A painter awoke to the glory of another sunrise. This was the day he had long waited for. “Today,” he told himself, “I paint my masterpiece.” He arose and gathered an easel, a palette, some canvasses, some brushes and some paint. Walking down streets until they turned in roads and then paths he found himself in the home of his muses. This home was and might still be a meadow covered in a colourful multitude of different flora and faunas where the sun shines through the branches of the scattered trees in a way that made the colours radiate and shine in particularly spectacular way. At one end of the meadow there was a cliff that dropped sharply, giving the illusion that this meadow was some sort of worldly heaven at the end of the earth. To capture such beauty in paint would surely be the achievement necessary to gain the respect of the ever so critical and pretentious artistic community back in the city.
Such a masterpiece was not painted that day, for as any painter knows the sun moves, the earth moves and thus shadows move. However, after spending several weeks in the meadow painting many different sequences and shades of light reflected on the ever changing, ever-growing meadow there developed a painting. This painting surely must capture the meadow at its most beautiful with all the insight and sentimentality to be able to give meaning. It was the masterpiece in the opinion of its creator. He took his work from the easel and compared it to the meadow one last time before gathering his equipment and walking back into the city.
There still much yet to be told about our protagonist the painter. Firstly we can call him Xavier, for that was his name. It originally was simply ‘X’ because neither of his parents could read or write so that was the name they gave him the only name they knew how to write. However, many children of the illiterate had also come by this fate so when X learned to read he called himself Xavier. Secondly, Xavier was completely colour-blind. He only saw in black, white and shades of grey. However, he was unaware of this malady and that his own conception of colour was completely different than that of those around him.
Thus, as Xavier walked into the prestigious pomp and circumstance pretentiousness of Le Salon Des Beaux Art, the painting of the beautifully coloured meadow he carried with him was completely in black and white. Xavier was completely unaware. The Salon was excepting works of art, the best of which would be put into their upcoming summer exhibition. It was considered an honour to have one’s work displayed there. Xavier had never been so confident in his life as when he filled out the forms and handed his work over to the snobbish clerical staff on the other side of the large oaken counters.
The history of art has often been concerned with the emotionality, feelings, experiences, etc. of the painter and of viewers of paintings. However, is erroneous to disregard the emotionality, feelings and experiences, etc. of the painting itself. The painting in question was named Meadow for Xavier although literate was not much of a wordsmith. At this point in the story, Meadow was wishing she were still in the meadow instead of hanging on the dingy walls of the artificially lit Salon. As a painting cannot see itself Meadow did not know she was black, white and grey. She had been absorbed in the confidence of her painter and believed that she was the most beautiful sight ever to grace these walls. As she looked around at the other paintings in the room, she entertained herself with fancies of being heralded above the paintings as far too superior to belong in such a competition.
Alas, the judges and critics entered the hall and went from painting to painting making notes and muttering and discussing each work. When they got to Meadow the judges recoiled in shock. They had been to the meadow and were shocked that someone would attempt to portray it in black and white. One judge remarked something of ironies and some metaphorical gibberish about the lack of colour. Within the span of thirty seconds Meadow had been passed over with little acclaim to outweigh the criticism. Later that day she was taken down from the wall and out of the building, through the filthy streets of the city and hung on a different wall in a different building. Meadow did not know where she was but the paintings around her were much less attractive than those she had hung amongst at the Salon. This was the Salon Refusé. It was here that paintings rejected from the Salon were placed. In her short life Meadow had never been so sad. She cursed Xavier for painting her ugly and swore a revenge that would make him suffer the same fate.
Eventually, Xavier came to visit Meadow. He was now aware of his inability to see colour as others saw it but was still in denial. For hours he stood staring at Meadow unable to believe that what he saw as the pinnacle work of modern painting in hues of brilliance was merely a dull greyscale sketch. Unknown to Xavier, Meadow was trying to look her ugliest at that point just hurt him more.
