A Conversation at the Gallery
Behold the Gallery. Boundless. Enormous. Very, very large. Standing outside the material Universe, it is just as well that it is where it is, for the Gallery is the repository of all Art in Time and Space (and a few other dimensions highly deserving of a capital letter).
Right in its center, in the air, among a throng of others, a picture hung. In front of it two men floated.
"Will it stand up to time?" asked the first. He was small, bright-eyed and ageless. His eyebrows shone like oiled sunlight. He turned his head to his companion.
In the mist-shot darkness under his long violet robe, its color and shape tapering thornlike to black towards the hood, the second one seemed to have accommodated all the ages the first one lacked.
"TIME SHALL TELL."
Driven by a cosmic resonance, the TELLTELLTELLTELL carried in a wide powerful tremolo across the vast expanses of the book-steppes, fluttering pages like windblown grass. The word disturbed two scavenging Huginn-ravens, which took to the air amid panic-shed feathers and the flicker of ink upon paper.
Almost immediately they calmed – having been by now used to the sound of reverberating, if somewhat dubious omniscience – and perched back atop a Holy Book, bound in the red and goldsilver hide of some obscure starbeast and written by the Race of Concrete Shoe-Horns, encapsulating the wisdom of two billion years of sentience and culture. Back in the Universe, the complete Book wasn't due for another two billion and one years. One of the Huginn-ravens took a bite out of it, thereby decreasing the chances of the Concrete Shoe-Horns' ever achieving sentience by one page.
While eating books might seem like a barbarous thing to do, even by a bird, the Hugginn-ravens are more than simple-minded scavengers. Some have written books themselves (if only by using their droppings to paste pages from other books together), and the appellation "scavenger" is technically incorrect, applied to a creature that eats things which, for the most part, haven't even been created yet, whenever "yet" might be in a place like the Gallery. What Hugginn-ravens actually do is to pare down the sum of all Art in the Gallery to control the amount of clutter and cliches in Life in the Universe, thus instinctively enforcing a fundamentally Universal Law – "Art is pretty big thing." In the case of a book as central and powerful to the existence of a race as the Shoe-horn Holy Book was, its destruction in precreation could obviate the development of the entire species. Which, in the case of a species called "The Race of Concrete Shoe-horns", was probably for the better.
"Tell! Tell! Tell! Tell!" squawked the other raven, and received a critical look from his cousin, who had a single eye like blue glass.
"Shut up and eat your binding."
"Tell?"
The blue-eyed Huginn-raven ignored the question with a sigh. It had of course been rhetorical, as would be every question from a creature so daft.
Meanwhile the echo had traveled the Gallery's whole circumference.
As mentioned, the Gallery is technically boundless, but the echo was produced by a voice equally boundless (technically). It seems the laws of simple mathematics hold even outside the boundaries of Space and Time, which is probably a mystery even greater than the existence of the Gallery itself, but the Gallery is generally more fun to look into, so the laws of mathematics and their effect shall, contrary to what the length of that paragraph suggests, not receive any more attention than the two Huginn-ravens have accorded them. Suffice to say the echo, having completed its rounds, returned back into the black hood from whence it came and there it sank but did not cease, proving without the shadow of a doubt something murky yet profound about the nature of probably Everything.
The small bright man screwed up the side of his mouth and flashed a sceptical eyebrow.
"Time will tell. Right... No, actually, you are. Now, what is it? Looks like Earth-art to me."
"YOUR..."
"Don't you go all endless on me."
From the bottomless depths of the robe came a soft sound, like a galaxy clearing its throat.
"Your skills are growing greater – Earth-civilization has seven billion billion and three twin-cultures in the entirety of existence. Yes, it is from Earth. Or it will be. Or it has been. Or..."
"French?"
"Why, yes."
"Twentieth century?"
"Yes..."
"1961, from the look of it. Jean Dubuffet's work? Looks a bit like Paris, Montparnasee, what he's painted."
