Cap. 1
It was more about dusk. It was about sunset. The sky had grown red, but now it started to darken. The sun had gone down. The air was red-hot. All was reddened. Not the sky, the sky was dark. Because the sunset. But the rest was reddened. Nay, ‘t was so reddened as of a burning heat, like a torpor, ‘t was a wilted orangish as of a strong heat. It had been a strong heat all the weeks before and it still was an intense heat, it seemed to maintain so, it didn’t cease, and as for the colours, ‘t was more of a reddened red-orangish such. And this ‘gish was yielding a state of torpor but not of numbness, ‘t was so hot that you couldn’t remain wilted for that torpor that was benumbing you mildly. At first it was easy. And a sunset, that was driving you crazy. Completely. People were looking in the shine and they couldn’t see the horizon line. Because of the thermic shock everything seemed more reddened and you were looking ten meters distance and the air was boiling up all-around, so it was a damn thermic shock that you couldn’t mark out the sharp, the distinction between forms, as for the photos, none made out a sharp image, that’s why you can’t find photos of that time, or to join them end to end. You’re looking at somebody near you and it was like looking in a stove. You’ve looked in the stove, you were pissing in the bed at night. Well, it depends on the stove, but at that time all stoves were red-hot. Everything was red-hot. And when you’re looking this burnings, the eyes were burned in your head. The eye sockets were as holes punched by bright kindled embers, but you could see through that light. I can’t say what you’ve seen because it blinded you completely and you could see nothingghhh. But a red, warm light. And the air, nobody was breathing, you couldn’t breathe that air because of the burning heat. And an orange-stunk-up-with-red atmosphere. But not only the sky and not only the air and the eyes and the stoves were red-hot. The women were also hot. The savarin, at least, you couldn’t find it at all, not at all, nothingghh. Or if you’ve found it, it was without that red jelly over for it couldn’t be seen because all the cakes were red. All Bucharest was like this. In the whole Bucharest, in all sweetshops you could find nothing but those red cakes. You didn’t’ make any difference between choux-a-la-crème and éclair or éclair and Negro cake with a tower. The same for the sweet cherries. They were red. And the greenish fondants were also red. Or something like a pink-stunk-up-with-red. And it seemed that because of heat it dropped I don’t know how some orange more orange-to-pink-stunk-up-with-red-in-it. But I can’t explain how it reached, that red in that pink, who was pouring it out, somebody must have put it in there, so that it was like this when it appeared. And there is another aspect. Nobody ever saw anything like this red, neither before nor after. Formerly you could make the distinction. Now, we can’t even talk about it. It’s impossible, you can’t make any distinction, I think it remained so because of the heat. The colours mix thermically and they all seem to you mixed with red. In which you pour out, just as an illusion, some orange-to-pink-stunk-up-with-red-in-it. To your sorrow. And that red was redder more towards the twilight and especially at the North Station. There were the flames bigger. In the rest they were smaller, more smouldering because there were bornbandments* in the last days. I think that in Berceni there were no flames because it wasn’t in the city area. It was the parish of Berceni. And when you arrived in the city you entered through Vergului, Vergului Athenaeum, respectively today it’s written there Milion Sexi Bar, but everybody knows what it really was there. In that part the flames were smaller. But that redness was all the same, everywhere, and that heat was there, that burning heat was there. It was on 23-rd of August 1944. At that time Lex Luthor was born...
