A few minor changes and some careful wallpapering are quite enough to lend a mundane and utilitarian item a touch of sophisticated polish or at least a bit of homely comfort. The result of these efforts arouses ambivalent feelings of embarrassment and admiration. The beautiful wallpaper heightens the esthetic ineptitude of the box to the point of unbearable bleakness and yet a conciliatory glow seems to emanate from the depths of its decoratively enhanced ineptitude. The man in the wallpaper obviously has no such ambivalent qualms; he only wants to to eat (his noodles?) in peace. Perhaps he mirrors the imperturbability that Martin Kippenberger highlights in his art as a means of reconciling us with the ubiquity of embarrassing banality.

According to literary history, Rameau's nephew was a Bohemian without character but not without talent, who was plunged into misery upon the death of his wife and children. Diderot's novel of teh same name depicts him as a cynical parasite and a brilliant failure, in short, a paradoxical protagonist behyond good and evil.

Patrick Frey, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should not be silent," in Parkett. 19 (1989).