Robert Cremean: Avaritia/Greed from STUDIO SECTION 2005-2007, The Seven Deadly Sins and Three Diptychs from The Winter Notebooks

2005-2007

80" x48"

Colored pencil, modeling paste on wood panel

 

Below is a transcription of the handwritten words of AVARITIA:

 

I live in contradiction, wanting that which I have not and disdaining that which I have. And the more I have, the less I am. I am emaciated by it, my being a sieve of endless mindless acquisition. My desire scans the horizon; my gaze, monocular I want...I want.... More is my credo. I am crucified by it. Nothing escapes my need. My grasp is amputated by hunger, cannibalized by greed. Was it always so? Even my memory cannot retain substance. I live only in the future dreaming of acquisitions I cannot digest. I am a mouth and an anus. Nothing lies between. Nothing fills me. Nothing sustains me save my desire for more. I starve and am tormented by it, a constant unremitting starvation. I am Avaritia, the gnashing tearing teeth of Gula. What I devour retains in an ever-expanding sack of artifice and accumulation a bottomless compaction of absurdity and repetition. My taste never varies. I am mankind in all his arrogant predictability. What I want I take, preferably by force. It is force that adds zest to the taking. The screams and pleading of mothers as I rape their sons and daughters, the screams and pleading of children as I rape their fathers and mothers, the belching silence that follows the ravaging momentary sating of appetite...and the desire for more. I am consumed by hunger. There is no bottom to it, no accumulation. I sustain Gula’s girth and he sustains my hunger. We are symbiotic functionaries of Acedia’s dreamless sleep. It is not I, Avaritia, who determines the menu. It is Acedia. By his otiose reliance on dogma, the menu is war. I simply devour the fare and prepare the order of repetition. The layering is a natural consequence of our triangulated symbiosis. Gula, Acedia, and I, Avaritia, are the triad of mankind’s entelechy. As we support each other so, too, are we supported by Sloth. No, not supported, elevated. It is Acedia, in all his slothful ignorance, who supports us all. His strength is magnificent; his power, absolute. Throughout the layering generations, the increasing weight of Gula and my undiminished hunger have affected no interruption of Acedia’s sleep. Dreamless, he sleeps on. War upon war, atrocity upon atrocity, century upon century, he sleeps on, complaisant in his majority. Reified by indifference, lulled by the lamentations of innocence, he sleeps on. And what of innocence? For me, Avaritia, it is the path untaken. Inedible, ungraspable, unpalatable. I ignore its possibility, its existence, its toxicity. It is a parallel entree on a menu that would destroy me. War is my menu, only that. It tempts my appetite, satisfies my need...but I am intrigued. Gula stores my pillage and within him lies evidence of my enemy. In my avarice, I have eaten and, through Gula, consumed that which would awaken Acedia. Art. Within the gut of Gula lies the death of sloth. Within the husk of artifact and object, I have devoured that which would wake Acedia from his dreamless sleep and erase his dominance, destroy his protectorate, and decimate his dominion. My ravishing hunger lays vulnerable our triad of complicity. The leaded weight of Acedia’s lids precludes the threat of epiphanic insurrection. But personal enlightenment within the congregation cannot be curtailed. I tear and snatch and gobble and within this catholicity of consumption all tidbits are desirable. I leave it to Gula to cope with matters of digestion. His layered weighting can contain my all. Acedia’s sleep will not be compromised by my lack of perspicuity. Though Art eludes y acquisition through mask and perception, my metaphors prevent insurrection. Our triad is assured. Epiphany is serendipitous and quixotic. The congregation will enter oblivion unenlightened. Within the swelling waste of Gula, objects will remain objects and artifacts will remain artifacts and Art remains eternally chimeric and suspect. History contains us all and finally history itself will be the final artifact to enter oblivion. Gula’s expanding dependence will cease and Acedia’s ancient slumber will be smothered in ashes. My hunger, finally my hunger, will cease and the earth will be delivered unto chaos, cleansing, renewing possibility. Although war, pure and simple