Saturday, August 3, 2013

a man and his monkey


This is the story of a man and a monkey.

There was a man who had a monkey whom he kept in a cage, mostly.  No one ever knew the man had the monkey.  The monkey was quiet and happy most of the time, and didn’t mind being in the cage at all.

The man was an artist.

One day the man prepared his studio to begin a new painting.  He laid out his paints and brushes and pinned some loose canvas on the wall, as was his custom.  Then he un-caged the monkey and set him amongst the painting materials.  The monkey took right to it.  He had a grand time splashing and smearing paint all over the canvas.  He made quite a mess.  After an hour or so the monkey seemed to lose interest, and so the man cleaned him up and returned him to his cage.

Several days later, after the paint had dried, the man took the canvas off the wall and measured it and built a stretcher for it.  After stretching the canvas the man built a nice frame for it as well.  The man signed the painting.  Then he filled his pipe with tobacco and sat and had a nice long smoke.

2 comments:

  1. Once there was a woman, an artist renouned as a monochrome expressionist, who had a pet crow. She gave him (?her - it's hard to tell) the run of the studio, which had canvas on the floor. She also had a dog, and usually he wasn't allowed in the studio. So when the canvas was well covered with dusty prints of the artist's shoes, and crow droppings, the artist would put the crow in his/her cage, open a tub of black or grey paint and bring the dog in to the studio; she would dip his paws in the paint, and set him to chasing a ball around the room. After a few days, when dog had been washed clean and the paint was dry, she would cut the canvas into squares, mount them, give the series a title, and send it all off to her gallery.

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