There is a point in every cycle where devotion stops being narrative and becomes inventory. This is that point. May 30th, on my table, under one lamp, the light coming in from the upper left across a surface that has held every subject I have painted for six years and shows it.
The tenth station is a laying out. An arc of aluminum rim, cut and straightened as far as an aluminum rim will consent to straighten, running across the upper third of the panel like the top of an arch that has lost its building. Beneath it, alone, the hub: flanged on both sides, seized, the color of a church door handle. Then fourteen spokes in a loose fan, nickel gone dull, each a different length now because I cut some of them to get them free. The amber reflector at the far left, unmounted, still bright, still performing the single function it was manufactured for in a room where nothing is coming. Two blue rim-tape rings. One curl of the tire. That is the whole of it. Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit is a small picture of a basket on a ledge against a plain wall, it contains no story whatsoever, and it is one of the most serious objects ever made. He painted the leaves that were already going. He did not clean the fruit up first. Ten stations, seven months, one wheel, and at the end of a passion there is no restoration, only the correct arrangement of the parts on a dark ground with a light put on them. That is not defeat. It is a reliquary. Non finis. Inventarium.
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