Culmination
In 1985, 9 months before the birth of his first son, Matthew Ryan Webber tried to recreate John Baldessari’s Throwing 4 Balls in the Air to Get a Square. He had seen the work in London on 3rd April. An inherently competitive man, he had decided that Baldesarri’s attempts were “pathetic”. To him, the idea of failing a game that one had created was an anathema.
In looking at the extant material, it is clear that he took the project seriously. It seems that he was acutely aware of the distance that separated his attempts from Balderssari’s. In a letter written that January, he states that;
“Though I am unsure in which particulars my rural Dorset differs from Balderssari’s California, I cannot escape a certain feeling of inequity in our joint endeavour. It is a monotonous fact that our conditions – both climatic and social – are different, and that this enormously affects the difficulty of our tasks. I am sure that his Pacific sun is far stronger than my Channel dirge [sic], and that the glare that must have plagued him will be of no consequence for me. Yet, the insatiable wind from Lymington will have to be contended with…”
In an attempt to do just that, he took to carrying a basic set of meteorological instruments with him. Those who knew him will not be surprised to learn that his choice of items placed aesthetics above accuracy. It was this, presumably, which led him to a second-hand bookshop in Lyme Regis on a cold October in 1984. Nevertheless, he was evidently delighted with the weather-worn brass bodies, chipped faces and bent hands of the dials he found there. His enthusiasm was so great that he appears to have completely overlooked the affect that 50 years of wear would have had on the accuracy of the devices.
It is unclear whether he was aware of the provenance of the instruments. The careful analysis undertaken in 2002 proves, beyond reasonable doubt, that he had in fact purchased the same models used by a certain Allessandro Marconi. Years previously, in the summer of 1934, they accompanied him on a meteorological expedition to South Georgia. It was during this expedition, and presumably using these same instruments, that Marconi completed his revolutionary paper on “Hermetically rotational turbulence in homogenous geosynclines”, the paper which was later to coin the phrase “Marconi spot”.
These spots are now famous amongst meteorologists, but perhaps an explanation is required for the less technical. Put simply, Marconi realized that when a rapid stream of cold air passes across an irregular mountain range, the complex turbulence patterns formed can give rise to tiny micro-climates. These “spots” of isolated weather can be no more than a few hundred metres across, and can exhibit entirely different climactic conditions to the surrounding air mass.
It seems likely that Webber was aware of these phenomena. His diary makes obscure reference to some “climatology books” that he borrowed from the local library, and his letters appear to show some familiarity with the effect. The most compelling evidence, though, comes from looking at his recreation of Throwing 4 Balls in the Air to Get a Square. Before this photograph was released, it was though that such conditions only occurred in Polar latitudes. Not so; whether by chance or calculation, the photograph appears to have been taken in a Marconi Spot that formed just outside Wimborne, Dorset, and perfectly recreated the weather conditions of Los Angeles, California.
If this seems improbable, it must be taken in the context of Webber’s increasing obsession with the project. The calculations required to predict such a phenomena are complex, but compare favorably to the next task that Webber set himself. In the 1984 accounts of John’s Camera Shop, Long Beach, California there appears a strange entry. The shop appears to have sold a roll of Kodak film for an unheard of £39. Curiouser – the film was a cheap, mass-produced item – and curiouser – it was 10 years old. The current writer’s investigations have resulted in a blunt letter from the shop clerk who worked that day. My attempts to recreate the tone of this letter have paled in comparison to it, so I reproduce a section below;
“There was this guy who called that evening. I can’t remember the details. But [sic] he wanted to no [sic] if I had any film left from about 10 years ago. Well. We always keep the excess stock out the back. He seems pleased [sic], and explained hat he had called old Joes and all, but those big places had thrown away all of their films [from that time]. Well, without much ado, he brought [sic] the film for $50, and I posted it to him.”
The film Webber required was not unusual, was still being produced, and could be bought in the village near his house. Given the effort involved in sourcing a film from califonrnia, it seeems unlikely that he was unaware of this. Perhaps he labored under the impression that manufacturing methods had changed in the intervening 10 years. Perhaps he even called Kodak. It is at this point that his diary loses its thin veneer of accuracy, and his madness becomes increasingly apparent. Investigations have been made with Kodak’s customer service department, but their records were lost in the fire of Mersing, Malaysia, in 1966.
The area was famed for its palm oil plant, which was the cause of the fire, and which was destroyed by it. The palms of the area had been famous since the 14th Century – they produced such rich and flammable oil that they were exported to wherever they would grow. Wherever they were exported, similar fires occurred, but at a rate insignificant enough to maintain their reputation. By the 1950s, the danger of growing the trees in such concentrations that were found in Mersing was well known. In fact, an audit carried out in 1951 considered such a fire “inevitable”. Had such audits been carried out in he 16th Century, and their conclusions been heeded, many thousands of lives could have been saved; in almost all cases, the oil caught fire when refinery plants were in full operation, so unfortunate workers were trapped.
