Earlier this month I paid a visit to the National Gallery of Canada here in Ottawa, and over at my photoblog I just started a series on the place that will carry on until month's end. Being there also inspired the following blog. Incidentally, the ghost of a cranky painter might not be happy with me for this one.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, I’m Daniel Gallagher,
and I am a curator specializing in the Impressionist section at the Gallery. My
apologies if I seem a bit nervous... I don’t usually testify before
Parliamentary committees. I come today to offer up a full explanation of the
events of last week. What we at the Gallery call The Incident. Normally, since Contemporary Art is not my section or
area of expertise, I would not be testifying here today. The senior curator in
charge of the 20th century portion of the Gallery, Mr. Alistair
McCormick, would be here to testify. However, as might be expected under the
circumstances, given what happened, Mr. McCormick suffered a nervous breakdown.
Where do we begin? Well, with the culprit himself.
Thomas Alexander Grenville, age seven, of Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania. Known to one and all as Tommy. Had we known he’d be such a source
of trouble, we would have never let
him in the Gallery’s front door. Tommy and his parents came over for a vacation
three weeks ago, and as it turns out, the little bastard... my apologies for the language, but as you can imagine we
at the Gallery are not pleased with
the boy. Tommy has been a nuisance wherever he has been visiting. It started
when his family arrived at Heathrow, and he yelled that the people behind them
in the customs line were hijackers. It only got worse from there.
At Westminster Abbey, he tried climbing all over Isaac
Newton’s tomb. He spent time in Trafalgar Square yelling at strangers and
singing God Help The Queen. Not God Save The Queen, but God Help The Queen. I’ll spare you the
lyrics he used, though it went viral on Youtube. Honestly, it’s one thing when
a demented local does that, but it’s quite
unwelcome when a Yankee punk kid does it. Apparently staff at Lincoln Cathedral
managed to stop the wretched brat
from getting his grubby paws on their copy of the Magna Carta. Tommy’s next
reign of terror was at the Palace where he spent time running around one of the
Guards before shoving him in the butt. I expect Her Majesty would not have been
amused. At the Tower of London, he kicked a Beefeater in the shin.
We only found out about all this, and believe me, the list
goes on, after the fact. If we’d known just how much of a demonic holy terror Tommy was, we’d have kicked him out before he
could have gotten in.
You know, after the fact, when we were yelling at his
parents, and believe me, there was a lot
of yelling going on, because at this point we were all pretty mad. Alastair was
starting to go through the beginning of his nervous breakdown. There they were,
the two of them, the Grenvilles, smiling in this demented, oblivious way while
their... well, as the French would say, their enfant terrible was alternating between yelling at the top of his
lungs and holding his breath. And finally the mother told us that they don’t
believe in discipline, that they encourage their son to just be himself without
anything remotely resembling rules or consequences, and that their Tommy is
a... in her words, a spirited, creative
angel. That’s what she said. As if what he’d done didn’t really matter. As
if she hadn’t brought a hellspawn walking temper tantrum of misbehaviour into
the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you that since then, we at
the Gallery have all agreed that if any of us ever have children, Tommy is off
the list of potential names. In fact, one of my colleagues who had a son last
year and named him Thomas, has sworn to keep herself in the habit of calling
him by his proper name. She had been
calling him Tommy, but under the circumstances told the rest of us that the
very name is poison to her now. On a personal note, my wife and I had
been thinking of having children, but after this, we’ve decided to have
ourselves both fixed. Tommy Grenville
could make anyone hate kids.
When the Grenvilles were passing through the Impressionists
area, I can say that they made an impression on the guards in the area. One of
them mentioned that Tommy kept pointing at paintings and yelling, that’s stupid! Over and over again.
Despite repeated requests for the boy to mind his manners and quiet down. The
Grenvilles just told my guard well,
that’s just the way he is. He doesn’t mean anything by it.
I just feel grateful that Tommy didn’t do what he did to any
of the paintings in my area.
The guards kept a close eye on the brat until he finally left with his oblivious parents, until he
moved on to the next section. There wasn’t much in the way of complaints about
him after that... maybe he’d tired himself out, or maybe his parents bribed the
little bastard into shutting up for a
few minutes.
At least until he was there in that one gallery in our 20th
century section.
Right in front of our prized Picasso.
We saw what happened after the fact on the security video
recording. The guard in that particular area was speaking with another tourist,
and had his back to Tommy. The Grenvilles were chattering away to themselves,
staring at one of the other paintings. Tommy, for his part, was in the middle
of the room, just turning round and round and round, totally quiet, it seems.
I suppose all children do that, right? Spin around for no
reason at all. Just because they’re being kids. Usually though, they stop when
they start to feel dizzy. Tommy, however, didn’t stop. He just kept going and
going. And got himself... ungodly
dizzy. And ungodly sick, as you can
imagine. In fact, ungodly is a pretty good term for that punk kid. I’m no clergyman, but there’s no way Tommy Grenville has a soul.
Well, finally he stopped. He was a bit unsteady on his feet
for a moment or so... and then all that spinning backfired on him. He got sick.
And I mean, sick. Projectile vomiting, ladies and gentlemen.
All over the Picasso. I haven’t seen that much projectile vomiting since The Exorcist. I would suggest demonic
possession might explain just how awful a child he is, but I expect a demonic
force would probably steer clear of a brat like that.
And the vomit seemed endless.
How much food could a child that age eat to have that much thrown up on the
floor and the canvas? And yet there it all went, sprayed all over the Picasso.
Cotton candy and fish and chips and ice cream and chocolate and cookies and
something called... Mallomars. Whatever that is.
At this point, everyone
was turning around, staring in shock at what was happening. The guard started
running right for the kid, trying to save the painting. He slipped on some
stray vomit, fell, broke his ankle. Fortunately it was a clean break, but
still...
The kid, thinking the guard was out to get him, panicked. He
charged forward, somehow not slipping
on his own vomit, and slammed face first into the Picasso. His hands burst
right through the canvas. The painting came crashing down off the wall, onto
Tommy. Too bad it didn’t kill the brat,
to be perfectly honest. Did I mention we’re all angry with him? Mrs. Grenville
cried out my sweet angel baby! And as
you can imagine when paintings are unlodged from our walls, alarms go off.
Well, there you have it. Our insurance will cover the damage
and the costs of restoration, of course. We’d like to get the costs out of the Grenvilles, perhaps to the point
of bleeding every last penny out of them, but our lawyers have told us it’s
pointless. We have been told that the Grenvilles were summarily kicked out of
Britain and told never to return, and our ambassador has filed a formal
complaint in Washington. The President has apologized personally to our
director, and the Grenvilles have had their passports revoked, thus preventing
them from ever leaving America again.
It’s their problem now, so to speak. Just as long as they keep the Grenvilles
out of every museum and art gallery in the country. Oh, and then there’s
Alistair, who’s now being seen to by the best doctors. They tell me they don’t
expect a recovery anytime soon. All they can get out of him is the occasional
muttered phrase projectile vomit.
As to the canvas itself? Our top restorers are at work on
the Picasso even now. They assure us that all of the damage can be fixed. It’ll just take a whole
lot of time. Strictly speaking, and yes, I’m aware I’m saying this as an art
curator, but then I don’t really like
modern art. Strictly speaking, I wonder how they’ll sort out the difference
between Picasso’s paint strokes and the vomit.”
