Those who say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder never saw the work of Jean Henri. From the boring and the bullshitting to the crazed and the damned, there was scarcely a soul that could gaze upon his art and not find something with which to inflame it. Some received comfort, others joy, still more rage or regret or sorrow, but emotional enrapture was always inevitable. Henri pieces, though evoking cacophonous feelings, were uniform in their supreme capability to captivate. Postmodernity had been conquered, flayed, and funneled by a creator whose like hadn’t been seen since the days of Adam.
From on high in his Brooklyn tower, Jean lived with his head in the clouds. Thin of frame but thick of lust, he awoke amongst the acolytes he’d privileged to lie the night, and emerged from his poly pile to light his first Galluoise. Spitting smoke out his mouth, he stared into the gray beyond, his view foggy but his vision vibrant and alive. Today he'd dabble with landscapes and explore Thoreauvianism. “Eleni!” he called, signaling to his favorite muse, a Greek spitfire whose embers ran nearly as hot as his own. “Bread, paper!”
“Prick!” she snapped back, sitting herself up and staggering into the kitchen, dutifully returning with a plate of baguettes and butter but wearing vinegar on her face. Leaning in to give her a kiss as she looked on and away, Jean noticed the news was absent. “Where’s the Times?” he asked, nibbling on his loaf just enough to satiate his stomach but keep his body hungry and mind sharp. “Has it not come?”
“Not come,” Eleni said, combing her hair and looking at herself in the void of the mirror.
Jean groaned. “Tell Abbas to fetch it.”
“He can’t,” she replied. “Still out.”
“Klara, then.”
“The same,” she said, annoyance radiating from her voice.
Jean’s ire rose with hers. “Fuck, then you go get it.”
Her composure, already shaky, broke. “No. Get it your fucking self.”
“Bitch!” Jean threw his hands up in the air. She wasn’t as deferential as the others, but demurity was so banal. “Making me go out so ghastly,” he carped, putting on a black hood and sunglasses to avoid being mobbed or robbed and leaving his loft’s sanctity. He descended the elevator and darted across the street, the doorman recognizing him but no one else. Handing the bodega boy three Sacagaweas, he rushed home, shooting Eleni a look as he sat and turned to the arts section. His eyes sharpened further when they glanced the headline – “HENRI ART DEBUTS AT MOMA.”
What the fuck? He hadn’t signed off on that. Jean was floored, muttering curses and inner monologuing. Transcendentalism would have to wait, this transgression demanded immediate attention. He grabbed the phone and rang Ted Dawson, the museum’s director. Like most, he answered immediately.
“Mr. Henri, it's a pleasure to hear from you,” he wheezed with the requisite reverence. I’m sorry to have missed you last month at the Gala, you know Susan, well, you know, she was –”
Jean cut him off. “Quit your shit. I saw the paper.”
“I beg your pardon?” responded Dawson.
“You think that you can showcase my creations without my express clearance?”
He heard an audible sigh across the wire. “Sir, I believe you are mistaken.”
“You’d better hope my solicitors think so,” Jean retorted.
“Sir, sir, it is not your art, Henri art,” the curator pleaded. “But HENRI art, H-E-N-R-I, capitalized and bolded.”
“What’s the fucking difference?”
“Er, well you, Mr. Henri, are, are, a man, and er, HENRI is, is, a machine.”
“A robot?” Jean let the breath out his mouth and tried to stop taking the air out of Dawson’s. “A robot that paints?”
“An AI. An AI, sir. An AI that generates.”
“Generates?” Jean asked, confused and cracking a quarter-smile.
“Yes, yes, that’s right. HENRI is a MoMA-created application trained on complex algorithmic protocols to receive aesthetic input and produce artistic output.
Jean’s eyebrows raised and the corner of his mouth went sideways. “So you give it a prompt, and it paints a picture?”
“Precisely, sir.”
“And why does it have my name?”
“The board voted and landed on it. We find it both charming and comforting.”
Jean frowned. “That’s my likeness, you know… I can still sue you.”
“With all due respect, sir, there are many other Henris… Henri Mattisse, Henri Rousseau…”
“Oh, don’t make me laugh,” Jean chuckled, rolling his eyes. “Have fun with your little toy.”
