27 September 2005 | Vol. 5, No. 3

Congo

by SCOTT GLASSMAN

You are no dumb chimp, smacking white on ultramarine, mars black on white, a stroke of crimson somewhere in between to mimic an inferno. You didn't knock over the brushes or try to eat them like your predecessors. You thought Picasso should have skipped Guernica—who needs a horse emerging from a man's chest? A man that doesn't even look like a man, Potato Head eyes thrown willy-nilly onto his head, crooked and one-dimensional. You never let paint spill over the edge or bleed off the paper. You never called your lover drunk from a phone booth at three in the morning. You knew what wrath these acts would incur, and the painting, it alleviated enough of the strain. But at openings, how hard it was to humor folks who thought they knew a thing or two about symmetry! In your mind, you'd raise the easel over them like a huge chunk of stone and look to the sky as if for a sign, any sign at all.