Death of the Artist

Roland Barthes said, "Death of the Author," and society said, "Hey, why not?"

They didn't actually kill them, and it wasn't just the authors, either, though there isn't much written about the artists in those early days. The theory was to pretend that there was no author, to better separate the text from the experiences of the writer. Of course, that's impossible to enforce. So society went the other way. If they couldn't separate the author's experience from the text, they'd separate the author from experience.

It worked well, at first. What author or artist wouldn't leap at the chance to live in a commune full of no one but other artists and authors? They lived a kept life, with nothing to do but further their art. Everyone chosen to go for those first test runs was ecstatic. So they say.

Non-fiction authors don't go, of course. I've always wondered if they resent that.

I like to think that my parents are glad that I never showed the artistic talent to get myself shut away in one of those villages. Some of us can't afford to lose a kid to some bullshit higher calling, you know? Money's got to be made and food put on the table, and you can't do that if you're locked away painting pretty pictures. And that's not even mentioning the rest of it.

It was the authors who lost it first.

All right, I know you've heard all this and more besides from any old conspiracy theorist haunting the street corners, but hear me out, yeah? I'm not like those crazies. I'm a Go-Between.

You know what that means, right?

So I know a lot of other Go-Betweens. I've heard things, and seen things for myself. Not a lot, but enough.

It was easy to see when the authors went – you just had to look at the work they were turning out. I'm not talking about postmodernism or James Joyce-style stream of consciousness bullshit, because that's still coherent, in its own self-conscious way. At first it was a matter of extra editing, nothing major in the industry, but when they started to get entire manuscripts full of gibberish, there was no editing it back. And you can't really ask a room of writers with their mouths sewn shut what's wrong, when all they can do is write nonsense words on scraps of paper and hand them back to you, expecting you to understand, as if you've evolved with them.

Death of the author: if the author's dead, then he can't talk back.

Yeah, I know, it's not easy to hear about that side of it.

It's a creepy theory, isn't it? Even in the abstract for people like you and me; every completed manuscript like a metaphorical death. They may as well cross your arms and close your eyes for all the say you get to have in it afterwards.

The genius part is how no one's noticed all this is going on. No, don't get huffy with me, that's not what I meant.

Look, think about it. Do you ever wonder what happened to Charles Stepsley? He doesn't write much anymore. Maybe it's because he can't keep up the quality, or he's running out of steam. Maybe.

It was easy to see when the writers went. How do you tell when the artists go? A picture is a picture is a picture. Only let me tell you, the whole reason the artists were sent away was to give them a chance to perfect their art, and it's working. I'm assigned to Commune Marie Laurencin, so I see more of the artists in their natural habitat than the average person. Even then, that's not much. If we have to fix the electricity, they're told in advance when we're going to be there, and they're never around. We deliver to warehouses and collect from them too, so there's no face-to-face communication.

But then again, you don't need any.

We collect the work they do every week, picking up cartons and cartons of finished canvases and sculptures, loading them into the trucks and taking them back to civilisation. We aren't meant to go through them hunting for the quality ones. We're told to bring back everything we find there, whether it looks like art or not. Can't trust the art-sense of people like me, of course.

You don't need art-sense to be able to tell which are the fresh artists enjoying the experience and which are the ones who have been there too long. But we do our duty, haul the whole lot back to the city and take our pay. It's not our job to have to decide which is art and which is madness. But at the same time – this is off the record, all right? I don't want to get into trouble for this – you can't help sneaking a little peek sometimes. Just for a sick thrill. I'm not proud of it. My mam taught me better than to get my jollies on other people's misfortunes. But at the same time, it's hard to call them people anymore once you've looked.

Yeah, you're interested now. I don't blame you.

There are a lot of artists in the world, and they're all working non-stop. The world's such a cornucopia of colour and concept that it's hard to keep your eye on a single artist without getting distracted by some other prodigy. It's like bait and switch, or a magic show, dazzling everyone with magnificent illusion after magnificent illusion so they can't see the sleight of hand behind the curtain. And it works. It really works.

There are so many names I could mention right now that you wouldn't even realise you'd forgotten, and I'm not saying that to be a smart-arse, I'm saying it because a friend of mine did it to me and it was true. Scary stuff. Art is forever, right? That's what they're always saying.

Anyway, I don't pretend to know what really goes on behind those walls. Like I say, there's never anyone around when we call round to sort out the plumbing or what have you. But something happens, in their heads, I guess. The authors start writing nonsense and the artists… Well. Cut off from experience and civilisation, not having to lift a finger to survive, not being able to lift a finger even if they wanted to. What happens when you run out of subjects? Personally, I think they all just lose it.

You find different themes start to emerge, to borrow some crit-speak, after they've crossed that line. Sometimes it explodes out onto the canvas, and sometimes it creeps in like ivy.

