Art

Hi everyone, I’ve been to a few galleries in my time. There were several near where I used to work, so it was a good way to get a drink. But I never saw anything like this…

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You had to show your cock to get into one of Breckham’s “things.” It was lewd or life changing, depending on who you asked, and just one of the reasons the critics hated him. I can assure you he paid more attention to the flash of a Patek Philippe or Rado on the wrist than what was being fished from between the steel teeth of the zipper.

The starkly white walls of the space were hung with kitschy gold framed canvases, all blank. The walls around them were daubed with neon paint. I was admiring the one closest to me: the blank square canvas the focus of a swirl of purple green and yellow that made me think irresistibly of water leaving a sink after a hippy had tie-dyed a T-shirt there, when Lena walked in.

I knocked back my wine and grabbed another one before the fireworks started. As always, Lena had taken the thing too far. She strolled around with not one, but two joke shop penises hanging over the elastic of her waistband. Breckham wouldn’t like that, but that was the point. When he saw her, he grabbed for the penises. She managed to hold on to one of them, and the thing turned into a bendy latex sword fight.

It looked good, but was clearly choreographed, at least to my eyes. But then, as his agent, I knew Lena was not just his most vocal critic, but also his business partner and lover. They fought their way around the room, crashing into guests now and again, until Lena had worked her way around to the table at the back where Breckham’s ink-filled phalluses stood. She grabbed a handful of the dicks and, slapping Breckham on the side of the head, knocking his glasses off, she raced around the walls squirting a glob of colour right into the centre of each of the blank canvases.

We made it into all the newspapers the next day. Not just the art sections, but the actual “news” parts. We didn’t sell any of the art. Breckham gave some interviews, magnanimous in agreeing that perhaps his art had become too phallocentric. We let that settle in, while I wondered how many zeros to add to the “defaced” canvases when they finally did go on sale.

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