He hung up the phone and slouched back in his recliner. Did MoMA go broke, he wondered, and simply decide to produce its own art rather than acquire further collections? It didn’t make any sense. How could a machine create beauty from its cold binary? It was a gimmick. A facade. Any work would be a hollow facsimile, bereft of visual pleasure or any observable purpose. He predicted it would be a failed fad that’d fade away, its progenitors embarrassed but rendered too irrelevant for that to even be a worthwhile emotion.
He was wrong on all counts. As the months passed, HENRI was a bonafide hit, the new cynosure of the art world, dominating conversations big and small and making spellbinding works with incredible speed. It didn’t matter who you were; a downtown sophisticate, a doomscrolling shitposter, a Biden supporter, or a Breitbart mourner. Everybody could be an artist and everyone a little god. The old creators, their hands ever more obsolescent and their deification never more challenged, fell into deep depressions. Even with his aesthetes having abandoned him, Jean could not be counted amongst them. He wouldn’t be Hockney or Richter, or any other of these soon-to-be-dead Silents, skillful enough for a passing thought but never a public fixation. His greatness was undeniable, even if his goodness suspect, and he demanded it be recognized for now and all time. He issued a challenge to the MoMA. In three days’ time, have their HENRI read and scan and analyze his entire body of work and make replicas a thousand times over. In that same span, he would paint a masterpiece whose primacy couldn’t be questioned, and yet again subjugate their subjective opinions to his objective brilliance. They accepted, and formed a committee to pass judgment.
Jean set to work, taking his usual vitamins, a little E for squashing uncertainty mixed with some powdered K to plumb the depths of his unconscious and slow the flow of the clock. He flurried about the canvas, stroking and brushing and dabbing and tabbing. Five hours later, his first attempt was complete. Eh, he thought. Incredible, yes. But undeniable? Perhaps not. This was not his knockout. Not wanting to remember wasted time, he chucked his failure in the fireplace.
The second attempt was similar. Too heavy-handed and raw. The third, too fine-tuned and manicured. The fourth and fifth were miserable with flaws not bearing mention. Off to burn they went. Time ticked away. Jean’s home was warm, but his body was in a cold sweat, his heart pounding and his face made gray from supplemental starvation. Eleni, the only devotee who hadn’t dispersed, gibed him. “Jean,” she said, “you look like shit. Come to bed.”
“I can’t,” he replied. “I must keep working.”
“It can wait until tomorrow. I haven’t felt you in an eternity,” she mewed, shifting her tone.
“Be quiet,” he shushed. “Procrastination is the antagonist of perfection. If I fuck you, I fuck myself, and I fuck the human spirit along with it.”
“The human spirit?” she yawned.
Eleni didn’t understand. If he lost, so did man’s control over his own inspiration. The instruments they’d used for cultural construction since the dawn of sentience would be made useless and true artistry relegated to being a schlubby hipster’s hobby. Jean needed to win, for himself and for humanity. He didn’t want it to come to this, but he suspected he was out of options. He needed his ringer, his PED, his Vitamin C. He raided his medicine cabinet and lined and snorted the psychotic residue.
His eyes got lighter and his heart moved faster. He hadn’t taken it since that jaunt in Mallorca. The letters all mingled with one another and launched Jean into action. He stroked his brush furiously, creating and destroying his universe on loop and wondering whether the Lord had ever had as much fun. The sixth try was his favorite thus far, but still not to his ideal. He needed more. More C, more E, more K, more happiness, more fearlessness, more dreaminess, more significance. Time dilated but Jean’s movements quickened and reached a breakneck pace. Paint flew everywhere as his soul grew increasingly possessed by aspiration and beckoned him beyond his earthly restraints. Finally, on the seventh attempt, he’d done it, his tour de force completed in all its vast array. Jean dropped his brush and finally rested. He called for his lover and closed his eyes. This was to last the ages.
Eleni came and cried, first when she saw Jean, and then when she saw herself. The committee was unanimous. It was no question that any artistic work ever existed as evocative or powerful as Jean Henri’s final masterpiece.
“I can’t wait to put it in the HENRI,” remarked Dawson at the funeral.