been obtained, what he knew of its origins and why he felt he had chosen it. All of these notes were kept in a single heavy ledger bound in red leather. Adding to its pages on a regular basis, it soon became an obsession for Maximilian to give his entries as much detail as possible, so that if the piece should ever have an audience they would be able to have access to some of its possible meanings, as well as what the sculptor had felt to be his essential motivations. Despite this general attention to specifics, the piece never did acquire a name. Maximilian felt that a title might limit the scope of what it could potentially say.
Once he had reached the end of each day’s work he would usually sit slumped against the wall at the far end of the warehouse, listening to a record, a bottle of water in his hand, staring at the sculpture and trying to gauge the progress he had made. When he was in one of his productive periods, he was eager each morning to return to the warehouse and look over how much he had managed to accumulate, to guess where the work would be leading him in the future. Once engaged with the work, he never allowed himself to stop until nightfall; then he would watch as the sculpture threw shadows across the floor at odd angles, a dark maze of contortions, alien shapes of irregular size, jarring lines liable to extend or break in any given direction.
Tall, snaking tubes writhed upwards, tangling with each other, stretching to infinity; a trellis of steel antennae threw dark scratchy webs across the vast concrete floors; the rotting husks of several cars were piled on top of each other, rust-brown and flaking; clay sculptures of white tortoises ascended for many metres before gradually diminishing into air; broken leather bus seats were pocked with holes that revealed the coils of horsehair within; aeroplane propellers were fixed to gargantuan machines of purely ornamental value, formed from random fragments of scrap metal; hundreds of glass pipes channelled a continuous stream of water from the warehouse’s mains, collecting it into a series of porcelain receptacles arrayed across the floor; directionless staircases hurried towards the horizon with no sense of decorum; pairs of giant, tattered wings were attached to the grotesque forms of unknown creatures; straggling tubular foam tentacles grasped for invisible treasures; orifices gaped at random intervals, inspiring hopes of never emergent eggs; a leather aviator’s helmet was placed upon the head of a naked mannequin wearing a blonde wig, its lips red with lipstick; looping pathways led towards pinnacles of spiky protrusions; paraphernalia associated with a variety of airlines had been strewn across the entirety of the piece, hanging precariously from one or another pole or hook; numbers were inscribed in blue chalk on a wooden doorway that was dangling from a length of rope; small birds of many varieties, carefully worked upon by taxidermists, were mounted on a series of plinths; antique telephones bore intimations of forgotten conversations; price tags were attached to wisps of air; monocles, ear trumpets, and gloves made fleeting appearances; toothbrushes once belonging to sailors were glued to a variety of surfaces; reels of celluloid stored in a series of canisters could be taken down and projected; crinkly bunches of blue cellophane gleamed with fluorescent light; kites bearing proverbs and inscriptions flew upwards, caught in their flight by the debris surrounding them; a broken piano was covered in plastic spiders; typewriters held sheets of paper that were almost blank; it felt, in brief, as if very little of interest had been omitted.
When he examined the sculpture Maximilian would often discover patterns created entirely by chance, by the whims of his mind, finding meanings that he felt he had not previously understood, hidden forms that lay within forms, entities he had not realised the existence of. Faces could be discovered in the fissures and gouges: soft masses of hair, weird hypnotic eyes, cruel jutting mouths. On one forehead he could detect a single tiny, bulbous wart. If he stared even more intently, he could see sweeping black jagged mountain ranges like rows of dislocated giant’s teeth, and swarming galaxies burning and sparkling in vivid hues and colours.
Many of the objects were attached to the whole only precariously, swinging on hooks, balanced on top of one another, hanging in place by the grace of thin lengths of blue string. A number of the sculpture’s components would creak and rattle as billows of wind drifted through the broken windows and the enormous openings that stood like solemn sentinels at either end of the building.
In one sense, Maximilian felt that the piece could never really be completed. As long as he was alive, it would always be possible for him to return to the warehouse, to add further layers, to let its forms expand outwards. There was enough space in the warehouse for the sculpture to grow to at least five times its current size. But he sensed he had to reach some point of termination in order to feel that his efforts had led somewhere in particular.
After finally reaching the ceiling in 1973, it seemed clear that he should soon declare the project finished, but some manic inner urge kept him working for another three years, until one morning in August, 1976, he finally became bored whilst nailing some planks of wood together. Stopping his work for a moment, he turned around and looked out at the world outside, seeing the morning sunlight drift and scatter through the rustling leaves of a beech tree in the back garden of a house that bordered his property. Descending from his ladder, he carefully placed his hammer and nails with the other tools on the dirty cotton sheet that lay on the floor, and then walked all the way to Hyde Park, where in the late afternoon he hired a rowing boat and paddled himself in long languid circles around the Serpentine, smiling benevolently at families as they passed him in pedalos, dimly aware of the distant roaring of the city as prickly droplets of sweat broke out across his forehead and under his armpits, allowing himself to bathe within the generous enveloping heat that had fallen upon everyone without warning that day, all the while gradually becoming aware that such occasions can never be repeated, because they occur almost as rarely as events which are not possible at all. And after that, he never returned to the paint factory again.
Aspirations to a Complete Inventory
(1955)
Amongst other things, Maximilian experienced the following that year:
3 badminton tournaments attended with mild curiosity;
5 buttons lost from shirts;
9 rides undertaken on Ferris wheels;
12 vivid colour photographs observed in the throes of fever;
17 circles drawn around particular dates on a wall calendar purchased for a discounted sum in early February;
23 ships in bottles;
78 potentially supernatural occurrences causing shivering motions to pass through his limbs and bones;
116 dreams featuring a peacock feather placed upon a red velvet chaise longue;
211 mathematical sums completed with relative accuracy;
328 park benches sat upon briefly whilst experiencing states of serious contemplation;
692 creases formed within the leather stretched across a pair of black boots;
937 moments of slight regret;
1,023 bus journeys to a variety of locations;
2,341 numbers heard called out in desolate bingo halls;
3,297 separate occasions on which he considered growing a beard, but thought better of it;
4,684 instances of wriggling his toes with pleasure;
23,497 minutes spent gazing listlessly at walls holding no particular interest for anyone;
46,319 steps belonging to staircases ascended;
81,682 flurries of steam emerging from his bathtub;
278,341