Cap.2
About that time Lex Luthor was born. In America. His parents got lost when they were coming with the emigrants boat Barlad to America and aftathat** his mother gave him birth at one of their aunts in America and when he grew up a little after a while those ships Barlad were still coming with emigrants in Memphis and Lex Luthor who was at his tender age he was just a child living at his aunt he was going to watch them and one day he remembered something from the past and as he was looking at the Barlad that returned loaded with sand at last he got lost on a ship and the ship Barlad not noticing that Lex Luthor was aboard the captain commanded the sailing and after a short supply in La Venta port where it is said that the captain had a mistress they didn’t stop till Zanzibar where they took Cocofifi and finally they landed on the Romanian shore, near Calarasi. In Zanzibar they made a hairbreadth escape from a group of ships of a group of pirates, which were much likely of a grouping. That’s the reason they escaped. Well, let’s forget about Zanzibar and his parents who probably about that time lost their way at the carnival in New Orleans, ‘t happened in a Mardi Gras Thursday, the carnival. There were in that time groups of critics and puritanical organizations that were criticizing the carnival, mostly after the arriving of those girls from Cuba, and they were saying this carnival was much of a mass-media success and anyway it is facile to make a carnival. Later there were others who reflected more and they said maybe it is not facile. The girls from Cuba were anyhow criticized by the girls from the French Quarter. ‘T wasn’t an easy job.
Nevertheless Lex went in Calarasi with Cocofifi and later when they’ve grown up they’ve married and they lived peacefully nearby Calarasi, in a locality. Someday Lex Luthor*.
Till one day when Cocofifi returned from Calarasi and brought some bread and fish packed in an Austrian magazine. The fish was some Danube blue mackerel and shark bought from the alimentary shop in Techirghiol and the bread was fresh bread. In a word, turtz brand***, well, Lex Luthor took everything and unpacked and started to read the Austrian magazine. It was called Austernibelungen and he was going to find out that at that time of contemporary art this was considered a kind of Flashout well known in all Austria, Europe and America and even in Milano. Cocofifi prepared the dinner and after they’ve eaten they both started to read from the magazine about contemporary art in the world. All over the world. And they liked it and after that they subscribed and they’ve read more and more, because they liked it. They were sitting on the verandah and they were talking about their readings and they were looking as the sun was going down on the Bulgarian shore and the water became blue, it was a strange bluishness to a vague greenish and it went to turquoises shaded in blue as the sun set down and it became vaguely blue from the sunset so. And the blue went darkened slowly slowly over the choir of the greenish frogs from the surroundings lakes.
One day Cocofifi told Lex Luthor that it isn’t anymore space in the house because of the magazines. Well, it would have been enough space but anyway a new stage started in Lex Luthor’s life. And Cocofifi’s.
They thought what to do. And they thought about going in Bucharest to see anyhow how things went on for they’ve been reading in the issues of the Austrian magazine about the artists from Bucharest. In any case, it was worthing. It was worthing selling everything and leaving the place. They couldn’t sell the house for it hadn’t windows, it had only some boards nailed in the windows, but it was a matter of feeling so they’ve decided to sell a part of the Austrian magazines namely the publicity part and that with the writings of our critics.
And they’ve sold it through the Internet from their place at that time to an American company interested in it.
It was 1946. Just when they arrived in the front of the North Station in Bucharest, there was great ebullition in town, it was a big banner in front of the station, which was written on it about the inauguration of the “Muzeul de Arta Moderna”**** of the town and the peasants from Berceni called it stupidly Moma instead of Mamo. They went together with a flood of people at the Museum to see the inauguration and they were thinking how lucky they were to arrive here just when such event took place. People came from all over the world. Among the international presences they’ve remarked those whom they knew from Austernibelungen magazine there were surrealists lead by Breton who was saying that in ’47 the surrealism would move to Bucharest, there were also the American abstractionists de Kooning and Pollock and Guston, there were also some cubists who were standing together with the others Romanians and they were in great fashion and totally out of fashion, there were as well officials of the Pertu Gorza government who had received a medal of friend of the arts fact that it would be proved in ’48 when he had already said that he would sent in jail the whole generation of surrealists, actually very few went to jail for some of them have turned on to realism and others have moved to other places, and others more skillfully have succeeded to find their way somehow. And there was also Mondrian and it was beautiful and a lot of people and a nice weather and the building was a famous palace that just has been restored and it has been added a brand new ultramodern wing. Pollock has been staying for a while in a residence where he organized some workshops about the beginnings of the performance in his painting. Knowing all these Lex Luthor and Cocofifi applied for Pollock’s workshop particularly because a scholarship was offered and a lodging and free of charge Internet at the new opened library at Mamo. It has been an extraordinary month. They’ve met a lot of young guys and had many long discussions and there were some poets and talked about the death of the surrealism. Through the poets Dinu Marinescu and Lucian Tanasescu they contacted some American poets who were talking about a new concept, postmodernism, there were sayings in some circles about the necessity of a Museum of Postmodernism in town or at least it was imperative to create a center to deal with it. Lex Luthor and Cocofifi were staying calm and were continuing their studies on the theories applicability and information delivery.
