year-old can paint? Two unwavering bands of light."
------------
-Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast Of Champions
20 x 16 foot canvas with avocado paint and a strip of dayglo orange tape: $50,000
Illustrating the awareness in individuals that distinguish them from machines: Priceless
Labels: art, literature, philosophy
posted by Jeremy at
8:26 PM
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