The hood turned toward the small man. He turned from the painting, drawn from his analytical contemplation by an invisible gaze and something he perceived as a singularly strange combinations of smells. Although the tall, robed one did not speak, he radiated a rank endlessness, along with a confusion just as endless, which was a much more satisfying aroma.
"What?"
"...," the hooded man failed to say.
"I googled it. It's a thing you use to find things out. Powerful. Not as much as you, but it's getting there."
"Maybe I should stop it then. Shall it prove a mighty adversary?"
"Most mighty. But you may find something in common. Lack of substance, for one. Now, is that going to stand up to time?"
"Unlikely. It's power is too great."
"How does that make it unlikely? Is going to be destroyed at some point in time? Or it never gets painted?
"I have traveled far and wide..."
"No, you haven't. You don't go out in the Universe".
"My substance has traveled..."
"You don't have one. Or is that where it went?"
Again that unpleasant smell. Like roses expelled from the bowels of a dead fish, if incontinence was a viable issue for a dead fish.
"I HAVE TRAVELED far and wide upon the viewless wings of Art, and have seen its capacity for creation in the minds of countless species, in the mesh of the elements themselves, ordering Chaos, bringing beginnings and ends, reordering the laws of the Universe itself..."
"So?"
"Are you familiar with the Race of The Yellow-Bellied Worms of Gnuu'lt'bz'tz.Tz??"
"I'm happy that I'm not."
"So your Google can't travel among the stars?" asked the Endless (But Not Now) One with a smirk.
"It's getting there. What about the worms?"
"Among the Yellow-Bellied Worms of Gnuu'lt'bz'tz. Tz? there lived a great artist, who shall remain unnamed – so great was his power, so nonsensical his name. He could use his art to alter reality, to conjure up the past and the future."
"And what did he do with it?" The small man was impressed.
"Once he realized his power, he painted himself tons upon tons of dirt and for a short time became the richest worm on the planet."
"For a short time?"
"He was crushed to death in a landslide during an inspection of his coffers. His spirit and his power, however, remained and roamed the Universe. They found a home on Earth."
"No!"
"Yes."
"Jean Dubuffet is a worm?"
"He has the creative power of one, yes."
"And what does that mean for the Earth?"
"It could mean it's DESTRUCTION."
The hooded man paused until the word returned to his hood. His companion weathered the smell. For a sublime critic of art, The Endless One had little enough creative flair, so even that piece of slightly worn-out dramatic flourish was appreciated. He went on:
"The power of the worm has manifested fully in this picture. It represents a consummate if unwitting imitation of a style that by the twentieth century has been extinct for more than three hundred centuries – the artistic style of humanity's ancestors, their real history and their great battles against humanity's greatest foe obscured by time."
"They had a greatest foe that wasn't themselves? Who?"
"The Bunrabids."
"Never heard of them."
"A mighty race, also indigenous to Earth. Much was lost by both races in the course of the war, but at the end humans prevailed and completely obliterated the Bunrabids, effacing them even from their art and left only scarce and ambiguous traces of their enemy's existence.
What Jean Dubuffet has done is to reach back in time by the sublimity of his imitation, and begin a cycle of reversion for Earth's reality. First the dodo bird will appear again. Then the Arabian gazelle and the bulldog rat; the stuttering lion and the woolly slug; the saber-tooth tiger and the mammoth; and then the Bunrabid. And there will be carnage.
"But the twentieth-century human has devastating weapons."
"None shall avail him against the Bunrabid."
"Allright then, how about the prehistoric human. Won't he appear too?"
"It is possible, but not likely. The biological niche is full. Either way, there shall be a bitter struggle."
The small man glowed with a hungry fire.
"When does it start?"
"The cycle's speed is unpredictable. It might begin and end in a day, or in a thousand years. But it must be observed. Such a large-scale effect of art is well-nigh a cosmic impossibility. The consequences of this event may extend far beyond the reaches of the Earth's cosmos."
