I see a red dot and I want to paint it black

/ Doug Jacquier

This piece was written in response to the weekly photo prompt from the 250-word maximum Unicorn Challenge.

I’d been taken by some friends to an exhibition at the Monte Carlo Opera House. The gallery included a redwood refectory table that seemed to have been adzed by a blind drunk and chunky chairs that would require a backside like a mattress to endure for longer than five minutes. The wine was served in pottery goblets made by a local ‘craftsperson’ who believed that anything that would sit on a flat surface was hopelessly bourgeois.

Designer overalls and wraps competed as statement garments and dreadlocks mingled with severe haircuts for men and women, either celebrating their grey or signaling their cool with streaks of various colours.

The paintings themselves were devoid of any talent for drawing or eye for colour, evoking Alice in Wonderland visiting India. Red stick-on dots adorned each piece, indicating sales. Everyone was riding on the red.

A growing susurration led to a focus on a stairway, from which reluctantly descended a fey young man with Jesus locks and wispy beard. It wasn’t quite the Second Coming but the beatific faces of the assembled multitude would have given you pause for thought. Soon besieged by the moon-faced adoration of the throng, he retreated upstairs (perhaps even to Heaven?).

Once the wine had run out, my friends asked me to gush over the precocious talent on display. I proffered ‘Those images will haunt me until I resolve them more fully.’ They nodded sagely.

I headed for the casino and put all my money on the black.

16 thoughts on “I see a red dot and I want to paint it black”

  3. Visiting the Adelaide Art Gallery recently evoked a similar response from my wife and myself. I was hoping to see at least a couple of masterpieces but we were “treated” to a conglomeration of pieces ranging from the banal to the ridiculous, including one piece comprised of the conjoined carcasses of a horse and a cow! I kid you not! I’d like some of what he/she was on, please.

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  5. I once went to the opening of an exhibition by a local artist a friend of mine gushed about.
    I thought they had mistakenly framed pictures taken from the walls of a kindergarten.
    But there were quite a few zeroes after the £ sign.
    You depict the milieu with your customary wit – I must remember that ‘haunting’ comment, it’s a good one.

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    • Thanks, Jenne. Although I do remeber an old cartoon of a man standing in front of a piece of modern art and saying ‘My four year old could paint better than that’ and an art buff standing nearby saying ‘And they could probably say something more intelligent.’

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  7. Have never had the occasion (or invitation) to such an event.

    However, your line/phrase made the trip (here) worthwhile:

    “…anything that would sit on a flat surface was hopelessly bourgeois.”

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