The Map and the Territory
The pretentiousness of the contemporary art world is just one of the targets in Michel Houellebecq’s The Map and the Territory. The protagonist, Jed Martin, is a talented painter and photographer who rises to fame in the art world, which he is largely indifferent to.
He initially gains recognition for his artistic yet simple photographs of everyday objects. One day, he looks at a Michelin map and finds beauty in it. At an early exhibition of his works, he includes some photos of Michelin maps and meets there the captivating Olga, who is a marketing manager for Michelin (convenient). She makes introductions at her company, and a more expansive exhibition is planned for map-related art of Jed’s. The two naturally become an item.
The exhibition sells out and Jed becomes financially solvent. He and Olga spend several years of bliss together simply enjoying life.
Eventually, Olga is relocated to Michelin’s Moscow office (she is Russian, after all) to oversee the growth of their business there. She asks him to join her, and Jed considers begging her to stay, but doesn’t. The relationship dissolves at that point, and Jed retreats into his former lonely existence.
About a decade later Jed begins taking notice of the people producing things. People in the context of their daily work. He begins with modest jobs (The Tobaconist at his shop Counter) and works his way up to Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Dividing up the Art Market and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology (at Palo Alto). His gallerist Franz helps Jed set up an even larger showing. The publicist Marylin brought in to alert the media is the same person Franz used for Jed’s first showing, but she now appears much better, (no longer out of shape, ashen, carrying an enormous bag with tissue packs, continuously wiping her nose), and altogether now rather attractive to Jed. Not quite an Olga though.
What hasn’t changed is Marylin’s ability to draw in the art press for a showing is as good as it was the first time and Jed lands more column inches in the press than ever before. His works are bid up into the hundreds of thousands and by the end of the show he has five million euros in his account.
Suddenly, we’re in M.C. Escher territory.
I have to regress to an important point. All initial art showings, or vernissages, are accompanied by a booklet giving an introduction to the artist and a take on what is being accomplished. For this booklet, Jed wants a renowned novelist for the job and he chooses Michel Houellebecq, the very author of the book I’m now reviewing.
Jed travels to Ireland to meet the famous Houellebecq (at his expat home) and finds him dishevelled, frosty at first, but warming up to the idea after reviewing Jed’s portfolio and having a few glasses of Chilean wine. They agree to a March deadline for the copy, and off Jed goes, returning to France.
Before leaving for France, Jed has promised a ten-thousand-euro fee to Houellebecq and expresses a desire to paint Houellebecq’s portrait. Houellebecq protests he cannot sit still for that length of time, but Jed says no painters do it that way any longer and that he will take some photos of him to use as a reference. Houellebecq agreed on this brief encounter, which happens after several months. When Jed does return to take the photos he notes a change in Houellebecq’s attitude and appearance. No longer horse-faced and malnourished, the novelist appears more spry and with colour in his face and a sparkle in his eyes.
Time passes, emails sent before March are not returned. Houellebecq’s phone goes unanswered. Until one day he picks up and explains that he requires more time and that the copy won’t be ready until December. Jed is ok pushing back the showing, as is the publicist, Marylin, but Franz is somewhat upset though he eventually gives in to reality.
Eventually, Jed also expresses a desire to make the portrait a gift to the novelist in addition to the fee, so after the big show, he travels back to Houellebecq’s countryside home and gives it to the novelist, who responds with thanks and offers a nice meal and some wine. Jed doesn’t mention the value the painting would have if sold at the showing (750,000 euros) and makes his departure through the cold winter air, hoping he can maintain a friendship with this interesting man, whom he is now imagining as a kind of replacement father.
As Jed’s career flourishes, he grapples with the challenges of fame and the art market’s commercialism. His relationships with family, friends, and lovers are complex and often strained. We learn that Jed’s mother had committed suicide and that he has a distant relationship with his father, an architect/developer, who never discusses Jed’s mother or comes up with an explanation for the suicide. Jed’s father reveals he has rectal cancer and opens up to him more about his early years, hoping to be more artistic, but that everything being built in his day was dominated by brutalism. He says he saved many of his early drafts and that Jed can look at them after he passes.
One day, Jed learns his father had checked out of his luxury care housing facility and flown to Switzerland. His father had mentioned euthanasia once before at a particular clinic in Switzerland. Angered, Jed flies to the clinic (located next to a brothel) in Lucerne, storms in and demands to see paperwork regarding his father. When he is denied several times, a worker there decides to give in and show him the one-page file on his father with all the approvals and signatures. Still in a state of anger and upset, Jed brutally beats and kicks the woman and leaves to fly home. He is concerned the authorities may get involved, but decides they likely want to maintain a low profile and avoid bad press. Still, he is shaken by what he was capable of.