They’ve rent a house with an attic close to the tower near the Greek Embassy and they were looking at the little Greek temple nearby and they’re thinking how Petre Antonescu’s project would stand there where once it had been The People House. It has been built there as well a nice esplanade where the two young people although they were extremely young went in the evening to look together with other young people at the beautiful view of the town offered by that place. However the esplanade has been criticized for its resemblance with the image of Via del Babuino seen from the left side as you have Piazza del Popolo behind. A bunch of imbeciles, those critics, considered our young people, but anyhow they were only a few so they didn’t matter, those imbeciles.
Mamo was functioning excellent, a succession of interesting exhibits have been continuing and a new generation was already expected, that was trying to destroy the frontiers between art and life already weakened and wheezed by the generation between the two wars. The faint air which had dominated town in the years of war made its absence felt. Everybody knew that in the upcoming years there it would be great changings in directions, tendencies and ideologies.
Notes
* see bombardments
** see after that
*** plum brandy
**** see MAMO (Muzeul de Arta Moderna) (rum.); MOMA (Modern Art Museum) (eng.)
Text by Nicolae Comanescu , Floe Tudor si Mona Vatamanu
It was more about dusk. It was about sunset. The sky had grown red, but now it started to darken. The sun had gone down. The air was red-hot. All was reddened. Not the sky, the sky was dark. Because the sunset. But the rest was reddened. Nay, ‘t was so reddened as of a burning heat, like a torpor, ‘t was a wilted orangish as of a strong heat. It had been a strong heat all the weeks before and it still was an intense heat, it seemed to maintain so, it didn’t cease, and as for the colours, ‘t was more of a reddened red-orangish such. And this ‘gish was yielding a state of torpor but not of numbness, ‘t was so hot that you couldn’t remain wilted for that torpor that was benumbing you mildly. At first it was easy. And a sunset, that was driving you crazy. Completely. People were looking in the shine and they couldn’t see the horizon line. Because of the thermic shock everything seemed more reddened and you were looking ten meters distance and the air was boiling up all-around, so it was a damn thermic shock that you couldn’t mark out the sharp, the distinction between forms, as for the photos, none made out a sharp image, that’s why you can’t find photos of that time, or to join them end to end. You’re looking at somebody near you and it was like looking in a stove. You’ve looked in the stove, you were pissing in the bed at night. Well, it depends on the stove, but at that time all stoves were red-hot. Everything was red-hot. And when you’re looking this burnings, the eyes were burned in your head. The eye sockets were as holes punched by bright kindled embers, but you could see through that light. I can’t say what you’ve seen because it blinded you completely and you could see nothingghhh. But a red, warm light. And the air, nobody was breathing, you couldn’t breathe that air because of the burning heat. And an orange-stunk-up-with-red atmosphere. But not only the sky and not only the air and the eyes and the stoves were red-hot. The women were also hot. The savarin, at least, you couldn’t find it at all, not at all, nothingghh. Or if you’ve found it, it was without that red jelly over for it couldn’t be seen because all the cakes were red. All Bucharest was like this. In the whole Bucharest, in all sweetshops you could find nothing but those red cakes. You didn’t’ make any difference between choux-a-la-crème and éclair or éclair and Negro cake with a tower. The same for the sweet cherries. They were red. And the greenish fondants were also red. Or something like a pink-stunk-up-with-red. And it seemed that because of heat it dropped I don’t know how some orange more orange-to-pink-stunk-up-with-red-in-it. But I can’t explain how it reached, that red in that pink, who was pouring it out, somebody must have put it in there, so that it was like this when it appeared. And there