Time passed and Xavier left the Salon Refusé in a cloud of shame. He wandered the dirty streets of the city in a listless blank stupor for days. When his body refused to carry him any further, he collapsed outside an apothecary shop. The apothecary business had been a little slow since the advent of modern medicine so the elderly woman minding the shop was looking out the window to see Xavier collapse in front of the shop. She went outside and found no challenge in picking up the long un-fed painter. She placed him on a cot in the back of the shop and left him to sleep.
The next day Xavier awoke but refused to open his eyes. The apothecary woman brought him soup and made him eat. Xavier had difficulty eating with his eyes closed. The old woman noticed this and would have no part in this stubbornness. “Open your eyes. You’re not blind,” she said. “If you were blind you’d know how to eat without seeing the spoon.” Xavier opened his eyes and after some prodding and questioning told the old woman the story of Meadow and his embarrassment at the Salon.
“Colour-blindness?” she muttered. “That’s easily curable.” She left Xavier’s bedside for a few moments. He could hear her rummaging through some cupboards and then the scraping of a mortar and pestle following by the sound of stirring. She returned with a vial of clear liquid.
“In this vial is the cure to what ails you. However, as I am a businesswoman, I cannot give it to you. As you seem to be in a shambles of a state, I could neither in good conscience take your money. However, I will give you this cure in exchange for this painting you call Meadow.” Xavier readily excepted such a proposition and was given the vial of medicine. The woman bid him farewell and instructed him to return the meadow before ingesting the potion. Xavier promised to return the next day with the painting.
Once again Xavier walked through miserable streets until they turned into roads and down the roads until they turned into paths. He sat in his favourite spot in the meadow and opened the vial. The liquid inside was colourless and odourless and for a moment Xavier thought this might be some sort of hoax (until he remembered he had yet to pay the woman). As instructed by the woman he held his eyes wide open and poured the liquid into them. A few minutes later the potion began to work. The trees and the flowers and the bushes and the sky and the ground all began to move ever so gently in waves. It was like they became a sort of liquid and floated without a vessel in a space where gravity might no longer exist. Then it hit him. Colour. The glowing radiance of refracted light that most people take for granted. Xavier’s joy was indescribable. He finally saw the meadow in all its colours and all of their shades and tints and gradients. Since words will fall short of describing the ecstasy of his experience and new insight we will leave Xavier in the meadow.
Meanwhile at the Salon Refusé something had happened that was being heralded as miracle. In these ever so disheartening interiors, filled with the works that brought their creators shame, the meadow materialised. That is to say that the mediocre painting we have known as Meadow became a window into the actual meadow in all its brilliance of colour. Meadow shone like no painting had ever done before. Bystanders dropped to their knees enraptured by the beauty. They could not look away nor could they quite look directly at her for Meadow was intensely bright and in full colour.
A few of the people who had witnessed this ended up speaking to people who were to attend the opening of an exhibition at the Salon. The opening was for the same exhibition, which the Salon had rejected Meadow from. When word got to the crowd at the Salon about the mysterious painting that was glowing in the radiance of colour like life the crowd left the Salon’s big opening and went to the Salon Refusé. The opening at the Salon was very poorly attended. However, there was a three-hour wait to get into the Salon Refusé and all because of Meadow.
Xavier eventually got through the most intense effects of the medicine and in his gratitude wanted to go retrieve Meadow for the apothecary woman. So he walked back into the city, now noticing a whole different range of colours of dull and dirty, which all in all is still pretty exciting to someone who has never seen colour before. Coming to the Salon Refusé he pushed through the crowd. He figured he would have to buy the painting back since it the purpose of the building was to exhibit works of shame. He went to speak to the curator and offered a meagre sum for the painting without having gone to look at it. The curator did not know him as the painter of Meadow and laughed at him. “You’re several thousand francs below the lowest bid. We’ll have sold that painting for millions by tomorrow.” Xavier was shocked and went to look at Meadow. Just as she was coming into sight, two art collectors began to argue in front of the painting. One of them grabbed Meadow from the wall and smashed her on the floor. The colours exploded like fireworks into a million hallucinations of the purest beauty colour could make. Xavier stood and watched in the double shock of the explosively hallucinatory demise of Meadow and the lost of monetary fortune.