It appears, though, that not all such fires were fatal. The accounts of the Kingston Lacy Estate, Dorsetshire, for the year 1789 contain the follwing entry:
“and in the 4th day of May this year there broke out a furiouf flaming amongst his mafter’f fine palm tress. Feveral unique fpecimenf, picked up on hif many travelf to the orient, were loft. The caufe of the fire waf never found. Feveral of the common folk blame the marfh gaf, though the mafter feemf to think otherwife, having often found the oil of thefe treef excellent for lampf in those timef that the french harried our merchant shipping”
Predictably, it is unclear how much Webber knew. He must have been completely and abruptly aware that he needed palm trees. It is unfortunate that this is the point at which his diary goes from semi-sentient ravings to complete insensibility. It seems fanciful, however, to affume that he decided to attempt his experiment in the same Estate that held the only extant example of Elaeis guineensis in Northern Europe.
Whether these seemingly improbable coincidences can be put down to sheer chance or the efforts of long a sustained research is a point of great contention, and I point you to the literature surrounding the debate for thorough discussions of the positions.
What is not in question is the date Webber chose for his undertaking – he completed his task on 2nd January 1985. Even this date would remain unknown but for 1 fortunate accident – he shattered his knee almost as soon as he had taken his 8th picture. Forced to cease the attempt, he managed to stagger to Odstock Hospital. The shocked hospital staff, faced with a broken and muttering hermit, immediately detained him. They also confiscated his possessions, which consisted of his clothes, 3 orange balls, and a camera.
In a way, it is unfortunate that the testament of the hospital staff remains. Unfortunate, because it means that 2 impossible facts have remained throughout these 20 years. The first is that he was alone. The 2nd is that he took only 8 pictures.
The first has been less contentious than the second. It is clear that any companion he had on that day would not have left Webber to stagger to the hospital unaided unless he was of a particularly callous mindset. Though this is possible, given the relative legality of their undertaking and the enormous pain that Webber must have been in, it seems unlikely. But for one fact – how can 1 man throw 4 balls simultaneously?
The second is the more miraculous. Yet, it is clear from the hospital records that Webber did not boast. It seems that the Hospital staff, fearing that his ravings were those of a criminal, promptly did assumed he had lost his mind. It is, therefore, the hospital records that prove Webber’s long-standing assertion that he completed his task in one go. In perfect conception. When asked, later, who had taken the picture, his reply was identical with that given when asked who had thrown the balls – “me”. The writer is at a loss to explain this.
Suffice to say, more research needs to be done. Indeed, the entire episode of Webber’s admission to hospital remains mysterious. Uncorroborated sources report that a 999 call was made, though no evidence has ever been produced to back up this assertion. And what of the black Renault Clio that was seen on the Kingston Lacy Estate that afternoon. Most mysterious of all, what happened to the 4th ball?
The nurses attested that “he screamed regularly for his camera”. Nevertheless, the hospital staff had more pressing concerns on their minds – fixing the wounded man’s knee. The implant they pushed into his flesh, on 17th April 1985, looked like this:
It bears more than a superficial resemblance to the battle plan employed during the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, exactly 122 years earlier. Curious – the hill from behind which the armies attacked is identical in look and morphology to hat of Badbury rings, where Webber’s first son would lose his virginity. Curiouser – the date at which the Roman army finally stormed this hill, and brought about the subjection of Webber’s Wessex, was the same year that Mark the Evangelist was made 1st bishop of Alexandria. The facts surrounding his death are well documented, but are reproduced here for the sake of clarity:
“In 828, relics believed to be the body of St. Mark were stolen from Alexandria by two Venetian merchants and were taken to Venice, where the Byzantine Theodore of Amasea had previously been the patron saint. A basilica was built there to house the relics. There is a mosaic on this Venetian basilica showing how the sailors covered the body relics with a layer of pork. Since Muslims are not allowed to touch pork, this action was done to prevent Muslim intervention in the relics removal.”
This event, as is well known, caused the replacement of Venice’s old patron saint with that of st. Theodore. Now, there have been 10 St. Theodores, one of which was a woman. It was this woman who, in 1934, gave birth to a girl that would, in the summer of 1973, regret a brief relationship with Baldessari. This cannot be denied. This woman, whose name appears on Odstock’s registers as “Ms. Nusbaum”, was a nurse. She had emigrated to England in the spring of 1948, and had been working in Salisbury for close to 20 years when she was called upon to attend Webber’s bedside. Of this tenuous connection she could not have known when he asked her to develop his film. She did, and records his “disappointed” reaction upon receiving 27 blank images, preceded by these:
And this is where rationality breaks down. Once again, this is Baldessari’s attempt:
He seems to have been unhappy with the result. Yet, looking back over 20 years, his achievement seems insurmountable. To paraphrase Borges –
“Some have seen here an admirable and typical subordination on the part of Webber to the Baldessari’s psychology; others a transcription of the work; the Baroness de Bacourt, the influence of Nietzsche. To this third interpretation (which I judge to be irrefutable) I am not sure I dare to add a fourth, which concords very well with the almost divine modesty of Webber: his resigned or ironical habit of propagating ideas which were the strict reverse of those he preferred. Webber’s image and that of Baldessari are identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer. More ambiguous, his detractors will say, but ambiguity is richness.”
MW 12/2009