I've got a good memory for numbers. Sometimes I'll get a call from a dealer asking me to keep an eye out for a certain artist's work, so I have to. Looking at signatures is one thing, but to prevent any fraud even within the commune every artist has their own ID number printed on their canvases. Too much fuss, if you ask me, but I don't make the rules. I don't pretend to remember every ID number I've ever seen, or even every number I've been asked to look out for, but the really prolific ones stick in your mind. Even a dogsbody like me can see the patterns. It's always different, but somehow always the same.

I'm not going to name-drop, because that would be cruel. Their madness is no one's business. Believe you me, if I could unsee it all, I would.

It shows in different ways. Sometimes they'll paint things that you wouldn't even want to dream about. You'll find yourself feeling like you're mad just looking at them. That's the most common, across all media. Twisted sculptures of things you'd want to put down if they were alive because it would be a mercy, paintings in all styles of grotesques that you can almost hear screaming, abstract portrayals of feelings that you'd pray no human being ever felt. Oh yes, they've perfected their art.

There was one that stuck with me just because of the mystery. She was another darling of the art world in her time, ID number 4356899. A pretty recognisable number, right? Even when I wasn't asked to keep an eye out for it, I couldn't help registering it every time she submitted a canvas. It's the closest you can get to making friends with them.

I can't remember when it was that her canvases started coming out yellow.

Just yellow. I can't remember now if her works started to take on a yellow tinge before the final slide into big square canvases of a precisely mixed slightly dirty yellow, the same shade each time. And it wasn't just daubed on sloppily, either. I sneaked a closer look once and it was obvious it was exquisitely painted, the whole thing covered in little delicate brushstrokes, just all in yellow. I couldn't tell what it was. Try looking at a painting sometime; ignore all the colour and focus on the texture of the strokes. You'll know what I mean.

There was always more yellow paint than the other colours in the supplies we delivered while all this was going on. She'd ordered extra, or someone else had for her. Oh God, you know, it actually crossed my mind that in any other circumstances I could leave her a note in the stacks of paints and we could strike up some weird fairytale friendship. But when we emptied the truck and started to fill it up again, with those stiff yellow canvases in my hands, I realised it could never happen. Not to mention I'd be breaking some pretty serious rules by attempting communication. I'm an honest worker. I don't play games like that. They always get caught anyway; I've seen it happen so many times.

It's almost as if the artists are in quarantine for something, as if human contact is a disease and they're the children living in a bubble. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an airlock in the doors. There isn't, of course.

I don't know what goes down on the other side of the walls when it happens. The Go-Between is instantly fired, and I'm pretty sure it's almost impossible to find work again after that. I couldn't risk that. Easier to make friends with my co-workers and keep on bringing home that money every month. Mouths to feed. Just got to pull down my cap and get on with it.

Does that make me a collaborator?

You can't let yourself think about things like that. I do my job just like everyone else.

This lass with the yellow canvases, she kept on turning them out, regular as you like. She wasn't the only one to go that way. Some of them go that way, drawing the same thing over and over again. It's amazing, though, if you pay attention. They're not mindless drones about it – every picture is better than the one before. Sometimes I'm not sure if they do lose it, or if they've just transcended us. The kids… the kids are the ones who frighten me. I don't know what goes on behind those walls, but artists and authors are as human as the rest of us, in their own ways. I've never seen them around, but I know they're there. They leave signs everywhere in the way kids do, kids much younger than the age limit for being accepted into the communes.

I don't know if they produce work like their parents. I don't know who each ID number refers to, and even if I had names I wouldn't be able to pick them out without being told flat out that they were born in the communes. But sometimes I look at a piece of work and wonder, Is this one of theirs? I can never be sure, but sometimes, when I see something that seems to go even further than the usual horrors, I wonder. They must have much less far to go than their parents to touch that kind of… inspiration. They haven't had to unlearn their humanity.

I don't know. For all I know, the dealers have been asking me to look out for them without me even knowing. Maybe you've been following their careers without even realising who they are.

I find it unlikely, in the face of all the evidence, but you never know.

There was one time, up at Marie Laurencin, in the dead of winter when the heating broke. It was a cruel season that year, and the government was adamant that we should tend their treasures like orchids in a greenhouse, so there was all these alarms set up in case something went wrong. As luck would have it, I was sitting in the office on my shift, bored out of my mind, when these sirens started wailing like vixens in the middle of the night. Broken heating. Bollocks. So I got my gear together and drove up to fix it. Even in the face of such a sudden visit, they were forewarned enough to have scarpered. There must be more contact with them than what we have, I know that much.

Anyway, it was a piddling little thing, and I had the whole system up and running again in a couple of hours. I wiped my hands and got my driving gloves back on, and as I walked across the compound I happened to turn around. Well. It's always the little things that stick with you, but there was the faintest of lights in one of the upper storey windows, almost drowned out by a security light positioned almost right in front of the pane, the light haloed in the cold, and the exact same shade of yellow as those canvases.