Chapter 16 The Tale of an Ambitious Savage Duke

One judge called it "malicious misconduct".Another judge called it "damage to public property." In New York City, a judge eventually reduced the charge to "littering" after a guard at the Museum of Modern Art caught him, and after the incident at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the judge said Terry Fletcher's behavior It is "graffiti". Whether it's at the Getty Museum.The Frick Collection or the National Gallery, Terry's crimes are the same, it's just that people can't agree on what the crime should be. None of these judges should be confused with His Honor Judge Lester G. Meyer of the Los Angeles County District Court, who was an art collector and a thoroughly good man.Nor is the art critic the author and cultural generalist Tanedy Brewster.In addition, don't worry, it can't be the gallery owner Dennis Brian Shaw, his famous "Variety Art Gallery", it is a coincidence that people are shot and killed in the back every once in a while.

True, any resemblance to these characters, living or dead, must be pure accident. What is said here is all fiction, and no one else is that person except Teri Fletcher. Just remind yourself at all times that this is a story and nothing in it is true. The basic concept comes from the UK, where art students would go to the post office and grab fistfuls of cheap address stickers, each about the size of your hand with fingers stretched out and close together, the size of which is easy to hide in your pocket In my hand, the sticker has a peelable waxed paper on the back and a layer of glue that sticks to anything and cannot be removed.

That's their baby, young artists - nobodies really - have that knack for sitting in a studio and painting a perfect miniature, or putting a sticker on a white background Finally, draw a charcoal sketch on top. Then, hiding the stickers in their hands, they went out to hold their own small art exhibitions, in taverns, in train cars, on the back seats of taxis, and their works "hanged" in those places for longer than you can Longer than expected. The paper the post office uses to print address stickers is so bad you can't tear it off.At most, only a small point or a small piece is torn off on the edge, but even so, the glue is still in place, and the exposed back glue looks yellow like snot, gathering dust and smoke, and finally It will become a smear of protection, which is much uglier than the previous small art student's work. Everyone thinks that any painting is much better than the back glue left behind.

So—people just let those paintings stick, in the elevators and in the toilets of the public restrooms.In church confessionals and department store fitting rooms.Most of the places in this category, there may also be some new works.But most painters are happy that their work will always be seen. But—this allowed an American to make matters worse. For Teri Fletcher, he was in line to see the Mona Lisa when the idea came to him.As he got closer, the painting didn't seem any bigger.All of his art textbooks are bigger than this one.This is the most famous painting in the world, but it is smaller than a sofa cushion.

If it were anywhere else, the painting could easily be hidden in a coat, grabbed in two arms, and stolen. After the team slowly got closer and closer to the painting, it seemed that the painting wasn't all that amazing.This painting is Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, but it doesn't seem to be worth the time he wasted a day standing in line in Paris, France. The feeling of great disappointment was the same feeling Teri Fletcher had when he saw the ancient petroglyph of the piper Kirkperi.I've seen this image printed on ties before, painted on dog food bowls, made into bathroom mats and toilet lids.Finally, he finally went to New Mexico and saw the original chiseled painting on a cliff. His first reaction was: so ordinary...

All those little old paintings, the British post office stickers, all those little old paintings that get a bad name, the point is: he could do better.He could paint better, smuggle his work into a gallery, frame it, and hide it in his overcoat.It doesn't have to be huge, but he can put double-sided tape on the back of the painting and when the time is right... stick it on the wall.There for all the world to see, pasted between Rubens and Picasso... an original Teri Fletcher. Huddled next to JMW Turner's Snowstorm: Hannibal Leads His Army Across the Alps at the Tate Britain, Terry's smiling mother wipes with a red and white striped dishcloth. hand.In the Prado Museum, next to the "Portrait of a Princess" painted by Diego Velazquez, is his girlfriend Rudi, or his dog Bone.

