Goodison Goebbels: Kamikaze Art Critic Read online



  Goodison Goebbels: Kamikaze Art Critic

  Mike O’Connor

  Copyright 2010 Mike O’Connor

  Goodison Goebbels had never been able to grow a decent moustache. But unlike Hitler, he knew neither art nor what he liked. Goebbels was, in essence, a halitosis ridden, nihilistic dwarf, with one glass eye, two buck teeth, three degrees obtained from the prestigious Academy of Pretentious Wank in Austria and a voice that could be kindly described as high pitched.

  With an IQ that ran into double figures, he was deemed too intelligent to present a television game show or write a column for a tabloid newspaper. The traditional, if somewhat hazardous career path of law, farming, mercenary soldiery, transvestism and genital piercing finally led Goebbels to his true vocation - that of television art critic. A man who couldn’t even spell conscience, on account of his being dyslexic, much less have one, on account of being a sociopath, his proudest achievement was the violent suicide of Hubert Hubenstein, darling of the Islington elite and father of Post-Modernist-Pre-Expressionist-Contemporary-Cubo-Vacuuism.

  Hubenstein's most glorious moment was his winning of the Tina Turner Prize for his daring and groundbreaking piece entitled “What Is It?” To the casual observer, “it” was nothing more extraordinary than one of the artist’s own turds on a cracked dinner plate and a mere shadow of his previous piss in a bottle masterpiece. However, one man’s steaming pile of excrement is another man’s greatest artwork of the millennium, notwithstanding the possibility that another man might be extremely stupid.

  Goebbels risked the wrath of the art world by becoming the soul voice of dissent. In his most dissenting voice, he had summed up the award winning work with the following phrase.

  "Is it art or is it shit? It is shit!”

  Art world people, firefighter people and a coroner person were all stunned by Hubenstein's outraged reaction to this sacrilege. He first destroyed his greatest creation by flushing it down the toilet, then destroyed himself by drinking a gallon of petrol, before doing his best Linda Lovelace impression on an oxy acetylene welding torch. The ensuing fireball did little damage to the interior of his minimalist apartment, as it contained nothing.

  The charred remains of the tragic artist were preserved in a sheep’s head, which was subsequently sold at auction for 8.4 million pounds, to a man in dark glasses from New York. The irony of his being at least part creator of such an obscenely expensive work of art was not lost on Goebbels. Nevertheless, he was not amused.

  Like most of his kind, Goebbels detested art exhibitions, considering such things to be the nadir of air and ass kissing pretentiousness. However, a John Bollockburn exhibition was an entirely different matter. Goebbels might well not know what he liked, but he liked Bollockburn, a man who, in his opinion which in his opinion was the only opinion in town, was a living messiah. By using nothing but a plain sheet of canvas in his work, he redefined minimalism and quite possibly surrealism as well. Not to mention Dadaism.

  It was days like this that made the whole business of art criticism seem worthwhile. Not only would Goebbels be attending the opening of the Bollockburn exhibition, he would also be interviewing the man himself. This was indeed an honor, as Bollockburn was notoriously reclusive and had never before agreed to be interviewed.

  "Now remember, don't be obtrusive, don't intimidate John and don't on any account make a fool of yourself by commenting on one of his works," Goebbels cautioned the cameraman who accompanied him to the gallery.

  "Sieg heil," was the muttered response.

  Goebbels nodded. "You will do well to remember that."

  Having duly arrived, he was so engrossed in his study of one of the exhibits, that he did not even notice the appearance of the artist. John Bollockburn was frequently described as tall and bespectacled, largely due to the fact that he was tall and wore glasses. Had he been wearing a dark suit, he might well have been described as having been dark suited. Which he was.

  Introductions completed, the tour of the exhibition commenced. The artist walked nervously, as though in awe of the man who could destroy him with a single word.

  "Marvelous!"

  Looking around, Goebbels gazed upwards at his idol for a moment, before returning his attention to the source of his appreciative rapture.

  "Such depth, such power!" he gushed, gazing up in awe at the blank rectangular canvas.

  "The Sound Of Silence," said Bollockburn. "This work was born from a particularly painful period in my private life. I think of it as the companion piece to White Noise."

  "The antidote to the chaos of that previous work, if you will," smiled Goebbels, moving reluctantly to the next piece of blank canvas in line. "Ah yes, White Noise." He clamped his hands theatrically to his ears. "A deafening piece that perfectly captures the chaos and stress of modern life. So much incoherent babble assailing the senses from all sides. Would it be fair to say that the violent intensity of White Noise made The Sound Of Silence essential?"

  "A very good point," agreed Bollockburn. "Silence could even be described as therapy for the post-traumatic stress disorder induced by White Noise."

  "And so to what is undoubtedly your most ambitious work, to date," said Goebbels, indicating yet another canvas upon which absolutely nothing was painted. "Perhaps you'd like to describe this piece."

  "In this, I have attempted to encompass the themes of birth and death on one canvas," explained Bollockburn. "I call it Birth And Death. The whiteness of the canvas symbolizes the purity of the new-born child, as yet untainted by the life that lies ahead of it. That same whiteness can also symbolize death, in an equally vivid manner."

