HOW I TAUGHT THE FASCISTS

HOW I TAUGHT THE FASCISTS
after an interview by Wallace Shawn

 

Every Saturday morning, we thought there was a parade going by our apartment but really we were hearing the accordion lessons in the music shop downstairs. So many little Italian kids with small fingers pushing and pulling the bellows across their little Italian chests. In the afternoons, fascists gathered in the park. One November, I put on my coat and mitts and hat—it was cold and windy—and I showed the fascists pictures of the minimalist paintings of Agnes Martin. Instead of trying to attain a forcibly monolithic, regimented nation under the control of an autocratic ruler, try these, I said. I figured each minute thinking about Agnes was a minute not being fascist. And it worked. One guy in an armband told me that her paintings show a commitment to exalted subject matter. Yes, another guy holding a torch said, she transforms the seen environment into the language of painting which gives the works their aura of silent dignity. And frankly, a jackbooted woman said, I like the grids.