The truly remarkable thing that happened that day was the change to the actual structure of the Salon Refusé building. The explosion caused changes in the building, which made for more favourable conditions for viewing paintings. All along it was never the paintings that were unworthy of being in the Salon just merely the fact that the Salon wasn’t necessarily the best place to hang certain paintings.
Such a masterpiece was not painted that day, for as any painter knows the sun moves, the earth moves and thus shadows move. However, after spending several weeks in the meadow painting many different sequences and shades of light reflected on the ever changing, ever-growing meadow there developed a painting. This painting surely must capture the meadow at its most beautiful with all the insight and sentimentality to be able to give meaning. It was the masterpiece in the opinion of its creator. He took his work from the easel and compared it to the meadow one last time before gathering his equipment and walking back into the city.
There still much yet to be told about our protagonist the painter. Firstly we can call him Xavier, for that was his name. It originally was simply ‘X’ because neither of his parents could read or write so that was the name they gave him the only name they knew how to write. However, many children of the illiterate had also come by this fate so when X learned to read he called himself Xavier. Secondly, Xavier was completely colour-blind. He only saw in black, white and shades of grey. However, he was unaware of this malady and that his own conception of colour was completely different than that of those around him.
Thus, as Xavier walked into the prestigious pomp and circumstance pretentiousness of Le Salon Des Beaux Art, the painting of the beautifully coloured meadow he carried with him was completely in black and white. Xavier was completely unaware. The Salon was excepting works of art, the best of which would be put into their upcoming summer exhibition. It was considered an honour to have one’s work displayed there. Xavier had never been so confident in his life as when he filled out the forms and handed his work over to the snobbish clerical staff on the other side of the large oaken counters.
The history of art has often been concerned with the emotionality, feelings, experiences, etc. of the painter and of viewers of paintings. However, is erroneous to disregard the emotionality, feelings and experiences, etc. of the painting itself. The painting in question was named Meadow for Xavier although literate was not much of a wordsmith. At this point in the story, Meadow was wishing she were still in the meadow instead of hanging on the dingy walls of the artificially lit Salon. As a painting cannot see itself Meadow did not know she was black, white and grey. She had been absorbed in the confidence of her painter and believed that she was the most beautiful sight ever to grace these walls. As she looked around at the other paintings in the room, she entertained herself with fancies of being heralded above the paintings as far too superior to belong in such a competition.
Alas, the judges and critics entered the hall and went from painting to painting making notes and muttering and discussing each work. When they got to Meadow the judges recoiled in shock. They had been to the meadow and were shocked that someone would attempt to portray it in black and white. One judge remarked something of ironies and some metaphorical gibberish about the lack of colour. Within the span of thirty seconds Meadow had been passed over with little acclaim to outweigh the criticism. Later that day she was taken down from the wall and out of the building, through the filthy streets of the city and hung on a different wall in a different building. Meadow did not know where she was but the paintings around her were much less attractive than those she had hung amongst at the Salon. This was the Salon Refusé. It was here that paintings rejected from the Salon were placed. In her short life Meadow had never been so sad. She cursed Xavier for painting her ugly and swore a revenge that would make him suffer the same fate.
Eventually, Xavier came to visit Meadow. He was now aware of his inability to see colour as others saw it but was still in denial. For hours he stood staring at Meadow unable to believe that what he saw as the pinnacle work of modern painting in hues of brilliance was merely a dull greyscale sketch. Unknown to Xavier, Meadow was trying to look her ugliest at that point just hurt him more.
Time passed and Xavier left the Salon Refusé in a cloud of shame. He wandered the dirty streets of the city in a listless blank stupor for days. When his body refused to carry him any further, he collapsed outside an apothecary shop. The apothecary business had been a little slow since the advent of modern medicine so the elderly woman minding the shop was looking out the window to see Xavier collapse in front of the shop. She went outside and found no challenge in picking up the long un-fed painter. She placed him on a cot in the back of the shop and left him to sleep.