The Endless One said a number of other things, but were all greatly diminished in importance by the fact that the small man had eagerly vanished and so didn't hear them, and so there would be little point in repeating them to the reader. All of them save the last, probably.
"CAN'T BELIEVE HE BOUGHT IT," The Endless One said and chuckled quietly, the sound like that of a company of galaxies sharing a joke.
Showing posts with label Task 7. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Task 7. Show all posts
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Task 7 - "The Unknown Art" by Miryana
The Unknown Art
“Whut”s dat?”
The two teenagers stared at one of the French exhibits that were brought for a month to the Contemporary Art section at the Brooklyn museum. Such art didn’t mean much to two black kids, although you could say they were literally immersed in it all day long. They were its blazing representatives, and they were Samanya and I, back in 1994.
“It sayz Paris Mont-something…Itz French,” said she. Later, when I was already in college, I found out that her name means “the unknown one”. And so it was with that girl.
“A bunch of cats ridin’ on an ol’ broken-ass bus, man. U sho dat aint NY?”
“It dont say NY, iz it? Da guy’s French – Duhbuffet. And dat sign on da bus – itz in French I think.”
“Yeah. Eau mineralee – sounds like the word dat my grandma sayz for perfume. U know she from Big Easy.”
“Kinda feel dat one. All those people walkin’ or ridin’ in couplez. No one iz out there, alone…” Samanya had the strange ability to darken her brown eyes at will.
“Whutz up, boo? Why u do me like dat? U trippin’ over dat fox Rakisha again?” The feeling of guilt that I had came over me again.
“I aint trippin’. Itz just I cant see whut u saw in her. U aint like ur boy Tylor.”
“Told ya itz over. Couldnt take her game no mo’’” Now I wonder how I could even think for a second that this can make her believe me. But I there I was, and I didn’t want to drive her away.
“Anywayz, dont u worry ‘bout Taylor. He went O.T. u know. Cuz of dat shootin’ last Friday.Somethin wrong wit those colorz? They shoulda taken better care of their stuff round here.” I would often stare at “Paris Montparnasse” later on, thinking about the faded yellow, grey and blue. They looked even paler next to the bright silhouette of Samanya, the unknown one.
“Colorz iz just fine dat way. Dem folks r smiling, but then again, they r like in pain or somethin’. “ She turned her eyes away from the painting and onto me.
“U had nothing to do wit it, did you? Those guys from da Bronx wont know ya? They cant. Uve got plans. U be leavin soon.” She wanted to look strong, but her eyes gave her away.
“Nah, boo. Neva went wit Tee dat night. Momz needed help wit lil’ CC. Trust me on this one. U know Id neva lie to ma ebony queen.” I really didn’t go. Truth is, I got cold feet. He was my friend, but I had to try my chances after high-school. Couldn’t afford to get stuck in the rut of beautiful Brooklyn. Much as I would want to say I did it for her, I did it for myself.
Samanya looked at the picture once again.
“Glad they brought us here. It aint da usual stuff u get in dem books. It different.”
Over the years at arts school, I grew a fondness for the works of Dubuffet. They have always looked like some alien graffiti. All his black lines have a strange hold on me, in them I see Samanya.
“I feel ya. And all those people goin somewhere in their automobiles.” Another instant of regret. It seems that back then, I couldn’t help myself from hurting her.
“U be gone one day. And me, I be stayin here. Mr Collins sayz a lot of good stuff about ya. Sayz u got sum great future. He knowz thangs.”
“It aint like itz gonna be foreva. Ill be back. Youll see boo. I cant be without ur hershey kisses now, can I?” And yet I could. I don’t know how I managed to do that, but her taste doesn’t come easily to me now.
“ I dont want ya back.” She said it plain and simple. In that intense moment, all there was , was the painting on the wall. People floating rather than walking, somewhere in between dimensions, heading who knows where. Probably home.
