🎨 An Artist's Journey

by Jon Clendaniel

He started with the earlobes. 

Why he chose the earlobes was anyone’s guess. Perhaps it was because of their incongruity, their flabbiness, the way they felt between his fingers. Or perhaps it was their ease of removal. Either way, as soon as the headline “Man Lops Off Own Earlobes” hit, combined with the viral video footage, his destiny was sealed. An artist was born. 

Next, he removed his feet with a hacksaw in the middle of Central Park. People came from all over the world to bear witness. When the saw cut through the last bits of flesh, a cheer erupted loud enough to be heard throughout Brooklyn and Queens.

He took to walking the streets on his newly cauterized limbs, and sometimes children would point and laugh and call him “Stumpy.” But then the parents would intervene, whispering “Shh, you mustn’t make fun. That’s a serious artist at work.”  

For his next display he cut deep slits in his skin, creating little flaps which patrons could lift to reveal his raw, pulsating muscles. He titled the installation “Behold the Ugliness Within.” It was a hit at the Met for three months running. He stood naked in the center of the gallery, propped up on his stumps, as giggling schoolchildren poked at his sinews and hipsters stood off to the side, stroking their goatees. 

Who could forget when he flayed himself in his own backyard, tearing off strips of skin and flinging them to the various scavenger creatures assembled around him? Raccoons, rats, stray dogs and cats sat arranged in a most orderly arc, nibbling at his offerings of flesh. He called this installation “Cannabalaria,” and it was yet another viral hit. Many of his more ardent fans wrote to him, requesting their own samples.

Shortly after, he had the bones in his limbs surgically rearranged so that he was forced to crab-walk backwards with his head turned upright like the girl from The Exorcist. Some felt this installment was a bit derivative. Warner Bros. threatened to sue. 

It was then that the artist entered a prolonged period of seclusion. Fans camped outside his house for weeks on end, pining for a glimpse of their idol. Whenever his silhouette appeared in the window there was a widespread, hushed murmur in the crowd. “What’s he doing in there?” they asked. “What genius is he concocting now?”

They got their answer when the artist announced his boldest installation yet. On live television, he was to be hung by the neck while his limbs were simultaneously pulled in four directions by hydraulics and his head was blown off by a shotgun. 

When the deed was done, the cameras were turned off, and the world’s televisions were flipped to the nightly sports highlights or footage from the latest war, one of his fans rushed to his side. She knelt beside his limbless body, the gaping hole in his head still oozing blood and brain matter. She could feel the artistic genius emanating from him. Overcome with admiration and near-orgasmic wonder, she closed her eyes and smiled. 

“My goodness,” she said, “what will he think of next?”