Of course, those are all his works and have his signature, but they are all to add glory to those he loves. It is a pity that most of his works can only be hung in the bathroom of the art museum in the end.It was the only place where there was no awe or monitors.He can even go into the women's bathroom to hang a painting during less crowded hours. Not every tourist will enter every exhibition room in the art museum.But they all go to the bathroom. Seems like it doesn't matter what a painting looks like, what makes that painting a work of art or a masterpiece seems to depend entirely on where it hangs... how expensive the frame looks...and some Depends on what works.If he had done his research, found the right antique frame, and hung the picture in the middle of a wall full of pictures, it would have hung there for days, or even weeks, before he received the art gallery. side, or a call from the police.

Then came the charges: malicious misconduct, damage to public property, graffiti. "Littering," a judge called his art, and fined Terry and sent him a day in jail. In the cell where the police detained Teri Fletcher, the people who had been there before him were all artists.Scratching the green paint off every wall to paint and sign their names is more original petroglyphs than Kirk Perry and the Mona Lisa, and the artist is not Picasso.It was that night, looking at the pictures, that Terry almost decided to give up everything. almost. The next day, a man came to his studio, a swarm of black flies circling the pile of fruit that Terry was planning to paint when he was arrested. It was the famous critic of various newspapers, who had been on the case the night before. The judge's friend, and the art critic said, yes, he thought the whole story was hilarious, and it would just fit in a column for his colleagues in the papers.Even though the stain smelled of rotting fruit and there were flies buzzing around, the man said he wanted to see Terry's work.

“Excellent,” said the art critic, looking at a painting that was just the right size for a coat. "very very good." The black flies kept coming and going, landing on the speckled apples and the blackened bananas, and buzzing around the two of them. The art critic wore glasses with lenses as thick as the windows of a ship.When you talk to him, you want to yell, like someone who's hiding behind an upper window of a big house and just won't get out and open the locked door. But he was absolutely, absolutely, undeniably not Tanedy Brewster. Terry told him that most of the best work was still locked up with the police as evidence for future interrogations.

But the art critic said that was okay.The next day, he brought a gallerist and a collector, both famous for their opinions frequently appearing in national magazines, and this small group saw his work, and they kept bringing up a The name of the painter who was only famous for his messy portraits of dead famous people and signed them big with a can of red jet spray. Of course, this gallery owner is not Dennis Brian Shaw.And when the collector spoke, he had a strong Texas accent.Her reddish-gold hair was the same color as her shoulders and neck, which were horribly orange-peeled by the sun, but she wasn't Pad Hillary Biarris either.

