Was The Black Death Really the Start of Modern Art!

As I continue to contemplate on how to make my fame and fortune another avenue has opened up for me recently. Celebrated Artist!

I have in fairness considered this option several times before.

What inspired me this time was a couple of articles that recently appeared in the 'Times' newspaper. The first related the story of the late British artist Robert Lenkiewicz, apparently he died at the age of sixty in 2002 with huge debts, nine homes and eleven children from seven different partners. No wonder he died relatively young, I find huge debts, one, two and one hard enough.

However his estate and works sold after his death for over two million pounds. His speciality subjects were green linoleum, metaphysics and death. The latter taken to extreme by the discovery, during the clearance of his home, of the embalmed body of a tramp named Edwin Mackenzie, in a chest of drawers. You see Damian Hirst with his embalmed cows is a mere amateur.

I must say that the image of the unfortunate tramp occupied my mind for a little while. I had just been searching for a very old but well loved t-shirt which I found in some unused drawers and could imagine a similar scenario with the artist and the corpse of Mr Mackenzie, “Oh that’s where I put it!”

Then I read about a German, prize-winning artist, named Gregor Schneider looking for someone with only hours to live, to actually die in a public art gallery whilst he experimented with the way light plays on the flesh of a person in terminal decay. Whilst not wishing to be a stick in the mud I do have to admit to finding this a bit macabre.

I experienced the same feelings some years ago when two writers were interviewed on television about a play they were hoping to put on in London’s West End that required an actual recently dead body as it’s main character, not embalmed like our sock drawer inhabitant Mr MacKenzie, but an almost warm corpse. As with our German friend they asked for terminally ill people to apply, because at that stage they weren’t quite ready to go into production.

I don’t think that this play ever got off the starting blocks but as I had at the time just come out of a two decade retirement from playing football and every part of my being cried out in pain and protest, I was sorely tempted to apply for the leading role. What put me off though was the prospect of a long run like “The Mousetrap” and me becoming an embarrassment to my family as I began to smell and bits of me fell off.

Around about the same time as this artistic offering was being muted a fire broke out at a warehouse storing millions of pounds worth of modern art, destroying hundreds of exhibits.

As one who dabbled with modern art I obviously took a keen interest in this story. I had recently placed a frame around a damp patch on my kitchen wall, signed the corner and invited friends around for a viewing and drinks. Biddercome who by this time was into the theatre and the arts, thought it an interesting concept and showed a depth of expression. I took this as a compliment from a learned critic. Simcock also liked it, but he is just stupid.

The multimillionaire marketing mogul Charles Saatchi was one who lost a lot in this blaze, however I always maintained that if he had got someone to just sweep up the debris into a nice interesting pile then he could have at least recouped a couple of million pounds back by marketing it as “Art turns to Ashes” or failing that we could have played the Australians for them, at say cricket or something.

This fire was serious though as it deprived the Nation and indeed the World of masterpieces like Tracey Emin's tent that featured hundreds of names of her ‘lovers’ inscribed upon it, two piles of rubbish (literally) on poles that were supposed to represent peoples heads, some plastic toys and a pile of un-moulded clay.

This then, was one of the previous occasions when I decided that art was the “boy” for me!

My youngest daughter was then thirteen and at that time was away in Paris with school on one of those educational “the teachers need a few days away paid for by parents” trips. So I decided to search her room for some modern art exhibits that I could offer to the grieving Mr Saatchi, at competitive prices obviously.

I enlisted the help of two burley workmen who were repairing a gas pipe in the front road to help me push the bedroom door open against the piles of clothes, books, CD’S and general teenage requirements that occupied pride of place in a four foot mound across the floor. Their work done, they departed and I was in.

Now I am a graduate of Art College so obviously I have a trained eye. I came up with a broken hockey stick complete with blob of dried blood (I assume one of her victims not hers), a ripped Halloween hat with green hair, a toy rabbit minus one ear and half it’s stuffing and an unmade bed (I think that ones already been done). I allotted six figure prices to each and e-mailed Saatchi and Saatchi.

I never got a reply. Not from Saatchi or Saatchi.

I am actually encouraged though to give it another go. Han is two years older since my last foray into Modern Arts black hole and her sister has just returned from university, surely their rooms must now have nurtured some undiscovered postmodernist creations that would make "Damien Hirst eat his heart out”.
Sorry back to death and bodily parts again well that’s art for you.