No. 117: Apelles. It was Easter, the Festival of Regeneration, and he needed to paint an egg. An egg was the essential symbol of new life in the offing. He was thinking, too. of old Apelles, the virtuoso painter of ancient Greece. Apelles could draw a perfect egg in one stroke before you could blink an eye. He also pondered the intimidating brilliance of the venerable Constantin Brancusi: all those egg-shaped heads and bodies.
No.116. Wolf on the Tracks. There were times--and they were on the increase--when he began to suspect that his vision of an Agit-Prop Art Train were grandiose, narcissistic and, worst of all, childish. This growing restlessness of his was sadly but profoundly deepened by repeated visits to his studio by his least favourite art critic, Wolf Blitzen. Blitzen always succeeded in reducing his beloved railway dream to the product of some overexcited little boys' playtime, recalibrating his exquisitely designed railway cars into clumsy toy wagons, and making him feel like a clown in the process. Clearly, Wolf had to go. But how was he going to manage that? .
No. 115. The Basket of Fruit. A friend of his, a painter living in the countryside not far from his studio, had suddenly begun to make shaped canvases. Abstract shaped canvases. He thought they were really exquisite. He loved the idea of shapedness, and wanted to try his hand at it, but since he'd never painted an entirely non-representational canvas in his life, he decided he'd have a go at making shaped still life paintings. His first was a big basket of fruit--in grisaille.
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