“Whut ya sayn’ Sami?”” I raised my voice in anger.
“Shhh. Keep quiet, or theyll be throwing us out!” when she meant something no force on Earth could contradict her. “U heard me. I dont want ya back. So ud betta not come n look for me. Ive had ‘bout enough from you. Us, together, it aint meant to be. “
“So whut am I suppose to do now, huh? “ All thoughts came rushing through my head. I thought of her skin. That couldn’t be right. I suddenly felt the need to get on that Parisian bus and leave her in the middle of the museum the way she did. Let her wonder why I was doing such a thing to her. Sit in a seat and watch her turn into a human speck in the distance.
“Think Im done wit this one. Ill go check out da one over there.” She swayed her hips over to the next exhibit, a couple of minutes before our teachers called on us to head home. What she saw in the unfamiliar painting - I never got to know.
The unknown one. I can picture her now. A powerful woman, unbending to no one’s desires but hers. She can let you take her in your arms, but she’d never let you bend her. I can almost see her lips turned up in a proud smile. But the taste of her – that I cannot recall.
“Whut”s dat?”
The two teenagers stared at one of the French exhibits that were brought for a month to the Contemporary Art section at the Brooklyn museum. Such art didn’t mean much to two black kids, although you could say they were literally immersed in it all day long. They were its blazing representatives, and they were Samanya and I, back in 1994.
“It sayz Paris Mont-something…Itz French,” said she. Later, when I was already in college, I found out that her name means “the unknown one”. And so it was with that girl.
“A bunch of cats ridin’ on an ol’ broken-ass bus, man. U sho dat aint NY?”
“It dont say NY, iz it? Da guy’s French – Duhbuffet. And dat sign on da bus – itz in French I think.”
“Yeah. Eau mineralee – sounds like the word dat my grandma sayz for perfume. U know she from Big Easy.”
“Kinda feel dat one. All those people walkin’ or ridin’ in couplez. No one iz out there, alone…” Samanya had the strange ability to darken her brown eyes at will.
“Whutz up, boo? Why u do me like dat? U trippin’ over dat fox Rakisha again?” The feeling of guilt that I had came over me again.
“I aint trippin’. Itz just I cant see whut u saw in her. U aint like ur boy Tylor.”
“Told ya itz over. Couldnt take her game no mo’’” Now I wonder how I could even think for a second that this can make her believe me. But I there I was, and I didn’t want to drive her away.
“Anywayz, dont u worry ‘bout Taylor. He went O.T. u know. Cuz of dat shootin’ last Friday.Somethin wrong wit those colorz? They shoulda taken better care of their stuff round here.” I would often stare at “Paris Montparnasse” later on, thinking about the faded yellow, grey and blue. They looked even paler next to the bright silhouette of Samanya, the unknown one.
“Colorz iz just fine dat way. Dem folks r smiling, but then again, they r like in pain or somethin’. “ She turned her eyes away from the painting and onto me.
“U had nothing to do wit it, did you? Those guys from da Bronx wont know ya? They cant. Uve got plans. U be leavin soon.” She wanted to look strong, but her eyes gave her away.
“Nah, boo. Neva went wit Tee dat night. Momz needed help wit lil’ CC. Trust me on this one. U know Id neva lie to ma ebony queen.” I really didn’t go. Truth is, I got cold feet. He was my friend, but I had to try my chances after high-school. Couldn’t afford to get stuck in the rut of beautiful Brooklyn. Much as I would want to say I did it for her, I did it for myself.
Samanya looked at the picture once again.
“Glad they brought us here. It aint da usual stuff u get in dem books. It different.”
Over the years at arts school, I grew a fondness for the works of Dubuffet. They have always looked like some alien graffiti. All his black lines have a strange hold on me, in them I see Samanya.
“I feel ya. And all those people goin somewhere in their automobiles.” Another instant of regret. It seems that back then, I couldn’t help myself from hurting her.
