ART HISTORY LESSONS

ART HISTORY LESSONS


Shortly before the fall semester
   of the art school I would go to began,
   a water main  burst late at night in the storage vaults
of the adjourning gallery, a large
   but secondary collection of art.
   The antiquated plumbing proved impossible to staunch
by the time the night watchman  found the Horace Greenloughs
    knee-deep in black water;
    soon the General Washington
modeled on Phidias' giant Zeus at the Acropolis
    (bare to the waist, seated on a dais
     flanked by the eagles of the Republic)
would vanish, along with catacombs
     lined with brown nineteenth century oils,
sepias, aquarelles, Boston Impressionists,
     like the ballroom of the Titanic beneath the tide,
     and when the lights went out
--according to my friend, the nightwatchman--
it felt as if the entire building had tilted
    about to slip into a chasm
       or ocean unlit and chill.
     The main valve shut down,
it was found that the holdings
--all but those works on exhibition--
    were entirely submerged
    and indeed the water had crept even so far
as the stairs to the central rotunda
    where they halted by the velvet ropes
     like a crowd at a premiere.
To remove a vertical lake
 some four underground stories would require
     months of unstinting effort
    said the engineer
called to the site the next day.
   Thus our lifestudies began to the shudder
of hydraulic pumps, a lecture on Monet
     was accompanied by cataracts,
     and sophomoric debates in the coffee shop
by the slow re-emergence of drown objects.
    Needless to say, this hardly concerned us.
       We were busy. With our instructors cheering us on
we would enter a new millenium,
     blurring the distinction between art and life
         in a flurry of manifestos.
Questioned on the subject of the aquatic archaelogy
      going on nearby
      most would reply that it was a pointless effort
and what was lost, historical detritus,
         the academic efforts of the dead
         made with an eye towards a posterity
     which had rightfully forgotten them.
We did not know of the rise and fall of schools
     or of the many manifestos even then dissolving under water.