is another aspect. Nobody ever saw anything like this red, neither before nor after. Formerly you could make the distinction. Now, we can’t even talk about it. It’s impossible, you can’t make any distinction, I think it remained so because of the heat. The colours mix thermically and they all seem to you mixed with red. In which you pour out, just as an illusion, some orange-to-pink-stunk-up-with-red-in-it. To your sorrow. And that red was redder more towards the twilight and especially at the North Station. There were the flames bigger. In the rest they were smaller, more smouldering because there were bornbandments* in the last days. I think that in Berceni there were no flames because it wasn’t in the city area. It was the parish of Berceni. And when you arrived in the city you entered through Vergului, Vergului Athenaeum, respectively today it’s written there Milion Sexi Bar, but everybody knows what it really was there. In that part the flames were smaller. But that redness was all the same, everywhere, and that heat was there, that burning heat was there. It was on 23-rd of August 1944. At that time Lex Luthor was born...
Cap.2
About that time Lex Luthor was born. In America. His parents got lost when they were coming with the emigrants boat Barlad to America and aftathat** his mother gave him birth at one of their aunts in America and when he grew up a little after a while those ships Barlad were still coming with emigrants in Memphis and Lex Luthor who was at his tender age he was just a child living at his aunt he was going to watch them and one day he remembered something from the past and as he was looking at the Barlad that returned loaded with sand at last he got lost on a ship and the ship Barlad not noticing that Lex Luthor was aboard the captain commanded the sailing and after a short supply in La Venta port where it is said that the captain had a mistress they didn’t stop till Zanzibar where they took Cocofifi and finally they landed on the Romanian shore, near Calarasi. In Zanzibar they made a hairbreadth escape from a group of ships of a group of pirates, which were much likely of a grouping. That’s the reason they escaped. Well, let’s forget about Zanzibar and his parents who probably about that time lost their way at the carnival in New Orleans, ‘t happened in a Mardi Gras Thursday, the carnival. There were in that time groups of critics and puritanical organizations that were criticizing the carnival, mostly after the arriving of those girls from Cuba, and they were saying this carnival was much of a mass-media success and anyway it is facile to make a carnival. Later there were others who reflected more and they said maybe it is not facile. The girls from Cuba were anyhow criticized by the girls from the French Quarter. ‘T wasn’t an easy job.
Nevertheless Lex went in Calarasi with Cocofifi and later when they’ve grown up they’ve married and they lived peacefully nearby Calarasi, in a locality. Someday Lex Luthor*.
Till one day when Cocofifi returned from Calarasi and brought some bread and fish packed in an Austrian magazine. The fish was some Danube blue mackerel and shark bought from the alimentary shop in Techirghiol and the bread was fresh bread. In a word, turtz brand***, well, Lex Luthor took everything and unpacked and started to read the Austrian magazine. It was called Austernibelungen and he was going to find out that at that time of contemporary art this was considered a kind of Flashout well known in all Austria, Europe and America and even in Milano. Cocofifi prepared the dinner and after they’ve eaten they both started to read from the magazine about contemporary art in the world. All over the world. And they liked it and after that they subscribed and they’ve read more and more, because they liked it. They were sitting on the verandah and they were talking about their readings and they were looking as the sun was going down on the Bulgarian shore and the water became blue, it was a strange bluishness to a vague greenish and it went to turquoises shaded in blue as the sun set down and it became vaguely blue from the sunset so. And the blue went darkened slowly slowly over the choir of the greenish frogs from the surroundings lakes.