“U be gone one day. And me, I be stayin here. Mr Collins sayz a lot of good stuff about ya. Sayz u got sum great future. He knowz thangs.”
“It aint like itz gonna be foreva. Ill be back. Youll see boo. I cant be without ur hershey kisses now, can I?” And yet I could. I don’t know how I managed to do that, but her taste doesn’t come easily to me now.
“ I dont want ya back.” She said it plain and simple. In that intense moment, all there was , was the painting on the wall. People floating rather than walking, somewhere in between dimensions, heading who knows where. Probably home.
“Whut ya sayn’ Sami?”” I raised my voice in anger.
“Shhh. Keep quiet, or theyll be throwing us out!” when she meant something no force on Earth could contradict her. “U heard me. I dont want ya back. So ud betta not come n look for me. Ive had ‘bout enough from you. Us, together, it aint meant to be. “
“So whut am I suppose to do now, huh? “ All thoughts came rushing through my head. I thought of her skin. That couldn’t be right. I suddenly felt the need to get on that Parisian bus and leave her in the middle of the museum the way she did. Let her wonder why I was doing such a thing to her. Sit in a seat and watch her turn into a human speck in the distance.
“Think Im done wit this one. Ill go check out da one over there.” She swayed her hips over to the next exhibit, a couple of minutes before our teachers called on us to head home. What she saw in the unfamiliar painting - I never got to know.
The unknown one. I can picture her now. A powerful woman, unbending to no one’s desires but hers. She can let you take her in your arms, but she’d never let you bend her. I can almost see her lips turned up in a proud smile. But the taste of her – that I cannot recall.
Task 7 - "The Mirror of Fine Art" by Kiril
The Mirror of fine Art
“What a live I’ve had! What a thriller! I am pretty sure that even da Vinci’s “Lady with an ermine” would want to switch places with me. You can’t count that for much, after all, she is actually a lady hugging a rat, but it is something, it should be something. Oh, who am I trying to fool? I’ve spent an eternity in this dark ugly backstreet gallery. And that is not the worst. Every time someone does enter I feel like a kitty waiting for adoption. I just hope that some idiot with a ten-digit bank account would finally buy me and put me in a spacious well-lit room across a window with a splendid vista of a beautiful city. A dust protector and a temperature and humidity controller would be nice, too.”, said the painting to itself. It actually said a lot more, it was a very clever and talkative painting, in fact, it was so clever that it possessed the processing power of a supercomputer and could probably prove Fermat’s last theorem in a nanosecond, and so talkative that it could easily deliver a speech that would make Fidel Castro look like a shy schoolboy. As a matter of fact if the painting had access to one of those fancy speech synthesizer with a strong Yankee accent, and hence the ability to communicate it would probably be able to steer human civilization in a much better direction than its political leaders. Sadly, all this happening would be highly unlikely. I leave it to you to decide if it was a miracle of God or some sick trick of fate, but actually the very next thing that happened was even less likely. A man entered the gallery, passed quickly the other paintings in the exhibition and suddenly came to a sharp halt in front of our super clever and hyper talkative painting.
“Interested in that one, ah, aren’t you. I can see already that you are a man of fine taste! “ the gallery owner had popped out of nowhere.
“Well,..”
“A pretty talented lad, that author. And he has one of those strange artistic names on which alone you could count to make you a great artist. Dorian Grey. Come on, let us say it together just so that you can feel the power of the name. Dorian Grey!”
“Dori…”
“You have seen his works exhibited in the Louvre , I suppose . Quite extraordinary sketches, I should say. Well, I wouldn’t like to steal more of your precious time sir. Let’s cut the long story short! Will it be cash or credit card?”
“I don’t want it” said the man.
“Sure, do you want me to wrap it up for you?”
“I don’t want it” said the man again.
