Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

STUDIES - Donald E. Morse: The Joyful Celebration oflJfe. Kurt Vonnegut's Affirmative Vision in Galapagos and Bluebeard

What is striking about Karabekian's defense

—besides its articulate self-confidence

—what it shares with much of contemporary theorizing about modern art, is the slight relation, if any, these assertions bear to the painting itself. (See, for example, almost any review or essay by the art criticphilosopher Arthur Danto.) Vonnegut satirically suggests that beauty no longer resides in the eye of the beholder, but artistic significance lies wholly within the head of the observer who looks at the painting and theorizes whether that observer be an artist, critic, or gallery-goer. While this discussion of the nature and value of art is somewhat peripheral to Breakfast of Champions, it becomes central to Bluebeard. The latter novel raises the perennial issue of what is art and who is the "real" artist by contrasting Karabekian and his Abstract Expressionist painter friends with Dan Gregory, the illustrator who paints things more real than they appear to the eye, lords it over the non-representational painters, worships Benitto Mussolini and is "probably the highest paid artist in American history" (50). Examining the Abstract Expressionists' exuberant splashing of paint on canvas and comparing the astronomical prices they fetch, Vonnegut comments wryly: "Tastes change"

1

1; yet Vonnegut's satiric focus is directed only in part on the whimsical nature of the art market While society makes Gregory fabulously wealthy by purchasing everything he paints, his work fails as art because it has no emotional or spiritual content: Since Gregory's goal is merely to illustrate someone else's ideas or feelings, his work is, although technically proficient, "good painting about nothing"

1

2 or what Holger Cahill contemptuously calls the "merely decorative": art is not merely decorative, a sort of unrelated accompaniment to life. In a genuine sense it should have use; it should be interwoven with the very stuff and texture of human experience, intensifying that experience, making it more 1

1 Jacket Blurb written and signed by Vonnegut, April 1, 1987 for the hardcover edition of Bluebeard. 1

2 Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko declared: "There is no such thing as good painting about nothing" (545). 119