A WHITE SPOT ON THE DOLE

(or the fictional interview of an unemployed by Damien Hirst)

When we agreed to meet, I thought that a chemist’s would be a perfect place. Medicine cabinets on the walls, pills in closets and flasks on shelves are part of his world and seem to be a source of inspiration. Entering the shop in Fulham Road neighbouring the newsagents, I saw him there, emptying flasks and setting coloured pills on the counter. An Indian chemist was absent-mindedly looking at what this customer was doing. He had once bought several thousand litres of formaldehyde for an avant-garde piece of art with a shark. Playing with coloured pills was probably nothing else but a harmless rehearsal for a future large scale project in Tate Gallery.

In the background a radio was playing The Clash:

I'm all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came here for that special offer
Guaranteed personality
…

(Lost In the Supermarket – The Clash)

“Hey!” said Damien when he realised I was there. “So you are the unemployed guy who travelled around for a print, aren’t you?”

I replied that receiving a print would certainly be a reward but this is not what had triggered my travelling.

“Why is that?” asked Damien.

“Well, I read about the “spot challenge” on the net some time ago. I don’t know how I came across the article while I was searching for a job, but after reading it I thought that you guys, wealthy people, don’t know what to do to maintain your fame and make even more money. I thought that the challenge was hollow and stupid. Then, a week or so later I was carpooling between Brussels and Paris and this young lady kept talking on her cell phone to her friends about female issues and she also mentioned - after receiving a piece of advice concerning a manicure and before forwarding the information to another friend - that her husband was doing the “spot challenge”. She said that was “cool” as someone who goes to buy a bottle of Cabernet at the local wine merchant. I was amused by the chit chat even though her concerns were far away from mine! She had not talked to me yet but when getting close to Paris she said “let’s socialise” and bending over the seat she asked me “and you, chauffeur, what do you like doing in life?” I do not have a really big ego but I was hurt because even though I have been jobless for a while now I used to be an international communications consultant, a chief editor of a newspaper and even an airline pilot. Making no money, being deemed as a chauffeur and having no hope of getting a job in a close future, depressed me.”

“All right” said Damien, “but what is the link with the spots?”

“I am coming to it” I replied. “Once in Paris, I went to the Gagosian gallery, being kind of jealous of people who can afford such a journey. While strolling in the main show room I was staring at one painting and I saw a white spot that was hardly perceivable but without which the whole painting would have been unbalanced. I thought that I am this white spot, the spot that nobody notices anymore, the no-value guy. I suddenly thought that I would do the world tour for this spot, for the sake of all the people being made redundant and who cannot play a game which is not made for them. I would do it because as African say: “We have no future, so let’s live the moment”.

“Waouh! But how could you afford the journey being unemployed? “, wondered Damien.

“Well, my wife is a flight attendant and even though tickets are not free, we have discount fees…”

I wasn't born so much as I fell out
Nobody seemed to notice me
We had a edge back home in the suburbs
Over which I never could see

I heard the people who lived on the ceiling
Scream an fight more scarily
Hearing that noise was my first ever feeling
That's all its been all around me

…

 (Lost In the Supermarket – The Clash)

Damien was nodding but was saying nothing as if he was listening the old tune that the radio was playing. I then explained that even though I firstly thought that the journey and the game were hollow, I wanted to turn it into an experience that I would share on a blog. I prefer blogs to tweets because I am not a tweeter guy. I am not a bird chirping on a branch but a barking dog - even if this dog is an underdog.
Damien was still playing with the pills on the counter and seemed to be lost in his thoughts. The Indian chemist had his elbow next to the emptied bottles and had his head resting in his hand. He looked as bored as someone who has been watching the same rehearsal since the opening of his shop.

“Do you like my work?” asked Damien abruptly.

I paused because I had my past and present feelings mixing up. “I used to think that you were a marketing product for wealthy people, a money maker” I firstly said. “But the more I travelled and tried to think about art in general, the more I thought that the initiative of the spot painting challenge was clever and a piece of art in itself. If you did it on purpose I even think that you are a genius”.