“What do you mean you don’t want it? I have children to feed, ok, ok, this painting is worth three million, but I will make you a discount, just for you it will be two million. How about that? ... Oh, you want to ruin me! Ok, then you can have half of it for a million, and this is my final offer. You cannot say no to that, can you! …Ok, please don’t leave! What is your favorite color; I will have Dorian redo it for you adding more of it!”
“ I came in to ask where the closest grocery store is.”
“Oh, please be gone!”
The man left and the owner said to himself “I just hate these cheap b*****ds, who come in here and don’t have a clue to what the price of fine art is!”
“Ha, and if you have a clue to what the price of being fine art is ,then I am, I am a postcard,” the painting laughed bitterly. It had endured the whole conversation and stood still hanging on the wall. It was in a bad mood. You see, if one doesn’t take into consideration its monstrous intellect it was not quite unlike a human being. It had never seen what was drawn on it, and it had to heavily rely on the perception of others to guess if it was a beautiful painting or not. Neither the author, nor the owner of the gallery, nor the painting itself were aware but, every time when someone was unimpressed by the painting’s look, a fresh new shade of dark grey appeared among its beautiful colours.
“What a live I’ve had! What a thriller! I am pretty sure that even da Vinci’s “Lady with an ermine” would want to switch places with me. You can’t count that for much, after all, she is actually a lady hugging a rat, but it is something, it should be something. Oh, who am I trying to fool? I’ve spent an eternity in this dark ugly backstreet gallery. And that is not the worst. Every time someone does enter I feel like a kitty waiting for adoption. I just hope that some idiot with a ten-digit bank account would finally buy me and put me in a spacious well-lit room across a window with a splendid vista of a beautiful city. A dust protector and a temperature and humidity controller would be nice, too.”, said the painting to itself. It actually said a lot more, it was a very clever and talkative painting, in fact, it was so clever that it possessed the processing power of a supercomputer and could probably prove Fermat’s last theorem in a nanosecond, and so talkative that it could easily deliver a speech that would make Fidel Castro look like a shy schoolboy. As a matter of fact if the painting had access to one of those fancy speech synthesizer with a strong Yankee accent, and hence the ability to communicate it would probably be able to steer human civilization in a much better direction than its political leaders. Sadly, all this happening would be highly unlikely. I leave it to you to decide if it was a miracle of God or some sick trick of fate, but actually the very next thing that happened was even less likely. A man entered the gallery, passed quickly the other paintings in the exhibition and suddenly came to a sharp halt in front of our super clever and hyper talkative painting.
“Interested in that one, ah, aren’t you. I can see already that you are a man of fine taste! “ the gallery owner had popped out of nowhere.
“Well,..”
“A pretty talented lad, that author. And he has one of those strange artistic names on which alone you could count to make you a great artist. Dorian Grey. Come on, let us say it together just so that you can feel the power of the name. Dorian Grey!”
“Dori…”
“You have seen his works exhibited in the Louvre , I suppose . Quite extraordinary sketches, I should say. Well, I wouldn’t like to steal more of your precious time sir. Let’s cut the long story short! Will it be cash or credit card?”
“I don’t want it” said the man.
“Sure, do you want me to wrap it up for you?”
“I don’t want it” said the man again.
“What do you mean you don’t want it? I have children to feed, ok, ok, this painting is worth three million, but I will make you a discount, just for you it will be two million. How about that? ... Oh, you want to ruin me! Ok, then you can have half of it for a million, and this is my final offer. You cannot say no to that, can you! …Ok, please don’t leave! What is your favorite color; I will have Dorian redo it for you adding more of it!”
“ I came in to ask where the closest grocery store is.”
“Oh, please be gone!”
The man left and the owner said to himself “I just hate these cheap b*****ds, who come in here and don’t have a clue to what the price of fine art is!”
“Ha, and if you have a clue to what the price of being fine art is ,then I am, I am a postcard,” the painting laughed bitterly. It had endured the whole conversation and stood still hanging on the wall. It was in a bad mood. You see, if one doesn’t take into consideration its monstrous intellect it was not quite unlike a human being. It had never seen what was drawn on it, and it had to heavily rely on the perception of others to guess if it was a beautiful painting or not. Neither the author, nor the owner of the gallery, nor the painting itself were aware but, every time when someone was unimpressed by the painting’s look, a fresh new shade of dark grey appeared among its beautiful colours.
