Fear and Self Loathing in NYC

I’m in New York at a TV Promotion and Marketing Conference and awards. Three feet in front of me is the legendary artist Ralph Steadman clutching my mobile phone looking for a hammer. Three feet behind me, 2000 or so people are staring. At me. Bewildered. And I’m embarrassed. Very embarrassed.

This is not one of those dreams and I’m not naked. Nudity could not strip me of any more dignity.

It wasn’t always like this. A short while ago the room was enchanted. Ralph described moments from his career; told stories and showed personal photos of his close friend Hunter S Thompson; took us through the length and breadth of his work, the good and the bad. Some of it was garbled and incomprehensible but we didn’t care – we were laughing and being inspired. This was Ralph Steadman and he deserved our respect.

He walked onto the stage and his opening gambit was to pull out an Iphone, mutter something about it befuddling him and asking the packed crowd whether he should take an axe end of hammer to it. YES we all hollered, thrilled and excited. Yes Ralph, do it. A hammer was duly brought out and over a piece of wood he skewered the phone to the stump in a shower of tungsten lit lcd crystals. It was magnificent.

Next he projected a picture he had done of Marcel Duchamp and filmmaker Bunuel onto the giant screen and spoke of their influences on him and his book Doodaaa ( a play on Dada). And it was probably about here that it all started to go wrong with me.

‘Ralph likes Duchamp?’ I must have said to myself. ‘I like Duchamp! ‘No, I love Duchamp. Ralph and I are connected. Ralph and I are friends,’ I must have reasoned. I see so easily now how stalkers are born. My eyes drifted to the recently impacted iphone. It reminded me of Ralph’s ‘teacher hammers’ in Pink Floyd’s The Wall. A film, as a kid, I had had a bit part in. See! Ralph and I are connected, Ralph and I are friends.

In that instance I realised how beautiful that phone was. It wasn’t just a broken gadget. It was Dadaism. It was art and I had to have it. I played the scenario through my head. There was bound to be Q&A at the end. I would bound boldly up to the mic, express my in depth Dadaist knowledge and demand the phone. Flattered, Ralph would gladly hand it over, hammer and all - the audience would applause, albeit jealously that they didn’t think of it, and I’d return to my seat with a small piece of art history in my hand.

It didn’t quite go that way.

Ralph was running over and the conference President, Jonathan Block-Verk was duly dispatched to usher him off the stage. Regardless, Ralph called for questions and I dashed to the mic, doubtlessly pushing a few genuine questioners out of the way.

“Ralph, my name’s James” see we’re on first name terms now, “ In the spirit of Dadaism can I take the mobile and I promise to frame it and put it on display?”

So far so good. Ralph seemed down with it and the audience admired my chutzpah. Quick as a flash and with unequivocal determination, president Block-Verk stepped in, “No, I’m putting it in my office,” he said.

He didn’t say – “We’re keeping it in the archives,” or “ We’re auctioning it for Charity.” Oh no. Vert was putting it in his office. I knew, he knew, the crowd and probably even Ralph knew 6 hours later we’d see it on Ebay. I was humiliated and you could hear the audience turn.

“How about,” suggested Ralph, “I do it to your Iphone.” The audience turned again. Will he have the courage of his convictions or wimp out? I was cornered. I handed over my phone, albeit a dated one. What the hell, the insurance company will understand right?

All that was needed was another hammer. And there wasn’t another hammer. “I’ve got a mic,” suggested a stage hand but we all knew a microphone and a Nokia does not great art make. By which point time had passed, we’re all looking like lemons and the joke had lost what little zing it had left. The audience had turned for the final time, clearly not in my favour.

“I’m here in NY all week, come find me,” said Ralph and I was sent back to my seat as a lot of eyes averted there gaze.

Three hours later I was back on the same stage collecting an award for a short film. I resisted the taking-a-hammer-to-the-award gag, said my thank yous and got the hell off the stage, much to the audience’s relief.

“What would you have done with phone?” someone asked me as I sat back down.

Probably put it in my office I concluded.

The Astronomer of Dizzying Caresses

I went back to the 'Duchamp Man Ray Picabia' exhibition at the Tate today. Actually, 'went back' masks the obsessive truth - it was my fourth time - and I'm acutely aware how mildly compulsive that is. To claim I wrote a thesis on Marcel Duchamp some years ago is probably a pathetic excuse. To make sense of it, the first three times I was stalking my prey, this time I went with a determined and somewhat deluded purpose.

It goes like this, bear with me.

Two years ago my roof started to cave in. There's nothing metaphorical in that, my roof did honestly start to cave in and I was now playing begrudging flat mate to a party of tuneless pigeons and tap dancing squirrels squatting in my attic. A succession of pest control and builders tramped through my house and in the midst of all the poison, bird traps and scaffolding I saw my Dadaist opportunity.

The Dadaists were the original punk rockers, sticking two fingers up at the predictable art salons of Europe and the prevailing fashions of the early twentieth century. To them it was not about technical artistry, aesthetic flicks of oil paint or pandering to those that financially herded the sheep. Duchamp and friends challenged the notion that art had to sit on canvas or marble; they moonied at the censors without them realising it; they laid bare the hypocrisy and joylessness of a world between two wars. And they were the first that dared to do it, long before Warhol, Pistols, Hurst or Banksy made it into an honest living.

And therein lay my chance. Artistic mischief has now become an honest wage and a fairly lucrative industry to a sizable digital audience. It's too easy to rebel and make a buck, but so rare to see it merely for the pleasure of an anarchic giggle.

So as the workmen up on the roof hacked slate back into place I hit upon an idea. We've all looked up the tops of our homes on Goggle Earth and a friend had told me that they refreshed the urban aerial pictures every three years. Over a cup of tea I asked the workmen to fulfill my Dadaist moment. Once the work was complete, in thick white paint would they write across my roof:

"FUCK OFF GOOGLE EARTH."

Not as subtle as Duchamp might have liked it, I grant you, but mischievous nevertheless. Keen to end the conversation quickly, they agreed and I hoped to bide my time chuckling until Google took a new photo.

Six months of British weather later and the statement was gone. Washed and battered away. My small tribute to Duchamp had failed.

Back at The Tate exhibition I searched for a way to revive my cause. Now the obvious thing to do would be to piss in Duchamp's 'Fountain' - a porcelain urinal that he displayed in 1917 to declare that anything could be art if the artist affords it that tribute. However I discovered that musician Brian Eno had beaten me to it in 1995 and if I was being honest I wasn't actually that brave. I didn't want to be called the bloke that wee wee'd on Duchamp. Moreover the Dadaists would have prefered something a little more, well, understated.

Like any gallery, beside each exhibit there is lettraset describing each work and the medium in which it was made. If you look closely on some you'll notice letters are missing - neatly scratched out. It couldn't have been easy to do and hard to mask from the guards in each room. Find them all, and they spell something. It's something understated, but extremely clear.

Go take a look. It's on until 26th May.