jarryd Cooper: juggernaut
03.09.25 - 27.09.25
Artworks
Jagganath
Philip Guston put down his brush and crushed his cigarette out in his palette. Ash pink dawn was breaking, and the cold light crept into his studio and cast an illuminating ray over his efforts, confirming what he had started to suspect. Completion.
What was it he saw there, in the countless strokes and scrapings? Some great steamroller. A chariot of dread proportion ploughing its way through all before it. From beneath the weight of the heavy roller, prickly legs issue forth in agony, crushed crimson and bulbous. Their shoes, horse shod, turned upwards to a bloodshot sun. He had always preferred Newton to Einstein. The gravity of it all!
He had been at it all night. He ate spaghetti and meatballs with Musa then made the short walk to the studio. When he squeezed out his first pustules of cadmium red, everybody was there. Friends, family, peers, critics. The whole bloody pantheon. But as he pondered and paced, and prodded and prised, one by one they all started to leave. Just like he always said they would. Was he going to leave too?
He took out his iphone and opened the camera. The clack of the shutter. A pale facsimile. Crooked and bowed, a deformed likeness if any. His thick and clumsy digits, so deft with the brush, plodded and fumbled numbly across the sleek paint smeared device, and eventually stumbled into Instagram.
He had never even wanted it. Bill de Kooning had persuaded him to get it. He had been late to Facebook too but had gradually succumbed. His last post read something along the lines of… “I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures.”
All his poet friends were on twitter, and he secretly wished he could join them. But Bill could be so persuasive. It’s freedom Phil! And that’s your true subject!
Ah well. Give it a go! What’s the worst that could happen?
*
The sun is starting to rise up over the trees. Crows perch on power lines and a cat knocks over a dustbin. But Philip can only stare in anxious wait at the greasy portend. Nothing. Why is it taking so long? Idiot. You fool, you should never have been so stupid. How could you let Bill talk you into this? To think that anyone could possibly appreciate what you’re doing. And what’s happened to you? In what sad pathetic world would anyone with a shred of integrity resort to… wait. A flash. A buzz. Like flies waking, and picking up their first scent, steadily they start to swarm. The dam busts open, and the deluge of approval washes in like a flood. He can’t fathom it. The adulation, the glory, all there in his paw.
No jibes and snide remarks. No accusations or mention of mandarins and stumblebums. Just positivity. Yes. Just nice words of affirmation. They like it. They actually like it. I’ve made something that people like. Fuck!
Thumbs up. OMG love this! The Pink is on point!
What do they mean by that, on point?
Now what, they’re making comparisons? Oh Jesus!
Love the Krazy Kat vibes. You should check out George Herriman. Hey @robertcrumbofficial get a load of this! Fuck yeah dude channelling some hungover De Chirico energy.
Oh, God stop! Stop! He tries to write back to these people. Tell them they’re wrong. Tell them the painting is a failure. An utter failure. But Bill didn’t teach him how to respond. Didn’t show him where it’s @
So, he shouts into the void. Can’t you all see this fraudulence? Can you not see you’ve been hoodwinked?
What have I done? They had all gone. They had finally left me alone, and then fool that I am, frail creature of vanity, I invited them all back in. I opened the box. I threw myself under the rampaging wheels of Jagganath. I am solely to blame. This and many more desperate utterances are spat into the chasm, unaware that with indifference, the algorithm had ploughed on, swallowing his words like a street sweeper, churning them up, perhaps to one day cast them adrift, to wash up on a desolate foreign shore.
Haggard and bereft, his day ruined, he lights a cigarette and takes a deep contemplative drag. Nothing to do now but paint. He takes his titanium white and empties it onto his palette. With his biggest brush, he begins to erase and undo. But he struggles against the weight of that mighty chariot. All that red and black, still wet, still living. History is written by victors and Guston wasn’t winning. But gradually things settle, and he relaxes into the process. Slowly though, he starts to sense something. A sound. What is that? Some kind of tone. Tinnitus? No, far worse. A high pitch note, constant, without break. It’s near. It’s inside the building. He steps out of his studio into the hallway, and follows the sound to a room he never even knew was there. No Entry. DANGER. Cellular site. TELSTRA. What is Telstra doing in Upstate New York? Subsidising his studio? Paying his rent? Funding his entire existence? Have they been listening this whole time? Would you believe it? The door isn’t locked.
Inside, everyone is there. Bill, Morty, even Jackson. John is performing four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. In this version, two split systems rage against the heat of a giant computer running hot, and that same ear-piercing tone, strikes its blistering knell. Lights flash green, but one is red, bloodshot even, and it doesn’t flash. It sits static, radiating like it were painted. It hums along to the silence. A socket beneath it plays host to a snaking cord. He’s down to one line now. With Mickey Mouse gloves, he grips it. The line goes taut and Guston, sweating under his hood, tastes salt on his lips. Well, he says to himself. What’s the worst that could happen?
Written by Harry Hay.
Hay is a painter and writer based in Melbourne.