The narrative interweaves Jed’s personal life with broader societal observations, particularly regarding the shifting landscape of art and the role of technology in shaping human expression. One thing I notice in the book is the sudden leaps of years or decades, and the comments on shifting appearances, either changing dramatically or close to no change at all. For some reason, this brought the idea of evolution to mind and specifically Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium.
The novel consists of three sections and an epilogue, and thus far I’ve only written about the first two. In the third section we learn of a gruesome murder: that of Michel Houellebecq, who is murdered along with his dog, and terribly disfigured in a surgical manner with pieces of him displayed just so. Police who first arrived on scene are outside utterly discombobulated by what they witnessed in the house. Most are outside vomiting. Detectives arrive to the scene and decide to wait for the crime scene department to arrive with their masks, which block out the rancid stench of decaying corpses.
Weeks, months go by with no real leads. All the usual forensics are done. The death was caused by a blow to the head to knock the novelist unconscious followed by a gunshot to the heart. The head was then cleanly severed using a surgical laser machine (the poor dog met the same fate) only manufactured by a Danish company. Leads to sales of the machine were tracked down and dismissed. Leads in the novelist’s computer’s contacts list were followed up on and interviewed in person. They all admitted Houellebecq had many enemies. Literary enemies, they emphasized, none of whom would actually kill him.
The police deploy several officers with cameras with telephoto lenses to take photos of everyone attending the novelist’s burial. The tombstone, designed by the novelist, is simply a slightly raised piece of basalt with his name and a Möbius strip engraved beneath it. The photos were sent through the face matching software of known criminals to no avail. More time passes. Then they give the photos to an officer who is known to have an uncanny ability to recall faces. After some time he pulls one aside and starts leaning in and backing out. Yes, he has seen this man before, in the papers. Jed Martin, an artist whose showing of people at their work appeared in a newspaper some years ago.
Excited, the inspectors call Jed and ask for his assistance. I was concerned following his most recent run in with the woman in Lucerne that Jed had regressed to a new phase of “creativity.” But he readily agreed to help and came into the station. While there he accidentally saw some of the crime scene photos (or perhaps left out on purpose?) and he pondered over them saying it reminded him of a Jackson Pollock, but then backed away from that theory. The inspectors learned that Jed had been to the crime scene before (no one else they spoke to had), so they asked if he would come with them to view it and perhaps offer up some other clues and he agreed.
Upon arrival the inspectors sat back and Jed paced from room to room. Finally he returned to the main sitting room and asked ‘where is it?’. What? the inspectors ask? My painting, Jed says. The inspectors look at each other and check that no paintings were logged into evidence from the house. The crime was being investigated as a personal vendetta or serial killer crime because no valuables were missing. The victim’s expensive watch, nor his wallet, nor the cash in it, were missing.
“What would be the value of the painting” the inspector asks Jed and Jed speculates about 12 million euros. They are gobsmacked. The case while not solved can now be shuffled to the art crimes unit and the work marked as stolen in case it ever comes up for auction.
Years go by, and through an unusual series of connections, starting with the manslaughter killing of a “plastic surgeon for men” by a rogue seller of forbidden tropical insect collectors of such rare specimens is a connection is made. Police investigate the crime scene, uncovering hideous human cadavers preserved in grotesque poses with neatly severed parts sewn onto torsos and the like in the man’s basement. They go to his surgical office and uncover the laser machine made in Denmark (its purpose is for limb amputations, so why would a plastic surgeon have one? the inspectors wonder). This is the man responsible for the novelist’s killing. After all, some of Houellebecq’s last words to Jed were about how he would be immortalised: not by a photograph, but by his painting.
Now my speculation
How to tie the surgeon to the painting’s whereabouts?
Between the time Houellebecq agreed to having his portrait painted and the time Jed returns, the novelist visited the plastic surgeon with, shall we say, odd hobbies. The surgeon knows through the papers (or Houellebecq told him) the value of the painter’s works and perhaps the surgeon even turned up at the showing and spoke with Jed about the novelist’s portrait and price, learning then and there that it was promised as a gift to the novelist.
Is this the author not only having a go at the vanity of the contemporary art world, but of his own clique of the literati? He has written since The Map and the Territory so it appears that he holds out hope for his kind.