One day Cocofifi told Lex Luthor that it isn’t anymore space in the house because of the magazines. Well, it would have been enough space but anyway a new stage started in Lex Luthor’s life. And Cocofifi’s.
They thought what to do. And they thought about going in Bucharest to see anyhow how things went on for they’ve been reading in the issues of the Austrian magazine about the artists from Bucharest. In any case, it was worthing. It was worthing selling everything and leaving the place. They couldn’t sell the house for it hadn’t windows, it had only some boards nailed in the windows, but it was a matter of feeling so they’ve decided to sell a part of the Austrian magazines namely the publicity part and that with the writings of our critics.
And they’ve sold it through the Internet from their place at that time to an American company interested in it.
It was 1946. Just when they arrived in the front of the North Station in Bucharest, there was great ebullition in town, it was a big banner in front of the station, which was written on it about the inauguration of the “Muzeul de Arta Moderna”**** of the town and the peasants from Berceni called it stupidly Moma instead of Mamo. They went together with a flood of people at the Museum to see the inauguration and they were thinking how lucky they were to arrive here just when such event took place. People came from all over the world. Among the international presences they’ve remarked those whom they knew from Austernibelungen magazine there were surrealists lead by Breton who was saying that in ’47 the surrealism would move to Bucharest, there were also the American abstractionists de Kooning and Pollock and Guston, there were also some cubists who were standing together with the others Romanians and they were in great fashion and totally out of fashion, there were as well officials of the Pertu Gorza government who had received a medal of friend of the arts fact that it would be proved in ’48 when he had already said that he would sent in jail the whole generation of surrealists, actually very few went to jail for some of them have turned on to realism and others have moved to other places, and others more skillfully have succeeded to find their way somehow. And there was also Mondrian and it was beautiful and a lot of people and a nice weather and the building was a famous palace that just has been restored and it has been added a brand new ultramodern wing. Pollock has been staying for a while in a residence where he organized some workshops about the beginnings of the performance in his painting. Knowing all these Lex Luthor and Cocofifi applied for Pollock’s workshop particularly because a scholarship was offered and a lodging and free of charge Internet at the new opened library at Mamo. It has been an extraordinary month. They’ve met a lot of young guys and had many long discussions and there were some poets and talked about the death of the surrealism. Through the poets Dinu Marinescu and Lucian Tanasescu they contacted some American poets who were talking about a new concept, postmodernism, there were sayings in some circles about the necessity of a Museum of Postmodernism in town or at least it was imperative to create a center to deal with it. Lex Luthor and Cocofifi were staying calm and were continuing their studies on the theories applicability and information delivery.
They’ve rent a house with an attic close to the tower near the Greek Embassy and they were looking at the little Greek temple nearby and they’re thinking how Petre Antonescu’s project would stand there where once it had been The People House. It has been built there as well a nice esplanade where the two young people although they were extremely young went in the evening to look together with other young people at the beautiful view of the town offered by that place. However the esplanade has been criticized for its resemblance with the image of Via del Babuino seen from the left side as you have Piazza del Popolo behind. A bunch of imbeciles, those critics, considered our young people, but anyhow they were only a few so they didn’t matter, those imbeciles.
Mamo was functioning excellent, a succession of interesting exhibits have been continuing and a new generation was already expected, that was trying to destroy the frontiers between art and life already weakened and wheezed by the generation between the two wars. The faint air which had dominated town in the years of war made its absence felt. Everybody knew that in the upcoming years there it would be great changings in directions, tendencies and ideologies.
Notes
* see bombardments
** see after that
*** plum brandy
**** see MAMO (Muzeul de Arta Moderna) (rum.); MOMA (Modern Art Museum) (eng.)
Text by Nicolae Comanescu , Floe Tudor si Mona Vatamanu
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