killing and pillaging, is my major fare, Acedia’s otiosity requires of me also more subtle, less stringent acquisition. Religion in all its fervor and fanaticism affords me great license to gratify my hunger in a disciplined and leisurely fashion. Consider the Inquisition: what a delightful and titillating repast and how fulfilling the gut of Gula! From Augustine to Napoleon, my feast was laid; fifteen hundred years of rapine and piety. I yearn for repeat. Throughout the reigns of the Innocents my hunger was blessed. Religion and greed were exquisitely coupled with the cowardice and cravenness of the multitude. Lands were taken and borders reframed, wealth rechanneled, names renamed. Generations were shorn of their selfness and the blessed of the blest were blessed. Man’s viability was cast in the crucible of the chasuble. Fire was the purifier and catalyst of his reformation; the stake his armature, ashes his reclamation. To the delight of Gula and me, Avaritia, for fifteen hundred years the mundane menu of war was enhanced by the verve and spectacular condiments of the Inquisition We long for repeat. Torquemada was one of Acedia’s most dedicated disciples. Not guilty he, the sin of avarice. He delivered unto Gula directly, in circumvention of me, Avaritia, the feast of souls. How envious I was of his delicacy and elegant perspicuity...and how advantageous to my rapacious opportunistic appetite. Hypocrisy flourished and so, too, the gut of Gula with the spoils of apostasy. What an artist he was! His attention to detail was phenomenal, his eye accurate and astute...and his mind an absolute treasure house of fanatical dedication For Avaritia, this icon of Acedia is deserving of all past and present celebrity and fame. His purity of purpose and servitude to doctrine and dogma sweetened the gut of Gula with piety and perseverance... No, I was not without envy. The power of Acedia controls us all. It is odd that sloth, the greatest sin, should be viewed so lightly...nay, even praised...nay, admired, even required of great leaders and pooh-bahs. Sloth is the brain of faith and it is sloth that weights the gaseous sack of Gula. Layer upon layer, generation upon generation, it is Acedia that defines the depth and breadth of gluttony. And so I grasp and grab and snap and snarl and stuff the gut of Gula. Without Acedia’s sleeping benediction, my purpose is primitive, unkempt, unworthy of civilized mores and methods, unworthy of Gula’s layering storage, unworthy of history. Acedia defines me, gives virtue to war and taking, pilfering and plundering, rapine and rape. He is my master and benefactor, the lord of lords. Without Acedia, there is Nothingness, Truth, and Chaos, a state of intrepid singularity, a shunning of our symbiotic triad, a denial of accretion. Truth is the opposite of Acedia. It is life with mind wide open. Sloth is its enemy. I cannot protect Acedia; I can only make profitable his dreamless sleep. Through repeat, through the distending gut of Gula, illusion is supported by the life or death actualism of Avaritia. This I am. Actuality is what I do. Entropy is my heart sand entropy is my enemy. Change is my purpose and exchange is my reality. I shade my eyes in shame and duplicity. Only Gula’s layering distension defines my purpose. Am I real? If Acedia wakes, am I real? I am proclaimed to be a sin but this is, of course, hypocrisy. Those very ones who name me, defame me, are me. Torquemada, with all his unquestionable piety and capacious forgiveness, was the greediest of them all. By avoiding me, he became me in his cannibalization of souls. Is this not hypocrisy? Acedia’s sleep is hypocrisy. Gluttony and Greed are hypocrisy. All that pretends to be other than what it is is hypocrisy. I layer Gula’s gut simply because it takes time to eat. If he would digest rather than retain, there would be no history, no layering of repeat, no past, no future, only the abiding moment. Enough of hypocrisy. I am avoiding that which breaks my teeth, that which I cannot consume, that which bypasses greed and delights the glut of Gula. All of my ways and horrific plundering cannot compete with the noisome plundering of Acedia’s sleep. The layering repeat from father to son to father to son which blankets the nurturing bed of dreamless sleep is sloth’s magnificence. Spotlessly sterile in immutable rhetoric, its moted lullabies scale the weighted lids of the true believer with Acedia’s