The Committee Room

Artie brought this one in on a Tuesday, which concerned me, because Tuesday is the day he does his thinking, and the drawings that arrive on Tuesdays tend to arrive alone. No caption. No note. Just two goldfish, regarding each other across four inches of municipal water, and Artie in my doorway saying it stands on its own, which is what he says when he hasn’t written anything.

For six weeks it hung in the back room uncaptioned. Visitors assumed it was finished. The junior member proposed that it was a portrait of the Committee itself, and was asked to withdraw the remark, and did, and then wrote it down. Artie, consulted by telephone, insisted on two points: first, that the fish are not the same fish, which no one had suggested; second, that whichever caption we certified, it should be, quote, true for about eight seconds, which is the only editorial guidance he has issued this fiscal year.

The chair has therefore opened the file to a slate of four readings, printed below. Deliberations begin when the room empties. The Gallery is invited to mark a ballot on the way out; ballots are advisory and non-binding, and will be disregarded with the full weight of the Committee’s attention. —Ed.