She is a completely fictional character.But when she was looking at his paintings, she kept saying the word "can make money". She even has the word "sugar" tattooed in tiny cursive script on her ankle, just above the sole of her sandaled foot.But she couldn't, absolutely couldn't, yes, not Miss Pad Hilary Biarris. Yes, this fake, phony art critic, art collector, and gallery owner finally said to our artist: We want to do business with you.They've got millions of dollars invested in that messed-up artist who's flooding the art market with work right now.He made a lot of money, but the value of his early works plummeted.And that's where we invest. The deal is this: If Terry Fletchken kills the painter—then the art critic, the gallerist, and the collector can make Terry famous.They'll turn him into a good investment, his work will sell for a fortune, and his paintings of his mother, his girlfriend, his dog, and his pet mouse will become something like Mona Lisa is as classic as Kirk Perry, the Indian god. In his studio, the black flies were still flying over the pile of limp apples and rotten bananas. They told Fletcher that perhaps it would be helpful for him to know that the painter became famous because he killed a lazy sculptor, and that sculptor killed an overactive painter who had killed It was a collage artist who betrayed them. All of these people are dead, and their work in museums has been snowballing in value like a bank account.The so-called bad value is not the value of beauty, because the color will become the same brown color as Van Gogh's sunflowers, and the oil paint and the varnish on it will crack and turn yellow. Much smaller than expected. The art market has worked this way for hundreds of years, the art critic said.If Terry decides not to take this, his first real "commission," it's fine.But he still has a lot of unresolved lawsuits to fight in the future, and many charges against him are still established.These people in the art world could settle the case with one phone call, or make things worse, and Teri Fletcher could still be in jail for a long, long time even if he did nothing.It was in the cell with the messy green walls. After the incident, will anyone still believe the words of a person who has been in prison? So Teri Fletcher, he said: OK. It was a good thing he had never met the painter.The gallery owner gave him a gun and told him to put a nylon stocking on his head. The gun was the size of your hand with your fingers stretched out. It was an easy thing to hide in your hand. , the size is only like a mailing list for parcels, but it is equally effective.The messy painter would stay in the gallery until closing time, and then he would walk home. Terry shot him in the back that night—bang, bang, bang—three times, and the job was faster than he could hang his dog, the little bone, in the Guggenheim . A month later, Fletcher held his first real solo exhibition in a gallery. It's not the "Gallery of Varieties", but the floor is covered with the same black and pink checkerboard tiles, and the canopy of the same color is over the gate. Many, many smart people go there and invest their money in art, but here It's another, let's pretend it's kind of gallery, full of fake smart people. After that, Terry's life became complicated.You could say he's doing a great job, because the art critic told him to kill a German concept artist, a San Francisco performance artist, a Barcelona motion sculptor, and everyone thought Ann Dee Warhol died of gallbladder surgery, you thought Jean-Michel Basquiat died of a systemic heroin overdose, you thought Keith Haring and Rowe Rboert Mapplethorpe died of AIDS. The truth of the matter is...you think what you are expected to think. All the while, the critic said that if Fletcher pulled away, the artist would frame him as the first murderer, or worse. Terry asked: What could be the worse outcome? They didn't say it. Let an American make things big. Between assassinating every artist who betrayed them, every lazy, sloppy artist, he Ray Fletcher didn't have time to get the painting done, and even the portraits of Rudi and his mother looked rushed.It's messy, like he doesn't care at all.He increasingly drew different versions of various pipe dancers Kirk Perry.He also enlarged the photo of the "Mona Lisa" to the size of a wall, and then painted the photo by hand in the most popular colors for interior decoration at that time.However, as long as there is his signature underneath, everyone will buy it, and so will the museum. After a year of fame... A year later, he's in a gallery, talking to the owner, the same guy who gave him a gun a year earlier.Not Dennis Bryan Shaw.It was dark in the street outside.The watch on his wrist read eleven o'clock.The gallery owner said he was closing and he was going home.What happened to the gun later, Terry didn't know. The boss opened the front door, and there was a dark sidewalk outside.Canopy with black and pink stripes.It's a long walk home. Outside, lampposts are glued to little drawings by people you'll never recognize.The street is plastered with their unsigned works, and things will happen on the long way into the night, if not tonight, then some other night.The next step, every night, is stepping into that world where every artist wants a chance to be famous. We were in the Mayan foyer, the stuccoed walls bumped to look like volcanic lava, fake lava carved into loincloths and feathered warriors.These warriors wear capes with speckled fur to look like leopards, and the room tells a story that takes you seriously. Carved stucco parrots with orange and red iridescent tails. There were false cracks and chipped places in these stucco stones, so they looked ancient, and high above our heads grew clusters of fat paper orchids. "Mr. Whittier is