Damien touched the rim of his glasses probably because he wondered if he was a genius or not. Thinking he was - there is no shame to be a genius - he smiled and asked why I thought the spot challenge was a piece of art.

“Well” I simply started. I cleared my voice and resumed: “As I explained before I did this tour because I wanted to prove that white spots were certainly not spots to be neglected. I don’t know if I wanted to give a sense to my journey or if you really had a purpose in painting the spots but I like them very much now. To me, they are a great metaphor of life. The white spots and the bright ones all dance together and all create a move. I even realised that the most important of all, those you don’t see at first (the white spots) are the spots towards which all of them converge. In other words, coloured spots make lines, circles and are attracted by the white holes! The bright spots, just like in life exist because they are able to compare themselves to the discreet ones”.

The Indian chemist looked at me agape, yawned and probably thought in himself “another weirdo…” The radio was still playing The Clash. It seemed to be a special London Calling day.

…

C'mon Start all over again

…

(Wrong 'Em Boyo – The Clash)

Damien asked me to continue. He seemed interested in my vision of spots but nonetheless said “don’t you think that is farfetched? “.

I was surprised because the spots were his idea. However, I responded that in Los Angeles I had visited the gallery with a rare person who pointed to me a sentence on a metal plate written in Braille and said that we were actually blind because most of us can neither read nor interpret. “Damien your points are inscriptions in Braille for the blind that see in colour”.

Both the Indian chemist and Damien Hirst had a friendly smile on their faces because they understood what I meant. Rich or poor we all strive to survive or have a decent life. Storing thousands of art pieces is nothing else but a desperate attempt to give a meaning to one’s useless wealth. Accumulating paintings or money is simply a life drive which I can understand even though I think it is not the best way to make your life blissful.

‘You know”, I added, “I like your skull covered with diamonds. To me it is the metaphor of social, cultural and symbolic death of a stranger who, ironically, has a market value today but who was worthless when he passed away. This skull also reminded me of Hamlet evoking the court jester: “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy”. Personally, I do not want to be a collector's skull in two centuries. For the love of God should not prevent the living to have a bit of empathy for their coeval.”

Damien nodded in agreement. The Indian chemist lit a stick of incense. We could have ended our short meeting at this stage but I decided to continue because I had more things to say.

I carried on: “I also wondered where your idea of spot paintings came from. When I was on my way to LA I made a stop in San Diego to visit Stacy who is my eldest friend and while we were talking about you, she mentioned the book “Put me in the zoo” by Robert Lopeshire. This is the story of a panther with spots of colour on the body. The panther wants to integrate the company of animals in a zoo but it is ejected by security guards who haven’t got the brains God gave a cat. The panther tries to convince two children that the coloured spots give it a multitude of talents. Showing them what it is able to do it hopes that it can also convince the zoo of its abilities. Children are seduced and suggest that the zoo is not for it but the circus is probably much more!”

This story is fabulous in many ways because it was written in 1960 and may well have been read by your mother and may have inspired your "spot paintings"! The bad boy, the agitator, may have sought his zoo before finding a circus? Like any talented proletarian suffering the weight of his class you may have sought to convince that the colour dots stigmatise but also make you special. The pea coat coloured panther may be the points which connect your first attempts of artistic expression. “

Damien narrowed his eyes, touched again the brown frames of his spectacles and laughed out loud. The chemist’s head slipped down his hand and wondered whether he had missed a joke. Damien neither denied nor confirmed my theory. He just resumed his activity of sorting the pills by colour and size. Without looking at me he asked whether I had other fanciful theories like this one.
I blushed because I am not an art critics and I don’t have the self confidence or the arrogance of some professional who don’t even try to understand the work and only follow curator’s tastes or the current trend. I like the quote of René Descartes I said: “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” After a pause I added: “The privilege of the working class is being able to doubt more than once… Questioning myself and calling upon various topics to comprehend the world in which I live has become a second nature. I should not be ashamed of blushing but it is hard to get rid of one’s social stigma when playing in a field which is not yours. “

“Do not think too much. Live the moment and act. This is the key to a true and positive behaviour said the philosopher Swami Prajnanpada” whispered the Indian chemist.

