Last Call

...FACED WITH WHAT SEEMS LIKE AN EPIDEMIC OF CULTURAL joy-riding, the curators have now decided to go public with their discoveries...

...It is a typically cunning mixture of oil paint and human blood...

...The curator could recall nothing especially funny about Pollock's work, so he initially dismissed the woman's laughter as the nervous giggling of a gawking rube...

...But several weeks later, while chatting with a fellow curator from Boston, he learned that a similar incident had happened at his colleague's institution...

...Snobs and elitists trying to heap contumely on the hoi polloi are the obvious suspects, but then again it could be the work of puckish teenagers...

...One night in 1948, Pollock got into a fist fight with fellow Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko over a bar bill at New York's famous Cedar Tavern...

...He decided that the tape contained in the phone had surreptitiously been altered by some misguided prankster, and sent it back to the shop for repairs...

...Although they maintain that most art phones in use throughout the Western world provide accurate, reliable material, there have been enough cases of tampering that the time has come for the man in the street to be warned about the hoax...

...And in Paris art phone users were being fed a monstrous canard that the bare-breasted woman leading the rebels in Delacroix's Liberty on the Barricades was Miss Teen Toulouse of 1829, later known to the world as Marie Antoinette...

...In Rome two art phones had reported that the incongruous jockey shorts worn by Saint Sebastian in Antonello da Messina's portrait of the Christian martyr were painted onto his otherwise nude body by the Inquisition 25o years after the artist died, because of complaints from demure Cistercian nuns...

...CONCERNED THAT A SERIAL PRANKSTER MIGHT BE AT WORK, THE two curators began approaching their peers around the world to see if they too had experienced tampering with their in-house audiotaped equipment...

...Again, this was arrant nonsense...

...The tremors of amusement had obviously been triggered by whatever the woman was listening to on the hand-held "art phone" serving as her guide through the museum...

...The responses confirmed their worst fears...

...THOUGH IT was true that Pollock was a rough-and-tumble individual given to the occasional late-night punch-up, the running commentary contained in the art phone presentation was complete nonsense...

...And yes, we also have our suspicions about a couple of unsuccessful young painters who might be doing this out of spite...

...Nor have we entirely ruled out garden variety philistines as the culprits...

...His curiosity piqued, the curator borrowed one of the devices from the rental booth and decided to find out what was generating this anomalous outburst of mirth...

...Right now, we have no idea who is behind this prank or what their motivation is," says Steinmentz...

...An adroit pugilist, Pollock took out the diminutive Rothko with just one punch...

...For the time being, museums the world over are continuing to rent art phones, but making regular checks to ensure that the devices have not been tampered with...

...STEINMENTZ WAS ASTONISHED BY WHAT HE HEARD...

...then, while his colleague lay unconscious on the floor, Pollock grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged his bleeding carcass across the canvas, deftly interspersing the evocative strands of red and black oil paint with Rothko's blood...

...In fact, Marie Antoinette was guillotined in 1793...

...Seemingly, several patrons had cornplained that the art phones describing one of Winslow Homer's late paintings also contained dubious material...

...Suspecting a hoax, Steinmentz reviewed all of the other art phones being rented at the museum, but found no similar material...

...LAST CALL by Joe Queenan Pollock Jokes THREE WEEKS AGO, GAVIN STEINMENTZ, A CURATOR AT A prestigious New York art museum, noticed a middle-aged woman giggling uncontrollably as she gazed at a painting by the revered Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock...

...When patrons of the museum planted themselves in front of a painting depicting two men seated in a wind-swept dinghy out on the high seas, they were informed that in nineteenth century Massachusetts homosexuality was so frowned upon that gay men frequently arranged nautical trysts in small fishing boats off the coast of Nantucket...

...BUT LATER IN THE DAY, STEINMENTZ NOTICED SEVERAL other people chuckling away merrily as they studied the same painting, and they too were listening to art phones...

...The painting was so well received that Pollock subsequently devised several other canvases using blood from the nose of Barnett Newman, the eyebrows of Ad Reinhart, and a gash he opened on the side of Willem de Kooning's forehead when he cold-cocked him at a Sunday brunch...

...In Brussels several art phones had erroneously reported that the man in Jacques-Louis David's famous portrait of Marat assassinated in his bathtub was not the lightning rod of the French Revolution, but David's brother-in-law Marcel, who absolutely refused to bathe...

...To his amazement and chagrin, the tour guide speaking on the phone was making the following comments: "The painting you are now looking at is Indian Red Ground No...

...They have also posted warnings asking patrons to report any suspicious commentary, especially if it involves fisticuffs...

...82 January 1999 • The American Spectator...