Sometimes both of these articles: gun and money, fake and real but ill-gotten, is indeed carried when it's under his arm but when it's held by his perspiring palm then more often all that's inside are a few greasy looking documents, a pair of reading spectacles and the sandwiches his wife made. And in spite of his magazine-style appearance (of course devised by Cruella), he's actually a nervous character (certainly not a Mr. Ripley!) and therefore not good with subterfuge. But then he's only the assuredly silent or stuttering money man.
Cruella handles the whole operation: that of dashing hopes and destroying artists, to recoup these losses when they've been extinguished, by fate or their own hand, and their works have finally been recognised and are climbing in value; when their admirers number thousands rather than a few earnest supporters, and when all that they achieved is lauded far, far beyond how it was received when they were living.
It may not have escaped your attention that I've somehow drifted into writing of this 'Cruella' and her accomplice as if they are established already; in my mind, they are. I see them so clearly, although you would be right if you also thought (as I do) the money man needs more work, even a re-write. But it's just germ of an idea, based on factual stories of art theft, art frauds and auctions which my mind took and Disney-ified, supposedly to try to make a point, which I'm currently failing at because the characters have stolen that thunder, and which I hoped to expand on to include (generically) authors who've incurred the same treatment.
I don't think it's too implausible to shape an idea thus, but really she needs her own name...if she's going to steal paintings not puppies and negotiate hard. The moral being that when acclaim comes too late other people grow fat on the proceeds.
But is that a moral you can learn by? The artist may have left the world poor – in a dejected state of mental and physical health - and yet what they left, as in their works, has enriched it. And continues to do so long after their demise.
How do you learn to recognise somebody's gifted?
And not after the fact, their fact of being and their take on the world: what they've lived through, how they've experienced it which they not only see through their own eyes but through the eyes of others. And then put into a painting, into music, into dance, into words.
Should art, in all its forms, always be a struggle? That if lived on is a hand to mouth existence? And which in many cases others later profit by?
Is that what makes great art? That will to create and get by with little. So that eventually (though sadly not necessarily in the artist's lifetime) the art is the collectible kind, the kind that impresses critics and crowds. That has popular appeal, and once it's been noticed a staying power. One that increases and doesn't diminish with time.
Do you have to, if you're an artist, live and die by the sword you wield? Perhaps you just have to be prepared to and to follow through if such an instant comes. Perhaps it's not a choice... perhaps art always gets its victim. Particularly if it's regarded as a calling. And perhaps those called to it aren't always strong enough, or its pitfalls make them weaker?
Maybe some artists arrive too soon, before the public are ready? Even before a receptive audience have been born, before attitudes have changed.
Cruella was expelled from school for drinking ink; Gerard de Nerval reportedly walked live lobsters on blue ribbons; van Gogh ate paint. There's a relevance in there somewhere.
Oh yes, art is cruel.
Picture credit: Cruella de Vil, 101 Dalmatians, Disney
All posts published this year were penned during the last.