slumber. Beneath this pall all thievery swims unnoticed. My admiration for the reigns of the Innocents, and especially in Torquemada’s Spain, is unbounded. Ordered, righteous, relentless, the acquisition of property, lives and souls was delivered unto Gula without messiness or mayhem. Neatly layered strata generation upon generation, how I envied this richness of Acedia’s sleep. How bloodless! How civilized! How beneficent! I take by force, Acedia consumes by forgiveness, purification and mercy. What finesse! What artistry! Nothing disturbs Acedia’s sleep... It is the fire that moves me to tears of envy. To illustrate the everlasting agony of the everlasting soul by stealing the life of the temporary body through merciful purification is sublime theater, unmitigated sloth, immaculate conception. How brilliant were the Innocents in their slumber. How dedicated Torquemada in his acquisition of souls. I was little more than a jackal on the fringes of so elegant a feast. Gula’s gut boiled with titillation. And the fear... I could taste it though my avarice was relegated to the stealing of goods and boundaries, neither esoteric nor engaging, the usual pedestrian fare of Avaritia. How I pitied Acedia. In his dreamless slumber he knew not that which I envied him most. Three hundred generations of pious sloth...and still he reigns, and still he fills, or attempts to fill, the layering gut of Gula. What a waste! What blind tasteless consumption! All that delicious fear, agony and toasting roasting purification of souls. All the tidy prissy assumptions of immortality and afterlife, clean bibs for a tasteless feast over-cooked in the icy flames of rhetoric and retribution What waste! Acedia eats and offers unto Gula only the layered ashes of dreamless sleep. Of all the seven deadly sins, it is I, Avaritia, who exceeds the limitations of personality. Luxuria, Invidia, Ira, Superbia, Gula, Acedia—none of these touch my universality. I am everywhere, in everything, in every thing living and everything not living. I am entropy, the equalizer of all things. I am the supreme power and processor, I am that which Acedia calls God. Only sloth would trivialize my magnitude. Only ignorance seeks my containment. All that devours is Avaritia, from the advancing glacier to the warming temperature that eats its flow, from an expanding universe to a universe of compaction. Gula’s gut is layered only with mankind’s recordation, man’s view of things, man’s wishes and wants and anthropomorphisms. He has named Avaritia a sin and Avaritia is a god. Such is his paradox. He sees himself in all things and measures all things according to his reflection. Even time, which he cannot grasp, he measures according to his own dimension; even time which he has invented and ascribes to all things living and all things not living, he ascribes to his own magnitude. And this, too, is Avaritia. This, too, is greed and pride and gluttony. And above all, this is sloth. I marvel at my capacity for exchange, to move things here and place things there. I marvel at how quickly the way it was becomes the way it is, how lakes become mountains and mountains become lakes. I marvel at how men become monsters and monsters become saints. I marvel at how the way it is becomes the way it was, how all I eat becomes Gula’s gut, how I retain nothing, not even shit. I am everywhere, in everything. Immensurable by time or virtue. I simply am, with or without comprehension. Acedia considers me a sin yet flourishes in hypocrisy. What could be more greedy than acquisition by sloth? Torquemada, once acclaimed, is now defamed. An entire continent was delivered unto Spain for his pious persecutions, but now Spain has lost its continent and Torquemada has lost his soul. What is, was and what was is yet to be. Torquemada is one of my more delectable tidbits. I relish him whenever and wherever he appears. He is a repeat that even Gula savors in his gluttonous accumulation, a welcome reprise from common war and hackneyed suffering. How greatly I admire dedication, passion, piety, fanaticism. To gnash and chew and cannibalize with abandon, willy-nilly, helter-skelter in the throes of Acedia’s sleep is greed’s brightest accomplishment. To be feared and revered as Torquemada was feared and revered as the flames ripped souls from the heretics and heathen made me salivate with envy. The cheering applause was deafening, sinking drowsing Acedia deeper into sleep while