(1) The Artists

What if all the really great dead artists were brought back to life? How would it feel to be them? How would they react to the crazy shit that’s been happening in this world?

These were the noble questions. How could we have the ability to bring back all the really great dead artists and not use it? The temptation was too great. The science went forward.

As it was, some of the really great dead artists didn’t react well. I mean, how would you feel if some beautiful meadow you’d painted was under an airport? Automobiles, casinos, and internet pornography caused one or two to conclude they had actually opened their eyes in hell. A watercolourist, who had been close friends with Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, killed herself on her first day. Some required emotional counselling to make their transitions successfully. Others seemed to thrive instantly on the new spectacles of life, capitalizing on opportunities right away.

Whatever the reactions, there were many questions. The state of the union? A state of Israel? The mini skirt? Did you say they walked on the moon, really? What had happened to Communism, syphilis, Abyssinia, the Kaiser, and the codfish? Fears existed that the artists might be subject to exploitation. There were unintended consequences. Vladimir Putin fell from power in a coup and was executed shortly after heckling William Turner at a G20 conference.

Auction houses trembled. The monetary value of art was turned upside down. Who would pay twenty–six million dollars for a stuffed vinyl shark in a glass tank full of mouthwash when Diego Garcia or John William Waterhouse or Thomas Hart Benton or Giotto is available and has time to kill? Selectively selling part of a collection of Van Gogh’s might not mean the income a collector could have planned on before the really great dead artists came back.

So yes, there were practical problems to be sure. Some of the artists spoke in disappeared dialects, had strange accents, or used words in obsolete ways. This was especially true when trying to find language for things new to them. Appropriate food and clothing had to be found.

Translators, art historians and sociology majors were recruited. They acted as mediums, did their best to provide answers. There were logistical matters of citizenship, prescription eye glasses, personal hygiene, estate settlements, driver’s licenses, taxation, paternity. Nothing that UNESCO, the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization, couldn’t handle.

True, the really great dead artists were hardly zombies but not all of them were in the best of shape. Gauguin was rough. Van Gogh, you know the thing with the ear, he did it again before his Xanax kicked in and he deeply upset a group of French school children. There were other episodes. Before long, it began to seem like they might have been given too much freedom.

UNESCO published an open letter to the artists. To their credit, the artists responded. They assembled in New York City to hear the world’s proposals. A park was set aside straddling the most scenic stretches of the Canadian/American border. The artists were provided for handsomely. Protected and supplied, their work was to be allotted equitably to the peoples of the world.

No sooner were the artists established in their comfortable cottage studios with picture windows than they rebelled. They sent a note down to the gatehouse.

'Until, above all other troubling things, the assault on nature is stopped, there will be no more art', began the note. 'World, you do not deserve wood carvings, cathedrals, marble sculpture, portraiture, action painting, gouaches, encaustic works, watercolours, drawings, songs, jewellery, landscapes, tapestries, scrimshaws, calligraphy, poems, novels, photographs, pen-and-ink drawings, or stained glass.'

The recently dead artists had snookered humanity! As far as anybody knows, they are still up there.

copyright Stephen Caulfield, 2009