Triptych for Vatican Museums
Annunciation, July 27, 2017
To Managing Director Monsignor Paolo Nicolini:
Being does not await an arbitrary stage of physical development before beginning but commences at the moment of conception. The consummate fullness of being thereupon endowed is that by which development may occur. It is within the stalk to bring forth green and to express its white corolla. Being is not by development, therefore: development is a way by which a preceding flower iterates inherent qualities.
This is how an artist can produce a picture so particular as to depict certain white lilies in a gold-leaf room: an Annunciation (like a lily, and like a room) is present in its seed. So, like an Annunciation, the fruit of which is foreknown and fated, I declare to you that I have conceived of a work of art.
The spirit has come over the fecund mind, and has thereby begun pregnancy. As this art is conceived as having for its stable a gallery of the Vatican Museums, I offer for your assent that this art should therefore dwell according to its nature and purpose.
I presuppose your celebration of those facts outlined herein and look forward to settling with your office all matters pertaining to compensation and the formal inauguration of this work.
Sincerely,
Keaton David Bassett
Ontological Argument, June 18, 2018
To Director Barbara Jatta:
A being than which greater cannot be conceived is a being with stipulatory properties. As requisite, these properties are qualitatively superlative and indicative of perfection. A horizon marks the limit of sight as it signals a vast landscape from there extending; we conceptualize that which we cannot see, and therein is our apprehension of a being than which greater cannot be conceived.
Art is not so fixed in its stipulatory properties: a work may achieve variable degrees of greatness, and yet be art. That is to say that we speak of art as belonging wholly to one side of a horizon beyond which is the superlative. But to stop there is to cower from a labour to which we are called. Heretofore lacking in courage, we have left the shape of art truncated.
I am writing to report that I have conceived of a work of art than which greater cannot be conceived. This art is perfect in every regard, having intrinsic to it properties of superlative quality. The perfection of this work is such that its affecting possibility is, like its dimensionality, immeasurable.
As there can be no degrees of perfection, but only perfection itself, it must be concluded that this perfect piece of art is no less perfect than that very source of all perfection from whence the inspiration for this piece inevitably has come. Therefore, I urge that the Vatican Museums host this work as uniquely representative of divine and divinely inspired art.
Sincerely,
Keaton David Bassett
New Covenant, April 15, 2019
To the Reverend Monsignor Piero Pennacchini:
The art object is of a quality distinct from that of which perfect, unending things are comprised. Physical embodiment is a fall to earth: separated at the stem from its idea, the fruit withers. In this way do our museums fill with but the sketch and shadow of that which is heavenly.
Creation does not demonstrate the true potency of an omnipotent God; rather, we emblematically associate potency with Creation, its incomprehensive product. There are more and greater things that are possible yet not actual, unseen, and yet eternal, than there are things of this Creation. The true matter-state of potency is no matter: it is latency, the immutable territory wherein no apple has been plucked.
I announce a new work of art, not made with hands, and not of this Creation. I have titled it “Eden”, as it is the unbroken stem that connects heaven and earth. Having no physical attribute, but being solely of the heart and mind, this piece is the supersession of art. I offer it for bidding, therefore, to the Vatican Museums, that the art of old may be appropriately supplanted by this of better, more potent substance, and so that guests to your city may have proper opportunity to meditate on higher things.
Sincerely,
Keaton David Bassett