I, Avaritia, licked and lapped the bourn. While he diverted, I cavorted picking pockets, rapping babies, and stealing continents. The screams of war in harmony with smaller choruses and soaring solos of agony and beseechment fill the world of men with the sweet songs of entelechy. How secure they are in their conviction, in their slumber. How peaceful the sleep of Acedia. How fulfilling the man of Avaritia. How distending the gut of Gula. With full orchestration, I sound the hymns of men. Turgid, bombastic, filled with canon and falderal. In the time of Torquemada, how sweet it was to hear the limpid strains of the dispossessed and dying flung high above the baseline of war. The Sturm und Drang of repeat so heavy and purpled by repetition was lightened by the lilting refrain of the Inquisition Though i prospered, I did not create those scorching lyrics of flaming tones. No, those came directly from the otiose sleep of Acedia. How perfectly made he was to satisfy my needs. Pure, chaste, sinless, he pursued his dedication with charity and mercy. His belief in the beyondness was unblemished by doubt. He wanted nothing, expected nothing on this earth. That, he left for me, Avaritia, to pursue. His appetite was for humbler fare asking only the gift of everlasting life. Imagine! He dedicated his earthly life to the purification of souls so that he might live among them in life everlasting. I weep with envy and gratitude for Acedia’s slothful complicity. In his slumber all theft is possible. There is no need for contrition, apology, or remorse. If not for the frothy fare of the likes of Torquemada, Gula’s gut would be leaded weight indeed. My appetite is implacable. I consume without metaphor or morality. I retain nothing. I remember nothing. I am process, universal and omnipresent. I am that which Is. Locked in acedian slumber, man’s nature cannot accept my Isness, his temporality, my constancy. He fears not my capacity for change but rather my intention to exchange, for this he cannot accept...to be replaced. And so he sleeps. Acedia sleeps. And so I eat, layering the gut of Gula with the shit of repetition. My time will come. An exchange will be made, for it is, of course, in process. History is a petty thing. Obese Gula, so ponderous and puffed up with authenticity and self-belief. How heavy he hangs while I, Avaritia, stuff his gut with repetition. I exist freely without Gula. Gula is merely the artificial and momentary recordation of mankind’s fear of exchange. Through repeat and the recordation of repeat, man strives to exist, to retain his control, his reality and his immortality. Through Gula and Acedia, he seeks to survive. But he will not survive. He will be exchanged. He, too, will be exchanged. The silence will envelop man and he, with all his metaphors, will be silenced. He, too, will be silenced. Will my menu serve no future? Will greed cease and avarice dispossess? And what of Gula? If Acedia wakes, exchange will occur. Does man fear this more than the silence, more than extinction? Comatose, in Acedia’s slumber, does he comprehend the difference? Does he care? In truth, I am sick of it all. I am sick of the same fare over and over again. Man is no longer my witness. He refuses my magnitude and compresses my appetite. He has become provincial and depressing in his mediocrity and sloth. (I do not demean or insult Acedia. He has served man’s petty greed with pious sleep and religious devotion but I would exert my full significance.) Unlike Acedia, I am capable of dreaming. I require neither Acedia nor Gula to assist me. I am a force. I do not sleep. I do not accumulate. Time means nothing to me for I do not mark beginnings or endings. I simply am. I do not seek change for the sake of layering. I exchange to create silence. I have no taste for Torquemadas and tortured history. I dream of something other. Anything other. Anything at all. I hunger now for the end of endings, for the end of answers and rotted strictures. I want man gone, his vile and odious stench, his petty pillaging and pilfering. I gag now on repetition. I long for chaos, to have my hunger writ large in a menu of infinite choices. I would exchange him for less boring fare. My jaws are weary of repetition, wary of gnawing repeat. Mankind embraces Acedia and proclaims me God, a tautology of infinite redundancy...8/6/45. He dies in dreamless sleep.

 

Collection:

Crocker Art Museum

Sacramento, California

Done