Atdtda32: One artist for another, 893-895 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

Over the page on 894 Dally will contrast to Fiona Plush as Fiona herself
contrasted, as Arturo explains it, to the rather more conventional AOD. (ie
"... the best you'd expect is a skull ..." etc). Neither Fiona nor Dally are
traditional types. The cemetery is a monument to warfare, "a crazy,
blown-about field of mineral stumps" (893); yet Arturo, it seems, insists on
a different kind of AOD, one "promis[ing] unvoiceably carnal delights"
(894). Feeling vulnerable, Dally previously felt he might be about to
assault her; here, however, his assault is on the traditional in art (if
Dally's pov describes his "perverse intentions", it perhaps reminds us of
Replevin's "all too contemporary"), as well as any individuality his model
might possess (eg "I finally did have to thin her down a bit"). If the AOD
is supposed to be an abstraction, Arturo's version offers recognisable human
identity, if also fetishisation.

Repeating the observation that opened the chapter, Dally has already
insisted that her status as exile relates to Venice, not America (893); yet
her current association with Arturo will lead her to think back to "putting
in a little time as a sculptor's model" in New York (894), where "she could
still be found as The Spirit of Bimetallism" (895), a celebration of
capitalism to match the AOD's celebration of warfare. If the traipse round
cemeteries has imposed Arturo's vision, what follows is resistance on the
part of his new model. In a lengthy passage of reminiscence, Dally thinks of
the other New York models ("What had they been like as girls ..." etc)
before invoking back stories that make of her an author (one perhaps
travelling in Ruperta's footsteps). Her narrative includes "some sculptor
fellow, some smoothie who'd been to France, veteran of artists-and-models
shenanigans"--perhaps what she was expecting when introduced to Arturo.

As a model Dally performs as an actress, "actually read[ing] up on the
abstractions she was instructed to embody". Furthermore, if Arturo has
attempted to fetishise her, in particular her hair, Dally insists on giving
the AOD a mental life: she "[can't] help seeing it from the Angel's point of
view", competing with Arturo as an author of the tableau in question. The
section, then, has gone from her exterior, perhaps somewhat expressionistic,
view of Arturo ("a voluptuous person in a fedora and a velvet suit", with
"the overgrown thumbnails of a sculptor", 893) to her own performance as "a
dynamic athlete, surrendered to a wind only she could feel, mindlessly
orgasmic from its velocity" (895).