buttercream on the wall

art, hunger, and office malaise

The most disturbing of nightmares is the stress dream, specifically one set in the office. When I think about how much time I spend at my desk, so much time that my dreams have molded to the contours of my monitor and rickety keyboard, I fear my deathbed, because I know that when I am on it, I am going to regret having wasted my prime pumping out emails, and I am going to fear that death is only one endless stress dream set in the office – simply because my experience of unconscious being so far has been stress dream after stress dream, set to the tune of noontime revelry from the pub that’s in the same courtyard as the art gallery I work at. Pint glasses shatter against the cobblestones while I’m in a Zoom meeting I’m not meant to speak in.

The girls at the office who really care about their job have made medicine cabinets out of their desk drawers. Throughout the day, sometimes I hear one of them filing their nails, and then I turn around and another one is applying cuticle oil. The rattle of vitamins in a plastic organizer often draws my attention away from the task on my screen. We complain about our headaches a lot, and someone always has a pill to offer, even to the boy who says he only believes in herbal remedies. When he complains of a headache, we have to offer him a pill. But he declines, always. Instead, he objects when the lights are turned on and peppers the fact of his headache into conversation for the rest of the day. And then he’ll opt to work late, like a good little martyr.

We work at an art gallery, and so naturally, we talk about what is good art and what is bad art. I am the only one in the sales team who doesn’t have a degree in art history, so I keep my mouth shut. I don’t know much, and I refuse to pretend to. Through email, I encounter the wealthy people who sculpt the monolith of contemporary art with their purchasing power, a cold blunt chisel that chooses what will end up in textbooks one day. They know more than I do. 

If I had some money and some formal education, I would feel more confident talking about art, but for now, the only metric I have to measure a good work versus a bad work is whether or not it looks delicious. It doesn’t take wealth or a degree to salivate. If I look at a work, and it makes me want to lap it, or gnaw it, or peel it off in ribbons and entangle it with my tongue – it’s good.

There was one day when the sales team was doing a walk-through of the viewing rooms, which are private spaces in an art gallery that salespeople will take select clients into. The other administrators and I were doing this tour just in case our salespeople were busy with one client when another client of theirs arrived, in which case, we would have to give them a tour. One work in the viewing room was a hybrid painting-sculpture; the artist had a lifelong practice of teasing paint into sculptural heights. There is an appetite in the market for this work in particular because it’s all white. Most of his works are in primary colors, and so not only is the white work rare, but it is a color that would look good on any wall, whereas a red, blue, and yellow work would be difficult to fit into many interior design schemes.

To the other staff in the room, the effect of this work brought to mind the question: what is sculpture, exactly?

To me, it brought a rumble to my tummy.

All of that paint stacked on top of each other in thick swirls just looked like buttercream frosting. I am the girl at the birthday party who will take that extra frosting you’ve scraped off of your slice of cake because you think it's “too much” and “too sweet.” I can stomach too much sweetness. Often, I seek it out. 

That was a good work.

Once I saw buttercream on the wall, I started imagining art between my teeth. Frosted glass and shiny ceramics are chewy. Paint can be chewy too, depending on the artist’s hand. Some paint looks like it could melt on your tongue. Sculptures, especially anything spiky or industrial, are like the expensive, gourmet meals that you don't know how to eat, and you feel as if no matter how you eat them, you’re doing it wrong. I’ve seen a work that uses torched rubber, which is obviously a toasted marshmallow. And because the art must not be touched, it appears all the more succulent. It's all forbidden fruit. 

When referring to a singular piece of art, we call it a “work,” rather than a “piece.”  I like this terminology, because it implies that the artist’s blood, sweat, and tears have gone into making this object, but it also makes me jealous, because while their work is gold gilding and glazing and meditative repetitive mark-marking, mine is editing PDFs. And raising invoices. And answering emails with Will do! and Could you kindly and Shall I and Please see attached and Should you have any questions, please let me know. All day long, I’m getting things done, but never accomplishing anything. The act of following-up on an email is called “chasing.” Half of my day is chasing colleagues for information because someone else is chasing me for it. We’re all chasing each other in the belly of the Outlook ouroboros. 

The culture of my office discourages a lunch break, but I insist on taking at least twenty minutes outside of the office every day. If I don't, I’ll suffer a mini burnout at three p.m. I’ll probably get a headache and have to ask someone for a paracetamol, which would be embarrassing because I should have my own stashed somewhere in my desk, but I don't. 

After this twenty minute break, I come back to the office and the room is heady with the collective smell of everyone’s lunch: chocolate biscuits mixed with the bolognese from Fortnum & Mason, leftovers microwaved in plastic, pad Thai delivered to the gallery door. Underneath soup, there lies the smell of Nespresso coffee and hot oat milk. Earl grey tea and pesto. They all eat at their desk, shoveling it in as they click around their computers. The smell is oppressive. I find it foul. There is no air flow in the office, so I don't think the smell ever goes away. I think I just get used to it. 

Maybe that lingering smell of lunch is what's making me so hungry that whenever I look at a work of art, I want something sweet, something chewy, something with an expensive mouthfeel. It's like a hallucinogenic vapor that makes me want to bite into burnt rubber and glass. I eat a homemade salad every day for lunch, but not even that amount of raw fiber can keep me full. I crave something else; I want to eat what I cannot have.