  "In death, we are once again pure?" suggested Goebbels.

  "No," snapped Bollockburn. "The Death aspect of the work symbolizes a triumph over death. There is nothing there. Death is nothing. If I could sum up this work in a single word, that word would be hope."

  Goebbels smiled. "Of course. A multi-layered and most challenging work indeed. This next piece is by far the most controversial and disturbing of your works, confronting us as it does with the terrifying reality of racial tension in society today."

  "It isn't always easy to separate art and politics," the artist mused, sagely scratching his stubbled chin. "In the case of this piece - White Power - it was impossible. I wanted to make a powerful statement about race relations in contemporary Western society. This work says two things. One - that there is too much racial tension. Two - that there should be much less. As an artist, I felt under a moral obligation to make such a statement."

  "Not all have taken such a cosmopolitan interpretation of White Power," Goebbels cautiously pointed out. "The Arts Council of the Ku Klux Klan, for example, who praised it as - and I quote - the most incisive and damning indictment of multi-culturalism and racial tolerance since Mein Kampf. How do you respond to the considerable body of international fascists who take inspiration from this particular work?"

  "I am not a racist, nor do I seek to inspire such people," answered Bollockburn. "It saddens me to see my work misinterpreted by the Far Right, but I'm hardly the first misunderstood artist never to have applied brush to canvas."

  Goebbels lingered a moment longer before the expanse of nothingness, before progressing to the next outstanding example of such art.

  "I have to say, I find this piece somewhat confusing, even from the viewpoint of one who looks at a lot of art and knows a lot about it," he confessed. "You call it White Rabbit. A reference to sixties psychedelia perhaps?"

  Bollockburn almost laughed. "Love and hate, war and peace, night and day, the very essence of creation itself. This work transcends t
he merely psychedelic, I like to think."

  "Was your mind perhaps in an altered state when you didn't paint this?" enquired Goebbels.

  "I was going through a phase of self discovery at the time of White Rabbit," was the enigmatic response. "If the evidence of a chemically expanded consciousness is what you seek, you will find it in this next piece."

  "Oh yes, oh yes, ah yes, yes, indeed!" Goebbels gleefully rubbed his hands. "Cocaine. The canvas that caused such a media outcry when it won last year's Mirror Prize. One would have to say, at least at first glance, that this work would appear to condone, if not actively encourage the use of hard drugs."

  "You must look below the surface, to find the broader picture," said Bollockburn, encompassing the blank canvas with an expansive wave of his right arm. "The pleasure of drug abuse is here, certainly. But the pain and devastation caused by the addiction is far more evident. Look again and tell me you can't see a stark warning about the dangers of class A narcotics."

  Goebbels frowned. He did not like this particular piece, yet he could find no palpable reason why it should cause him such acute discomfort. Loath to admit that he was intimidated by the gritty realism of the work, he was only too glad to leave it behind.

  "Ah yes, Average White Band, your latest and, dare I say it, most minimalist, yet all-encompassing work to date," beamed the critic. "How I have looked forward to viewing this! Correct me if I'm wrong, but Average White Band holds up a mirror to middle class, middle aged, middle England, depicting smug, comfortable suburbia in an uncompromising manner achieved by no other artist this century. This is indeed a multi-layered, multi-textured masterpiece, a bold and original statement that speaks volumes for its subject. At moments like this, one is left almost at a loss for superlatives. Where did you find the inspiration for such a dramatic piece?"

  Bollockburn cleared his throat. "Um.... actually, that's just a piece of blank canvas that was put there to take the bare look off the wall. Average White Band won't be going on show until tomorrow, when David Bowie arrives."

  Goebbels appeared crestfallen, but even the death plunge of some kind of crest from the highest point imaginable could not even begin to describe the nature of his horror. For several long moments – these being moments of an indeterminate length and existing only in fiction - he was rendered speechless. The only sound in the gallery was the helpless sniggering of the cameraman. Then, as though punctured by a pin, the critic slumped slowly to his knees, buried his face in his hands and proceeded to sob uncontrollably. Bollockburn merely stood by, in all his tall, bespectacled dark suitedness, uncertain how to react.

  Goebbels was inconsolable. Not that anybody tried, even when he began crawling on all-fours towards the exit, gnashing his teeth and wailing piteously, a man broken in the wake of the ultimate artistic faux-pas.

  Outside, in the afternoon sunlight, despair finally gave way to a madness that even Van Gogh might have considered somewhat over-the-top. Roaring like a man possessed, clumps of ginger hair gripped in his fists, Goebbels threw himself upon the hood of a passing BMW and proceeded to headbutt the windscreen to smithereens, while the two drug crazed teenage joyridrers within ran for their lives.

  Five minutes of headbanging madness later, the deranged art critic launched the fire red sports car at high speed through the glass doors of the art gallery. The police arrived just in time for the explosion.

  Goodison Goebbels had rendered himself as existent as the artwork that had driven him to his fiery demise.

  THE END