CREATIVE WRITING
F I C T I O N Tension Harry Goodwin (Year 12)
T he Ayatollah Khomeini did not look impressed. As Michel Foucault hacked away at the air between them with the sides of his hands, he stared rigidly at – or rather through – the French philosopher. Maybe he wasn’t even listening to whatever it was Foucault was maundering on about. There was a kind of tension in his face, in his arms, in his posture – perhaps indicating boredom, or murderousness. Foucault was, of course, oblivious. He was enjoying himself: being in Iran, being a part of history, being listened to by mystics and revolutionaries. He wasn’t even looking at Khomeini. Instead, he sat perched on the edge of his leather armchair glaring delightedly at his own fingers. They were huge, pale, spidery things. On the mahogany coffee table between the two men rested all of Foucault’s books published to date, a Qur’an, and a roast suckling pig on a gold platter. Sonia thought Death to America, October 1978 was one of the better paintings in the Syracuse series. There was real characterisation there: the agreeable emptiness of Foucault juxtaposed against the ruthlessness of his beloved Ayatollah. Yes, the roast piglet was a little obvious, but it would make the viewer spend a bit more time on the work, it would make them really pay attention. Given how much people still idolised Foucault, it would certainly be one of the more spoken-about pieces in her exhibition. It would contrast nicely with the European cityscapes, Brussels, 2015 and Bradford, 2016.
Sonia began to cry, aghast at herself. She stood there, right in the middle of the soon-to-be-opened Tate Modern blockbuster Sonia Benedict: Maverick Painter , and wept her heart out with her blouse hugging her shoulders and her silky hair bobbing up and down. Was this what she had come to – shock art, propaganda? Was this the culmination of all her reading and thinking and endless, endless canvas hours? She wanted to… she wanted to stride up to Death to America, October 1978 and punch a hole in Foucault’s face. Now, that would be shock art. She giggled tautly at her own unuttered joke. Yes, Sonia Benedict, Alone was one of the twenty-first century’s finest self-portraits. Though Benedict refused to speak about it or any of her paintings in public, her Indonesian biographer interpreted it not as a rejection of her early, ‘political’ work as was commonly asserted, but as a timeless depiction of the way tension manifests itself in the human condition. Here, there was strain between Sonia Benedict, the controversy-seeking artist-of-ideas, and Sonia Benedict, a lonely young woman. There was strain between amusement and misery on her pallid face. And there was strain between this sad girl, six years out of university, and the great art she had created. This was before the drugs and the dating apps. The Indonesian biographer, an earnest young man by the name of Kenneth Nistiyana who would, towards the end of his life, write and publish bad poetry,
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