Catriona Confesses

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Woohoo, and ruffles and flourishes! Today we welcome, with great fanfare, one of the dearest and best friends of the Reds, the brilliant and incomparable Catriona McPherson. A blazingly good writer, and infinitely hilarious, her books are consistently terrific--thoughtful and funny and twisty.

I don't know how she does it. Some of her books are so deeply dark and literary and thought provoking that they will break your heart (and your brain, too), and others are laugh-out-loud funny.

Today, she offers a confession.

 

Confessions of a Philistine

   By Catriona McPherson

 

In Scot’s Eggs, the eighth Last Ditch Motel mystery, the fluffy-soft, pastel-shaded innocence of an Easter holiday in Cuento, CA, is somewhat spoiled by the murder of two tourists and especially by the crime scene, which is a vintage Mustang full – like seriously full – of their blood. It’s been left in the hot sun for a week until the arrival of the turkey vultures makes someone take a closer look.

Why’d it take a week? Because the killers parked it outside the brand new art museum on the UCC campus, where the curators mistook it for the early arrival of the promised work by a young creator from an Oakland collective, who’s long been interested in decay.

I can’t lie; I had a lot of fun writing the employees of the Patsy Denoni Cultural Center and their combination of aching earnestness and corporate lock-step. Here’s just a flavour.

Fern had arrived at our side. ‘These resources are free and there is no entry charge,” she said. ‘But we encourage you to make a small donation to support our work in celebrating, promoting and protecting the diverse practices of artistic expression by the families of peoples who comprise our communities.’

 

Before any of us could answer, another woman came our way, stalking across the polished marble in spike heels. It took some kind of confidence to walk that fast in those shoes on this surface, but she was being powered by irritation.

 

‘Diverse expressions of artistic practice, Fern,’ she said. ‘The communities of peoples who comprise our family. Wait.’ She coloured slightly. ‘Diverse communities of expressive practice, to protect the arts of-’ She sniffed. ‘We suggest fifty dollars.’

 

I had even more fun describing the art itself, but it’s too gross for this blog. (Yes, I know I described a Mustang full of blood. The actual art is worse.) As ever, I need to say that the opinions expressed – here regarding the collection – are those of the fictional Lexy Campbell, nothing to do with me.

Ahem.

Honestly?

Every so often an exhibition of conceptual art blows me away completely. I saw a dozen pieces at the Serpentine in London a few years back that still haunt me – hyper-realistic and disturbing – and there’s a sliced-apart full-size house at Tate Modern with a film of 1950s DIY leaflets playing in the slices that . . . maybe you have to be there but it’s amazing. Also, I think Shedboatshed – the wee huttie dismantled, turned into a boat, sailed to the museum and reassembled into a shed again thoroughly deserved its Turner Prize. And I’ve got a lot of time for Tracy Emin. Even her Bed.

But.

The pile of wrapped sweeties (US hard candy?) in the all-white room in the National Gallery that the museum-goers are supposed to help themselves from? (And presumably suck as they walk round the rest of the exhibition? Dropping the wrappers?) It doesn’t work. There’s a security guard on duty. Who’s going to eat the art when there’s a guy in a uniform watching?

And in another room of that same exhibition, we read the card and peered about looking for the art for ages, wondering if someone had stolen it, before we realised it was the light fixture plugged in low down on one wall and tacked up and across the ceiling.

“Okay,” I remember Neil saying. “So we’re in one of those ‘But what is Art?’ exhibitions.” He cleared his throat. “So. What is Art?” There was a long silence then someone behind us whispered “You forgot to say Hey, Siri.” So we weren’t the only Philistines in there that day.

Look, I’m not saying it’s not an interesting question. (Seriously, what is Art?) only that you can’t necessarily stand in front of a pile of sweeties, ask yourself what art is for a while, then move on, ask it again underneath a light fixture, and on again and on and on, in front of, under, on top of, or sucking on another fifteen or twenty works. At some point you start wondering if the café’s any good. I do.

How about you, Jungle Red readers? Are you big fans of conceptual art? If so, have you lost any respect you ever had for me? I might as well put the cherry on top and tell you that my favourite artist is Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn then. Mostly because he painted women with love and tenderness, not as if he’d simply scoured the Bible for any page where someone’s dress fell off. And his unflinching gaze at his aging self makes me want to give him a cuddle.

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  See, Reds and readers, easy question today: what is Art? 

(This always reminds me of when my editor and I were discussing one of my book covers.

She said: I’ll tell Art what you said.

 I said: Great, tell him I appreciate it.

And she said, no, there’s no Art, I meant the art department.

I mean, how’m I supposed to know that?  But that’s a question of WHO is Art. Not today’s question, which is: WHAT is art. See?  Weigh in, Reds and readers!

 

 

Serial awards-botherer, Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. A former linguistics professor, she is now a full-time fiction writer and has published: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories about a toff; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about an oik; and contemporary psychothriller standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comic crime capers about a Scot-out-of-water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California sneezedavissneeze.

Catriona is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.  www.catrionamcpherson.com