Task 7 - "Belle and Bus" by Evgenia
Evgenia
Belle and the Bus
(A play in one action)
Two men standing before a painting. Any gallery.
1st man: Good afternoon. I can see you are looking at my painting. How do you find it? Oh mon dieu, this was such a wonderful time…
2d man: Excuse me, are you nuts?! This painting was drawn by me!! Paris, the colours, the women…
1st man: What the hell are you talking about?!? This is ridiculous…wait, I will tell you how I painted it and then I will call for the security. All sorts of lunatics are walking around. So, back then, at that very same day, I was very hungry, all the painters in Montparnasse usually are hungry, waiting for bus N 133 calling at Gare du Norde, here it comes, it was coming, crowded, women with clammy faces and scarlet mouths, bald men with grey clothes, tormenting, such a wonderful Parisian morning. It is slowly moving its dirty body towards the bus station. Out of the blue, madly coming behind the turn, a car, a blue car, blue as the skirt of my neighbour, the psychologist, Belle. In the car, a woman, clammy face, scarlet mouth, the driver, a man, a bald man with grey clothes. Ooooh, an accident….heeelp, the people around, still smiling, still realizing the crash in the wonderful Parisian morning. They died, yes, all of them died in that day. I didn’t, I painted all of it. I painted it in grey, grey is the colour of fear.
2d man: Sir, please, don’t shout like this, we are in a gallery after all. I am afraid you are in a terrible mistake, you are terribly confused. This painting is my creation, it is the story of my life. Sit here, calm down, I will explain. I met her in 1959, fair, fragile, always wearing blue, Belle. Tres belle, indeed. She was attending my Experimental Psychology classes at the university…
1st man: Are you crazy or what, you say that you teach Psychology and at the same time you believe you are an artist. This is absurd.
2d man: Well, sir, painting is a vocation, it is not a profession, you couldn’t know that. Please, don’t interrupt me, I listened to all your nonsense. So, as I was saying, she was attending my classes, she would always sit at the front, always right against me, her blue skirt, barely covering her pointed knees (the knees of a real lady), was shining, shining with an azure light in my eyes. We fell in love in the third month, oh, these colours, these times, that Paris. She would look me straight in the eyes, hers were green, she admired me, she thought my authority at the university was very sexy. Until that day. I was travelling in the bus calling at Montparnasse, it was a tender violet Parisian evening, suddenly, on the pavement, I saw a familiar blue silhouette (she is the only person in the world to wear that specific blue colour). Ooooh, the terror…
1st man: Sir, please, don’t shout like this, we are in a gallery after all…
2d man: The terror of seeing her soft hand holding someone else’s, smiling at a stranger, a bald man, grey clothes. I haven’t seen her since that evening, quite a long time. You see, on the painting, this man in the bus, at the back, miserably looking, it is me, seeing the end of my happiness in a blue skirt. I painted it in brown. Brown is the colour of pain. The couple down there, in the middle, it’s them. Scoundrels…
3d man: Gentlemen, I am listening for quite some time to what you are talking about. This is insane. You both claim that the painting I drew, the work of my life is by some of you. What a disgrace, what a lie. I will tell you how it all happened, how it all began…
Belle and the Bus
(A play in one action)
Two men standing before a painting. Any gallery.
