Book review: A Bone of Fact, by David Walsh

David Walsh (born 1961) is a professional gambler and art collector who used his own money to found, build and furnish with art the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, which since 2011 has stirred up the Australian art world and has had a quantifiable impact on tourism to the Apple Isle.

The Australian art establishment has been split on the significance of MONA, where many felt that they would have preferred Walsh to behave like a more conventional art philanthropist, who would give a bucket of money to art professionals, who would make decisions on its "proper use", while the patron would be acknowledged with pomp and ceremony. Walsh is anything but conventional and every aspect of the museum bears the stamp of his personality. The collection generally focuses on the themes of sex and death and the flights of fancy of this patron collector with many of the items on display of very high calibre by some of the biggest names in art.

This whole venture by this self-declared atheist follows the mediaeval Christian tradition of expiating one's sins by building a church for people to worship in, for example, Enrico Scrovegni's Arena chapel, frescoed by Giotto, was commissioned to expiate the family sin of usury, in other words charging interest on loans.

In this case, Walsh is expiating the sin of gambling by building a museum in which  people can enjoy art. Economically it is not a particularly viable venture with MONA costing about $10 million annually to run, but generating only about $4 million in income.

The millionaire gambler remains happy and engaged with the venture and underwrites its operations and is progressively adding to its collection. For example, in December 2014, James Turrell after the triumphant opening at the National Gallery of Australia of his retrospective exhibition, flew to Hobart to open a new Skyspace at MONA.

Walsh's A Bone of Fact is presented as a humorous autobiography or memoir, where this l'enfant terrible of the Australian art world is shown as neither especially an enfant, nor for that matter, very terrible. Walsh introduces his book by explaining his motivation for writing it: "By some great good fortune (mine, not yours) you hold in your hands my story, credible I think, but not extraordinary (despite what those avaricious publishers might have you believe). I have captured your attention: maybe you have some resonance with MONA, or maybe good graphical design partly seized your day. To extract 55 bucks from you I need to say something clever, but I can't think of anything."

At school in Tasmania he describes himself as a sickly nerd interested in science fiction and astronomy, whose favourite book was Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and its anti-hero Raskolnikov and later the writings of Vladimir Nabokov.

Walsh also narrates his personal history of gambling and the methods and systems which he devised, with such priceless tips, as to avoid buying lottery tickets or Powerball tickets, as the returns on your investment are very poor. We have a narrative relating to his sex life, with a catalogue of his girlfriends, wives and of his sexual encounters, an account of some of his travels and more about his gambling and the money which he was making.

The origins of MONA are related in terms of giving something back to society to make up for the evil of gambling and the buying of a lovely Yoruba door, through a friend in South Africa in 1992, and then building a museum to house it.  First came the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities in 1999, then this was expanded underground and opened as MONA in 2011.

Thoughts and associations in this book leap around like a flea on speed and include asides, like a rant on the paucity of thought of Aristotle ("wherein I contend that one of history's most noted intellectuals is a f---ing moron"), a hymn of praise for the beauty of the Byzantine monastery of Peribleptos in Mystras in central Peloponnese, a defence of vegetarianism, an attack on bullfighting, plus a discourse on rape and abortion. The sole reason for reading this book is to understand the workings of the mind of an original free spirit in the Australian art world.

The book is quite readable and I did not find it an ordeal to read it from cover to cover, but the endless literary digressions, provocatively expressed views and constant overstatement, if anything, create a shield around this author, rather than reveal him to the inquisitive gaze.

Walsh emerges as a largely self-educated and self-made man, one who is endlessly curious and gifted with a good dose of common sense. Although he is eager to demonstrate his wide reading and his lively interest in very many disparate facets of visual culture, anyone seeking in this book a coherent key with which to unlock the enigma of Walsh will be disappointed, in a Duchamp manner, the author retorts that there is no solution as there was no problem.