In Art, Mystery, a controversial former footballer, now export agent
specializing in chrome, accepts an unusual commission from an odd
source, the very man who brought him down, a former football referee
turned art handler -- to find and export a pornographic work of
Renaissance art. Art, Mystery utilizes the style of crime noir as a
delivery system for its high-spirited satire of modern life, catching
the gallery scene, footloose Euro-trash, art criticism, the very rich
and middle-aged white ennui in its net while hardly pausing for breath.
Tersely delivered, with a dry sense of the ridiculous, Art Mystery
calmly regards the commodification of aesthetics and their subsequent
price-tags as a necessary evil, a machine under which the bodies of his
protagonists are rolled. The inclusion of Tile's Antonio Polliauolo
files, quoting extensively from E.L. Gombritch's popular study, The
Story of Art, provide the raw data of aesthetic value, while providing
a framework with which to regard it whimsically. This, along with Tile's
drunken deep-dive into scholarly discourse with Dr. Harmoni, give us a
sense of the arcana driving the capitalist lust without breaking
Thompson's headlong stride or his ability to send up human interplay and
its twisted use of language. Perlat Tile, Pablo Pablon, Ms. Jasmine,
Naj, Dr. Enver Harmoni and the rest of the characters of Art, Mystery
are sketched definitively, but with an eye on their ambiguous,
unknowable depths - the darkness of which only emerges once in a rare
while. The rest of the time, Thompson's deft strokes tell us what we
need to know as the stakes multiply. Art, Mystery is a strikingly
breezy read and a delightful introduction to the literary voice of Mayo
Thompson.
