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

Moreover, Gregory's illustrations, although painted in minute and exact detail, are completely removed from "the very stuff and texture of human experience"; they prove as void of content as Rabo Karabekian's extremely well executed huge abstract canvasses. The novel asks repeatedly which works are art and therefore essential to life and which are decoration and therefore inessential. Are Dan Gregory's fantastic illustrations, Karabekian's wall-sized paintings, or Terry Kitchen's spray gun paintings? Are any of these valuable as art or does each have value only as one person's attempt to play with paint? How does each of the three measure up against the great artists of other ages? Can a line be drawn from Rembrandt to Pollock?

1

3 Or from Gregory to Karabekian? Vonnegut's satire on the world of art, artists, connoisseurs, and critics provides provisional answers. "Artistic justice," for example, occurs in Bluebeard when Karabekian's paintings return, "thanks to unforeseen chemical reactions," after a few years to their pristine state as sized canvas: "... people who had paid fifteen- or twenty- or even thirty thousand dollars for a picture.

.. found themselves gazing at a blank canvas, all ready for a new picture, and ringlets of colored tapes and what looked like moldy Rice Krispies on the floor" (19).

1

4 Perhaps Karabekian unwittingly became a Conceptualist painter, one whose work exists only as a concept (compare "The Greatest Artist in the History of the World" and Leon Trout's invisible novel) or perhaps he is only the latest example of "Now you see it, now you don't"

—as stage magicians used to say during the Great Depression while the rabbit disappeared into the tall silk hat

—or more likely his success Although grouping some of the moderns with the Great Masters may appear either strained or pure errant nonsense, depending upon one's view of the moderns, one critic did lump them together or, rather, in his inelegant prose, "tossed fthemj into one pot": "The pictures of de Kooning and Kline, it seemed to me, were suddenly tossed into one pot with Rembrandt and Giotto. All alike became painters of illusion" (Leo Steinburg quoted in Wolfe, 79). 1

4 The trade name of the disappearing paint changes from Breakfast of Champions to Bluebeard, as casually as the names of characters shift between and among Vonnegut stories and novels. Vonnegut has remarked several times that such changes have no significance; see, for example: Vonnegut interview with Reilly, 7—8. 120