The Opposite of Art - Excerpt From Chapter 14
Friday, October 28, 2011
As he had beneath the Sistine ceiling, Ridler paced the sidewalk. Back and forth beside the looming ramparts, he paced. All the years swirled through his mind, the cost of jungles, beaches, filthy alleys and bazaars, tortured and exploded, hungry, parched, lonely and alone, and of course Suzanna. Suzanna lost forever. He had surrendered everything to paint the Glory, trying it a thousand times, a thousand ways, miles of paint, gallons of it flowing across canvas by the acre. What were these imposters' feeble efforts compared to sacrifice like his?
"I'll show them," he muttered, dropping to his knees and opening his backpack. "I'll show them."
Removing his kit he spilled his pastels out onto the sidewalk. Still muttering, he selected a piece of chalk and began to sketch. His arm swung broadly over the pavement, a giant motion from the shoulder. Line after sweeping, monumental line arched across the slates around him. He was no mere artist. He was an athlete, a zealot and a warrior. He was no propagandist. He was a partisan, a dogmatist in possession of all truth. He alone could show the Glory to the world, and he alone would do it.
Driven by his rage and his disdain, Ridler lost all consciousness of his surroundings. He did not see the crowd gathering about him as his colors rose from the pavement to the ancient ramparts of the Holy See. He did not hear their whispers, nor their gasps and exclamations as the image swelled and spread. He climbed the wall with only fingertips and the narrow edges of his boots, clinging to the bricks stacked earthy and steadfast for generations. Halfway up he released his hold and drifted. Gripping colored chalk in both of his hands, he drew with unerring beauty and precision on his left and right at once, a whirlwind of pristine intention, filling empty voids as if he was a witch conjuring a portal to a future or a past. He almost had it now. This time he would hold it fast. He would draw back the veil. He would reveal the Glory. He would not let it go. He would master everything.
Ridler drew among a cloud of witnesses. No carabinieri stepped forward from that growing crowd to protest on behalf of public property. On the contrary, the police in their white belts and chest straps stood entranced along with bankers and tourists, priests and beggars. Dozens of them turned to hundreds; hundreds turned to thousands. From the street and sidewalk, from the windows, balconies, and rooftops, all of
It never crossed the artist's mind that he might run out of colors. Again and again he pulled more pastels from his pack, never realizing it had become a cornucopia, endlessly fertile, providing everything required. Nothing was withheld. The sun itself beyond the angry clouds did not betray him. On the contrary, it remained aloft long past the normal hour, granting the suspension of time. Even gravity and space surrendered, all created things in all directions bowing in submission to his genius.
In the end it seemed the only limit was himself, for when he stopped it was his own decision. Hands and arms and clothing choked with color, Ridler sat back on his haunches. At that very moment the sun began to move again above the clouds, but it took a while to regain its usual velocity. And like the fading of the day, Ridler's own return was gradual, a slow recognition of the image spread out all around him. Shadows gathering, he gazed upon the work.
It covered half a block along the sidewalk. It climbed forty feet up the wall. It was of course his grandest effort, superior to anything that
Posted byAthol Dickson at 5:35 PM 4 comments
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The Opposite of Art, first draft
Friday, October 22, 2010
Hey, remember me? I've been gone a while. On Wednesday I sent a good first draft of THE OPPOSITE OF ART off to the editor. As always, in the final months of work on a new novel it becomes impossible to even think about keeping up with this blog. Wish I could do both, but there's only so much energy in this little brain of mine. Anyway, the hard part's over now, so I'm back.
Shivering, he watched the blood and bruises rhythm of the red and blue, red and blue, the flashes regular against the motionless pattern of the dirty terra cotta colored masonry, worlds colliding in the two configurations, lights ethereal and fleeting, bricks stacked earthy and unchanged for generations. In the time and space created at the intersection of those patterns Ridler saw deep shadows slash across the wall, carved out of the light by the few bricks which had resisted the usual linear fate of their kind, standing out a little, casting empty voids across their fellows like witches conjuring a pitch-black portal to a future or a past. Lately he’d been interested in voids, in portals. He sensed a presence waiting beyond time in them, something no one else had painted. Gazing at the blank brick wall Ridler ignored the policeman down below pummeling the screaming fellow’s kidneys with methodical jabs, left, right, left, right. Although that too was a pattern in its way, there was no color in it, and certainly no transcendence.
When the screaming stopped and the guy dropped face down in a puddle of oily rainwater, Ridler tucked his long black hair behind his ear to better consider the rotating lights rippling in the glistening pavement around the body. Steam arose like ectoplasm at a manhole cover, transubstantiated from ghostly grays to primary colors by the police car’s flashing lights. It occurred to Ridler they would switch off the lights at any moment.
Turning from the window with a curse he ran into the sitting room, which he used as a studio, easel standing on a paint-splattered tarp in one corner, finished paintings hanging everywhere, stacks of waiting canvases against the walls. From the dining table he gathering his sketchpad and some pastels. Seconds later he was back in the bedroom, bare haunch against the window jamb, half in, half out, colored chalks and charcoals on the sill beside him, fingers dashing back and forth across the pad, eyes mainly on the wall across the alley, ignoring the cold in his desperation to memorize the image in case he couldn’t get it down before they killed it off forever.
The lights went out. The brick wall was just a wall again. Ridler leaned dangerously far out into the frigid air beyond the wrought iron railing, teetering five stories up to scream, “Turn your lights back on!” The policemen down below ignored him, focused as they were on dragging the inert man over to their car. Ridler’s breath turned into clouds, drifting off into the night. “Give me back my lights!” The policemen drove away without bothering to look up. Pulling back in from the brink, Ridler muttered, “Pigs.”
(Opening paragraphs of the first draft, THE OPPOSITE OF ART, which will be published in the spring)
Posted byAthol Dickson at 8:45 AM 5 comments
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