Artforum by César Aira

Hey, César! Absorbed in reading the latest issue of Artforum?

Artforum - international magazine of contemporary art headquartered in New York City.

Artforum – quirky 80-page novel featuring a narrator sharing much in common with author César Aira: he’s a writer who lives in Buenos Aires, in an apartment on the second floor; every morning he bikes to a café, orders espresso and writes in his notebook for an hour (but never more than an hour); he spent his boyhood in the provincial town in Pringles; he can occasionally become a tad obsessive over an object or idea.

Artforum is playful, philosophical and very funny. I read and reread sections for the sheer delight of it. I chuckled, I chortled and occasionally laughed out loud. If you haven’t read any of the Argentine author’s short novels (nearly all under 100 pages), I encourage you to pick up Artforum. If you are like many readers of literary fiction, you’ll become an instant fan and yearn for more. Fortunately, 16 other books by César Aira are available in English from New Directions.

Artforum begins with a stroke of the miraculous: upon waking one rainy morning, César (yes, I’ll call the unnamed narrator César) races around his apartment closing windows since he knows what damage rain can inflict. Sure enough, it appears rain soaked his stack of precious magazines on the glass table by the window. But wait – what’s this? To César’s dismay, there’s a sphere the size of a soccer ball sitting on top of his magazines. César can see the soaking wet ball is none other than a copy of Artforum, the one with a work of artist Robert Mangold on the cover, the very magazine he cherishes above all others.

Upon closer inspection, as impossible as it might seem, this Artforum magazine now turned soaking wet ball performed a sacrificial act: it absorbed every drop of rain so the other magazines beneath could remain perfectly dry. “Useless and unreadable, I loved it more than ever. I asked myself a strange question, justified only by the strangeness of the situation: did it love me?”

César knows very well his posing this question of an object being capable of loving him encapsulates the entire history of animism - in other words, perhaps the beliefs of indigenous peoples are right and our modern world is wrong, objects like his Artforum soccer ball are, in fact, capable of thought and emotion, they can direct their love and compassion to someone like himself.

Such a question, César! - a question leading to further inquiries that, in turn, propel you to initiate a monumental change in your life, an absolute first: to set up, via computer and credit card, a subscription whereby you'll receive the monthly edition of not just any magazine but your very own copy, mailed to you directly, of your beloved Artforum. Both astounding and positively life-altering.

Thus we're off, joining César on his adventures revolving around his relationship with Artforum, adventures wherein César ponders a gaggle of philosophic questions, among their number, the following trio:

Economic Realities - When a lad back in Pringles, his dad always impressed on young César how everything in life is connected to everything else. César reflects on this truism when sitting in his armchair, copy of Artforum in hand, and his eye catches sight of the price of the magazine in the upper left corner: ten dollars. What would ten dollars mean to a beggar? "The amount of money that for the beggar meant appeasing his hunger, for me gratified an idle whim, the snobbism of an armchair connoisseur."

This line of reckoning leads César to consider larger economic issues: those people who must do without so he can easily afford his much loved Artforum; the value of an Argentine peso compared to an American dollar; the trust necessary for the entire system to run smoothly (for example, he must trust all the many people in the post office who set hands on his copy of Artforum will not steal it).

In his essay on César Aira, critic Kamil Ahsan asks us to consider the author's short novels as more than simply bizarre, creative bursts of a fertile imagination within the spirit of avant-garde. Rather, on closer inspection, César Aira continues the tradition of so much Latin American literature in its scalding indictment of a global system further empowering the rich at the expense of the poor. After reading Artforum, I can see Kamil Ahsan's point.

Waiting for Godot, César style – Now that he’s one of the magazine’s bona fide subscribers, he, César, is entitled to a post office delivered copy scheduled to arrive within the first two weeks of every month. César acknowledges any reasonable person would simply wait patiently but, and this is a supersized but, patience and reasonableness are not counted among César’s virtues. “I waited with fury, day after day, and within each day, hour after hour.”

 However, it only takes César a few months to detect a predictable pattern: on the morning a young couple come to clean his apartment building - wash the sidewalk and stairwell, wax the foyer and landings - turns out to be the very day his mail carrier delivers Artforum. Pondering this striking connection, César surmises “the building had to be pristine in order for the Artforum to deign to disembark therein.”

César’s wife accuses him of mocking the supernatural but César maintains his thinking is not that farfetched since, taken several steps further, “a solid and coherent system of superstitions is a religion, and an entire civilization can be built from there.” Perhaps not so coincidently, the reasoning of narrator César dovetails with the following statement made by author César during an interview: “I remember a phrase by Borges: there are no absurd ideas that have not been written at some point by a philosopher. And I add: if the idea was too absurd even for a philosopher, it must have come from a theologian.”

The Clothespins - Given an everyday occurrence, the thoughts you will think. While performing a round of household chores, a stroke of bad luck - a broken clothespin. César takes this setback as occasion to launch into a meditation on the very nature of form in our lives. César remembers the enormous clothespin of Claes Oldenberg and muses that surely human ingenuity can find ways to solve our issues with form. "And in the worst-case scenario, we would be left in a world without forms - maybe it was better that way. Maybe we have lived as prisoners of something that in reality we don't need."

Again, the above are only three of the many topics considered by César as he rambles and shambles through Buenos Aires, issue of Artforum at the ready. Pick up your copy of Artforum, the novel, and join him.


Public Art in Philadelphia - Clothepin by Claes Oldenburg