In the idiosyncratic tradition of Joseph Cornell and Ray Johnson, Benes has established his own school of art, one founded on obsessive assemblage. A born collector—"I have always been afraid of losing things"—Benes leaves no gallstone (see page 59 for Larry Hagman's) unturned in his acquisition of odd objets. The artist's fastidious catalogue recalls crime-scene investigations and Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. Whereas the 19th-century pharmacist recorded rare flora and fauna, Benes preserves the leavings of celebrity culture—Nancy Reagan's chocolate-soufflé stained napkin, Bill Clinton's half-sucked throat lozenge, Roy Rogers's nasal douche. Macabre, witty and earnest, the book offers readers the guilty pleasure of supermarket tabloids and the brooding quirkiness of a modern-day Vanitas. The most mundane object—a desiccated cookie baked by Katharine Hepburn, for example—labeled and squared in its wooden cubbyhole, looks just like art, but also foretells decay. Leavening the reliquary's morbidity are anecdotes of stealthy acquisition—the artist surreptitiously pocketing Ed Koch's dinner fork, friends thieving a twig from Mao Tse-tung's broom, a postal worker retrieving a dead bird that flew into Elizabeth Taylor's window. The book itself, beautifully designed, promises to be a poignant keepsake for connoisseurs of the absurd. Warhol would have loved it; Benes has indexed a celluloid strip from Empire. And Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) has contributed not only the introduction but also the aforementioned Rogers keepsake. 110 full-color illus. (Oct.)
