But the jokes, alas, are derived from the utter ridiculousness of the characters. The play, by Yasmine Reza, originally written in French, has been widely acclaimed, not just as a penetrating study of male psychology but a stinging comment on the obscure and competitive mechanisms associated with collecting works of art. This more senior connoisseur has conservative tastes and is not only unsympathetic to the pretentious minimalism of the work, but jealously disposed to the independence that Serge asserts in buying it. The fact that the radical work was very expensive is especially galling, as it indicates in Serge a strong commitment to the modernism that Mark deplores. But the white work, in Mark's eyes, is only capable of eliciting an aesthetic response through selfdelusion or hysteria.
Serge confesses that part of the work is the system that lies behind it.
For heeding such systems that detract from the wholesome integrity of artworks past, Serge incurs Mark's contempt as a traitor to good aesthetic sense and, above all, to his superior, cultural guidance. In rejecting that guidance, Serge shows himself to be a traitor to Mark's values and to Mark himself. He has limited passion for art and is content to live with an expressionistic daub painted by his father. As the two serious antagonists pursue their altercations in evermorepersonal ways, the gentle Yvan remains a constant voice of reason, attempting to pacify his friends, put their absurd feelings into some perspective and reconcile their incompatible positions. With a touch of cruelty, however, Reza has given this voice of reason to a man of blithering weakness, a man who is coercing himself into marrying an intolerant woman, who is willingly running headlong into matrimonial disaster, who will alienate both wife and mother and who confesses to crying all the time about his powerlessness.