"Jack Dann - Art Appreciation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

after her, find a cab maybe, catch up, plead his case. It wasn’t as if he was
disfigured, or an idiot. It wasn’t as if he had nothing to say.
He had plenty to say! Look at what was going on in the gallery. That certainly
would be a way to make contact. The jogger was wearing pink sweatpants and a red
T-shirt; it made him crazy watching her slowly diminish, like a favorable weather
condition being undone by cosmic dust. The clownishness of his desire
overwhelmed Evans then as it so often did, and he shook his head, tried to push all
of it away, and walked back into the museum, showing his hand stamp. I don’t
know why I’m going back, he thought, I don’t know why I’m bothering with all this.
I’ve seen all there is to see: five tourists gobbled, and every angle of La Giaconda.
And two women, one in red and pink, the other avec chin, who wouldn’t look at me
twice if I were up there on the wall with Mona. Maybe that was the point. Maybe that
was what he was driving toward. He thought of the School of Visual Arts, what art
itself meant to him. If he could only get on that wall, become a simulacrum of
himself.
 Hell, if Leonardo da Vinci could do it why couldn’t he? Wasn’t La Giaconda
supposed to be a portrait of the artist? Hadn’t Evans heard a gallery guide putting
forth that very possibility to a group of disbelieving tourists? Hadn’t someone in fact
used a computer to prove a point-by-point congruence by juxtaposing La Giaconda
with Leonardo’s red-chalk self-portrait? Take one part Leonardo’s face and one part
of La Giaconda and presto! -- you have the world’s most enigmatic smile, the
simulacrum to end all simulacra, eternal art. One need only follow the recipe.
Glop. It was all too abstract for him. The gallery was still empty; the guards
hanging around the hall nodded to him as he walked by. There in the corner, invisible
from his first angle, was yet another pretty woman. Indeed, this was his morning for
them. This woman looked somewhat like his jogger, all in red, though, a red dress,
yearning waxen expression, a handbag clutched against her small breasts. She was
arched like a bow, staring at the Mona Lisa. Somehow she had gotten into this room,
gotten into the Guggenheim, gotten through all of her life up to this point without
Evans having ever seen her. Maybe she had come from the upper corridors,
examining Segal sculptures. Of whatever provenance, she was extraordinary; in his
sudden and tottering mood Evans felt he had never been so struck by anyone.
Sensitivity came from her eyes, from the angle of her handbag, from the intelligent,
anguished tilt of her head as she searched the eyes of La Giaconda for meaning.
“Hey, he said quietly. “You shouldn’t do that. I don’t mean to intrude, I mean
I’m not trying to come on like a masher or something, but you shouldn’t lean into
the painting like that, it’s dangerous, you know what I mean? You’re alone,
something might happen -- “ He was babbling, that was all. In any event, she did not
hear him. Please,” Evans said, “I’m just trying to be helpful; that painting is a
masterpiece all right but it’s very threatening -- “
Who was threatening? Who was acting like an idiot now? He stopped talking,
sized up the situation with shrewd and caring eyes, then began to move toward her,
thoughts of rescue in mind.
This is ridiculous, Evans thought. I’m making a fool of myself. It was
humiliating not even to be noticed. If he was going to lose control like this, then he
Who was threatening? Who was acting like an idiot now? He stopped talking, sized
up the situation with shrewd and caring eyes, then began to move toward her,
thoughts of rescue in mind. This is ridiculous, Evans thought. I’m making a fool of
myself. It was humiliating not even to be noticed. If he was going to lose control like
this, then he should at least shed anonymity, make some kind of impression. Was