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Saturday, March 16, 2013

Today's #flashfiction #TheDetachedArtist

“Don't lose your head.”

Maximilien de Robespierre* #quote


Hanging out with CJ today. We're thinking about going door to door making people offers they can't refuse.



The Detached Artist


     “So what inspired you to make this piece?” an art critic asked.
       “People like houses. So I made a landscape with a house on it. Thought it would sell,” Walden hated that question. He hated the interviews with people, though he knew he should be grateful for his success. The statement he just made was taken in different ways by the art community. Most thought it was sarcasm. Some thought he was trying to be secretly deep and was hinting at a deep metaphor in the art or something. He always gave these kinds of answers and that's what the art community looked for in a man with talent like Walden, meaning and power in the art.
     But the statement was a literal as could be. So much of art embodied self-expression, yet Walden's had none. Many normal people put their souls in their art. He put none of it. He pieces were soulless. He created them like a robot following a program, with instinct instead of thought. People working on pieces on commission who put honest work into their pieces put emotion into them. While he did art he didn't think a thought beyond the brush and he didn't care for the thoughts at the brush.
      One painting Walden did was of a man smiling. People saw the joy of the smile in Walden's craft and skill, but what wowed the art community was an emotion they felt but couldn't place while looking at the piece. The reason they couldn't figure out the emotion that fascinated them was that it was a lack of emotion. They felt the void of feeling of Walden. The fact he didn't care at all about his painting meant the only thing he could express in his art was nothing.

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