right," said Mrs. Clark, looking around. "We do create dramas that fill our lives." Only the dust eclipses the orange feathers and purple flowers.Fake leopard-spotted fur hides a wooden sofa.The ferocious faces of those sofas, soldiers, and lava are all connected by spider silk, revealing strands of gray. Mrs. Clark said it looked as if we had spent our lives seeking misfortune, and she looked down at her protruding breasts—a look that was almost impossible because of her protruding lips.She said that when we are young, we wish there was something that would slow us down and trap us in one place long enough for us to see what lies beneath the surface of the world.The disaster was a car crash or a war.For us to sit still, it might be getting cancer, or having a baby.The important part is that this kind of thing happened completely unexpectedly.Disasters prevent us from living the life we ​​planned to live as children -- the life of wandering around all the time. "We're still creating the drama and pain we need," Mrs. Clarke said. "But this first scourge is a shot. A vaccination." All your life, she said, you've been seeking misfortune—you've been trying to act it out—so that when it finally comes, you've already mastered it. "When you die," Mrs. Clark said. In the Mayan foyer, the dark wood sofas and chairs were carved to look like altars, and on top of the pyramids, the living sacrifices had their hearts cut out. The carpet looks like a lunar calendar, with circles inside the circles, black patterns on an orange background, sticky from spilled soda.There was a large stain under our feet, with hands and feet growing out. Sitting on the fake fur cushions, you can still smell the popcorn. That's her theory.Mrs. Clark was derived from Mr. Whittier's theory. We have pain, hate, love, joy and war in the world because we want them.And all this drama that we need to prepare us to face death someday. Nature sat with her arms stretched out before her like a sleepwalker.She opened her fingers, looked at the dark red pattern that had been stained on the skin, and touched the bottom of each finger of the other hand with the fingers of one hand.Touching the bones to see how thick, Nature said: "Do you think Mrs. Tramp is ready?" She said: "Do you think Mr. Whittier is ready?" Mrs. Clark shrugged her shoulders. She said, "Does it matter?" The Negative Inspector sitting on the fake fur beside nature had a nylon stocking wrapped around the wrist of her left hand.She wrapped the stocking tighter with her right hand, until her left hand turned white, so white that even the pale cat fur looked gray compared to her blue-white skin.It was so tight that the fingers that were so white that they couldn't feel it hung down and hung under the wrist. Sheng Gugut held his right thumb in his arms, made a fist with his left hand, and tapped that thumb up and down.Feel the protruding part of his thumb knuckle, so that when the thumb is gone, it will never be forgotten. We're all sitting there, looking at each other, waiting for the next episode or some dialogue to be jotted down as our version of the truth that we can sell. The gossip detective moved the video camera light from one face to another.The Earl of Slander's tiny mesh microphone protruded from his shirt pocket. This moment foreshadowed the truly terrible things to come.This moment has replaced Mr. Whittier's death, that one has replaced Mrs. Bumbo's death, and this one has replaced the scene where Miss America puts a knife to Mr. Whittier's neck. Nature said to Mrs. Clark, "Then why don't you love him?" "I didn't come here to love him," said Mrs. Clark.She said to the gossip detective: "Don't point the video camera at me, I look ugly on the tape..." However, under the hot spotlight of the video camera, Mrs. Carrick gritted her teeth and smiled, accompanied by On her lips like water polo, like a clown's smiling face."I came here because I saw an ad..." she said. And does she trust this man she didn't know before?Follow him, help him?Even knowing he'd lock her behind a locked door?This is so unreasonable. The godless priest with his face sewn together, his eyebrows shaved, and his nails too long to make a fist, said, "But you cried..." "Every apostle or student," said Mrs. Clarke, "though they would run after their Master—as well as run away from something else." With the carved warrior looking at us, and the paper orchids dyed and folded so naturally, Mrs. Clarke talked about how she had a daughter and a husband. "Kathy was fifteen," she said. "Her full name is Cassandra," she said. Sometimes, Ms. Clark said, when police found a shallow grave or the discarded remains of a murder victim, detectives would hide a microphone there.This is standard procedure. She nodded to Count Slander, who had a cassette player in his pocket. The police would be around, listening for days or weeks.Because almost all murderers come back to speak to their victims.Almost always.We need someone to tell the story of our lives, and the murderer can only discuss his crime with the one person who can no longer punish him, the victim. Even a murderer has a need to speak, to tell the story of his life, so great that he will come and sit by a grave or a rotting corpse and talk for hours.He kept talking until his words made sense.All the way up to the story where the murderer can convince himself of his new reality.That reality is -- he's doing the right thing. That's why the police are waiting. Still smiling, she said, "That's why I'm here." Mrs. Clark said, "Like the rest of you, I just wanted a way to tell my story..." Mrs. Clarke, still in the warm glow of the gossip detective spotlight, said, "Please." She reached out to cover the face with both hands, and behind tightly closed fingers, she said, "It's a VCR that ruined me. marriage..."