The next day Xavier awoke but refused to open his eyes. The apothecary woman brought him soup and made him eat. Xavier had difficulty eating with his eyes closed. The old woman noticed this and would have no part in this stubbornness. “Open your eyes. You’re not blind,” she said. “If you were blind you’d know how to eat without seeing the spoon.” Xavier opened his eyes and after some prodding and questioning told the old woman the story of Meadow and his embarrassment at the Salon.
“Colour-blindness?” she muttered. “That’s easily curable.” She left Xavier’s bedside for a few moments. He could hear her rummaging through some cupboards and then the scraping of a mortar and pestle following by the sound of stirring. She returned with a vial of clear liquid.
“In this vial is the cure to what ails you. However, as I am a businesswoman, I cannot give it to you. As you seem to be in a shambles of a state, I could neither in good conscience take your money. However, I will give you this cure in exchange for this painting you call Meadow.” Xavier readily excepted such a proposition and was given the vial of medicine. The woman bid him farewell and instructed him to return the meadow before ingesting the potion. Xavier promised to return the next day with the painting.
Once again Xavier walked through miserable streets until they turned into roads and down the roads until they turned into paths. He sat in his favourite spot in the meadow and opened the vial. The liquid inside was colourless and odourless and for a moment Xavier thought this might be some sort of hoax (until he remembered he had yet to pay the woman). As instructed by the woman he held his eyes wide open and poured the liquid into them. A few minutes later the potion began to work. The trees and the flowers and the bushes and the sky and the ground all began to move ever so gently in waves. It was like they became a sort of liquid and floated without a vessel in a space where gravity might no longer exist. Then it hit him. Colour. The glowing radiance of refracted light that most people take for granted. Xavier’s joy was indescribable. He finally saw the meadow in all its colours and all of their shades and tints and gradients. Since words will fall short of describing the ecstasy of his experience and new insight we will leave Xavier in the meadow.
Meanwhile at the Salon Refusé something had happened that was being heralded as miracle. In these ever so disheartening interiors, filled with the works that brought their creators shame, the meadow materialised. That is to say that the mediocre painting we have known as Meadow became a window into the actual meadow in all its brilliance of colour. Meadow shone like no painting had ever done before. Bystanders dropped to their knees enraptured by the beauty. They could not look away nor could they quite look directly at her for Meadow was intensely bright and in full colour.
A few of the people who had witnessed this ended up speaking to people who were to attend the opening of an exhibition at the Salon. The opening was for the same exhibition, which the Salon had rejected Meadow from. When word got to the crowd at the Salon about the mysterious painting that was glowing in the radiance of colour like life the crowd left the Salon’s big opening and went to the Salon Refusé. The opening at the Salon was very poorly attended. However, there was a three-hour wait to get into the Salon Refusé and all because of Meadow.
Xavier eventually got through the most intense effects of the medicine and in his gratitude wanted to go retrieve Meadow for the apothecary woman. So he walked back into the city, now noticing a whole different range of colours of dull and dirty, which all in all is still pretty exciting to someone who has never seen colour before. Coming to the Salon Refusé he pushed through the crowd. He figured he would have to buy the painting back since it the purpose of the building was to exhibit works of shame. He went to speak to the curator and offered a meagre sum for the painting without having gone to look at it. The curator did not know him as the painter of Meadow and laughed at him. “You’re several thousand francs below the lowest bid. We’ll have sold that painting for millions by tomorrow.” Xavier was shocked and went to look at Meadow. Just as she was coming into sight, two art collectors began to argue in front of the painting. One of them grabbed Meadow from the wall and smashed her on the floor. The colours exploded like fireworks into a million hallucinations of the purest beauty colour could make. Xavier stood and watched in the double shock of the explosively hallucinatory demise of Meadow and the lost of monetary fortune.
The truly remarkable thing that happened that day was the change to the actual structure of the Salon Refusé building. The explosion caused changes in the building, which made for more favourable conditions for viewing paintings. All along it was never the paintings that were unworthy of being in the Salon just merely the fact that the Salon wasn’t necessarily the best place to hang certain paintings.
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