1st man: Good afternoon. I can see you are looking at my painting. How do you find it? Oh mon dieu, this was such a wonderful time…
2d man: Excuse me, are you nuts?! This painting was drawn by me!! Paris, the colours, the women…
1st man: What the hell are you talking about?!? This is ridiculous…wait, I will tell you how I painted it and then I will call for the security. All sorts of lunatics are walking around. So, back then, at that very same day, I was very hungry, all the painters in Montparnasse usually are hungry, waiting for bus N 133 calling at Gare du Norde, here it comes, it was coming, crowded, women with clammy faces and scarlet mouths, bald men with grey clothes, tormenting, such a wonderful Parisian morning. It is slowly moving its dirty body towards the bus station. Out of the blue, madly coming behind the turn, a car, a blue car, blue as the skirt of my neighbour, the psychologist, Belle. In the car, a woman, clammy face, scarlet mouth, the driver, a man, a bald man with grey clothes. Ooooh, an accident….heeelp, the people around, still smiling, still realizing the crash in the wonderful Parisian morning. They died, yes, all of them died in that day. I didn’t, I painted all of it. I painted it in grey, grey is the colour of fear.
2d man: Sir, please, don’t shout like this, we are in a gallery after all. I am afraid you are in a terrible mistake, you are terribly confused. This painting is my creation, it is the story of my life. Sit here, calm down, I will explain. I met her in 1959, fair, fragile, always wearing blue, Belle. Tres belle, indeed. She was attending my Experimental Psychology classes at the university…
1st man: Are you crazy or what, you say that you teach Psychology and at the same time you believe you are an artist. This is absurd.
2d man: Well, sir, painting is a vocation, it is not a profession, you couldn’t know that. Please, don’t interrupt me, I listened to all your nonsense. So, as I was saying, she was attending my classes, she would always sit at the front, always right against me, her blue skirt, barely covering her pointed knees (the knees of a real lady), was shining, shining with an azure light in my eyes. We fell in love in the third month, oh, these colours, these times, that Paris. She would look me straight in the eyes, hers were green, she admired me, she thought my authority at the university was very sexy. Until that day. I was travelling in the bus calling at Montparnasse, it was a tender violet Parisian evening, suddenly, on the pavement, I saw a familiar blue silhouette (she is the only person in the world to wear that specific blue colour). Ooooh, the terror…
1st man: Sir, please, don’t shout like this, we are in a gallery after all…
2d man: The terror of seeing her soft hand holding someone else’s, smiling at a stranger, a bald man, grey clothes. I haven’t seen her since that evening, quite a long time. You see, on the painting, this man in the bus, at the back, miserably looking, it is me, seeing the end of my happiness in a blue skirt. I painted it in brown. Brown is the colour of pain. The couple down there, in the middle, it’s them. Scoundrels…
3d man: Gentlemen, I am listening for quite some time to what you are talking about. This is insane. You both claim that the painting I drew, the work of my life is by some of you. What a disgrace, what a lie. I will tell you how it all happened, how it all began…
Task 7
TASK 7
Imagine a couple viewing the picture below.
The choice of setting is up to you: it could be a gallery, an auction, the Internet or… you name it.
You are also free to choose an approach to character development. You could decide to develop your characters through their lines in the dialogue, through authorial intrusions or through first person narratives. It’s up to you.
There will be no requirement concerning the proportion between narrative report and dialogue.
The only two requirements:
* there should be dialogue
* the conversation should revolve around the picture (the characters’ comments could be triggered by their reception of the picture or by its visual content)
Word limit: 1,000 words
Writers
Emo
Reviewed by Milena, Aglika, Tsvetomila, Tsvetelina, Alexander
Kiril
Reviewed by Ani, Maria, Madlen, Mariyana, Zlatina
Miryana
Reviewed by Danail, Karamfil, Zlatko, Galina, Irina, Daniela
Evgeniya
Reviewed by Yolanda, Daniela, Hristina, Toni, Snezhana, Nataliya
Lot 32, "Paris Montparnasse," is a very good work by Jean Dubuffet. An oil on canvas that measures 65 by 86 1/2 inches, it was executed in 1961 and is one of several works consigned by Lars Ulrich, a musician with Metallica band... It sold for $4,739,500.
From Christie’s Catalogue, 2002
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