Close Looks: "Talisman" by Barton Lidice Beneš

Audio Description of
Talisman
by
Barton Lidice Beneš

Fifty blue and white beads are strung on a thick green cord arranged in a circle about five inches in diameter, forming the shape of a necklace. At the bottom of the circle, in the same green color as the cord, there is an upside-down V-shape that resembles a knot in the cord, with the two ends of the cord hanging down. The necklace form is centered along the vertical axis of a thick, rectangular piece of white paper and slightly higher than the paper’s horizontal axis. The paper’s edges are torn. Although the pattern of the tearing is irregular, it almost resembles a scalloped border. The paper is mounted on top of a white surface that is just slightly larger than the scalloped torn edges. A ruled line in graphite runs across the paper’s lower edge, extending nearly to the left and right edges and leaving about two inches of blank space between the bottom of the necklace and the graphite line. On that line, the title, artist’s name, and date are written in neat, legible cursive: Talisman, Barton Lidice Beneš, 1994.

On closer inspection, the blue-and-white beads reveal themselves to be medicine — fifty identical capsules, carefully positioned so that the same printed information is visible on each one. Above the blue line on each capsule, there is a black unicorn with tail curled over its back and one foreleg lifted and just below it the word “Wellcome” (with two l’s). Below the blue line, two rows of numbers and letters — “Y9C” over “100.”

The capsules are clustered in symmetrical groupings. Immediately to the left and right of the knot, there is a cluster of six; next on either side is a cluster of five; after that, two clusters on each side of four; around the upper part of the necklace, there are four clusters of three capsules each. The blue line that bisects each capsule lines up with the blue line on its neighbor, giving the effect of a blue thread that seems to run parallel to the green cord linking the clusters of capsules.

The hue of the green cord is dull, a little grayish. On its surface there is a variegated pattern that, when examined closely, includes whole and partial capital letters: near the top, part of an “A,” and “UN.” At the right side, an “O.” In other places, curved lines that resemble part of a frame or a border are visible, in others, a bird’s wing and a leafy branch. The same green material covers the inverted V-shaped knot and its loose ends hanging down. Because those hanging loose ends are longer than the glimpses of cord visible between the capsules, longer sequences of capital letters are visible here: “STATES OF” on the left side, and “S OF AMER” on the right.

Taken together, the color, the letter and word fragments, and the imagery tell us that this green material is US currency. Judging from the grayish tint, the bills are not new ones but rather ones that have been in circulation. There isn’t enough information to indicate the denominations of currency. Strips of it are tightly rolled to a uniform thickness and mark the distances between the clusters of capsules. Between most of the clusters, there is an interval of space filled by the green cord approximately equal to the width of two capsules. A length of green cord about four times that long is visible at the lower edge of the necklace’s circular shape. It may have initially appeared that they formed a continuous cord, but instead they are more like beads. Fifteen of them. At the top righthand side of the necklace, one of the currency beads is slightly off kilter. This slight irregularity reveals that the fifty capsule beads and the fifteen currency beads are actually strung together on black string.

The knot also bears closer scrutiny. The two loose ends, or tails, hanging down from the knot are actually slightly curved and of slightly varying thickness. For example, more of the letters at the beginning and end of the words “STATES OF” are visible than of the letters in the middle. And the shape of the knot is actually more triangular than knot-like. It isn’t merely a knot — it is a wishbone, carefully and completely wrapped in strips of US currency.

It isn’t clear what attaches the necklace to the paper it rests against. The ends of the wishbone, the rolled beads, and the capsules cast shadows on the paper, but nowhere is there evidence of how it is mounted. Because of that, and its placement slightly higher than center on the paper, the necklace seems to hover over the firmly drawn graphite ground line at the bottom of the paper.