“I agree” I declared, “but living the moment and acting doesn’t prevent anyone from thinking. To me thinking is important to be free. Culture - art is a part of it - is only a tool and contemporary art like other forms of arts has got to be the buzzing mosquito in a conformist world. Even though I suspect many collectors enjoy contemporary art to balance their ultra traditionalist attitude in their every day lives”.

I had still in mind Damien’s question concerning my theories and without knowing whether he would appreciate this one more than the other, I continued:  “Actually, I have another fanciful theory. Doing the world tour chasing the coloured stamps, I realised that I am a sort of "ready made" inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s idea. Indeed, I turned an ordinary object; me, the worthless skull, and I moved, thought and acted so that the usual image of the unemployed person disappears. A urinal became a fountain. A jobless and penniless guy could become an art critic and reporter.” I continued: “As you know, collectors decide of the value of their purchases. The more expensive it becomes, the more it is inaccessible and the price increases because the number of privileged who can afford the work decreases. With the same logic, the number of unemployed increasing, the less you compensate them because their value decreases! Ideally every unemployed person should become a work of art and be bought or hired by a famous collector to increase his/her value! Mr Pinault maybe? Personally I would not mind living in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice!”.

The Indian chemist scratched his turban as if it had been a direct extension of his head. He turned up the volume of the radio:

If it's true that a rich man leads a sad life
N' that's what they from day to day
Then what do all the poor do with their lives?
Have nothing to say on judgment day?

I've been beat up, i've been thrown
Out but i'm not down, i'm not down
I've been shown up, but i've grown up
And i'm not down, i'm not down

On my own i faced a gang of jeering in strange streets
When my nerves were pumping and i
Fought my fear in, i did not run
I was not done

And i have lived that kind of day
When one of your sorrows will go away
It goes down and down and hit the floor
Down and down and down some more
Depression
But i know there'll be some way
When i can swing everything back my way
Like skyscrapers rising up
Floor by floor, I’m not giving up

So you rock around and think that
You're the toughest
In the world, the whole wide world
But you're streets away from where
It gets the roughest
You ain't been there

(I'm Not Down – The Clash)

For a long while nobody had said or scratched anything. Then Damien pouted and asked me if I were poor.

“That’s quite a complex issue” I replied. “But here is what I think. Our social class is defined by various sorts of capital: economic, social, symbolic and cultural. If you have all of them, you are probably in the upper class and if you have none, you are in the lower one. Of course they are intertwined. For instance, if you have no network, you have little chance to get a job and if you have no job your economic capital is probably low. What about talent? Well, talent is something that exists only if someone having influence in the field of your talent helps you to develop and become known. Let me tell you a story. When I was in London for the challenge and after I went to Davies Street, I sat in a pub. I like English pubs whose names are always inspired by countryside animals, religion or mythology: "the black swan and the raven," "the friar" or "The Mermaid & the singing sailor". I like the thick carpets, wood paneling and velvet seats. When I was eating a "fish and chips with peas", a Londoner with a strong Cockney accent invited himself to my table. His name was Damien. He was a house painter and, surprisingly, had on the face the same white spots that I had seen in Paris. But Damien had never heard of you. He was familiar with his paintbrush and his roller, which by dripping would freckle his white cheeks without any collector giving him - in his lifetime - a market value. Damien is poor more than I am because he is not even able to play with the symbolic capital which I tried to play with during my journey.”

“What are you going to do with the print? “, inquired Damien.

“I do hope that I will be able to keep it”, I responded. “Coloured spots became special to me because I tried to connect them with the real world. However, I may also have to sell it if I don’t get a job quickly. Travelling was a great experience and I should thank you for that”.

“You know Laurent” said Damien, “I like your panther theory. However, I think that the animals in the zoo inspired me more than the spots on the panther. I think that the way we treat animals in zoos are sometimes similar to the way we treat people in life. I wonder whether “put me in formaldehyde” wouldn’t have been a more adequate title for a book.

“I agree” said the Indian chemist, while he was yawning and putting back the coloured pills in their original flasks.