FREE Monologues
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I Wonder if Vincent...
I wonder if Vincent Van Gogh ever lay in his bed late at night, his heart pounding, wondering why nobody liked his paintings enough to buy them? Did he give it a thought? Or was he more concerned with what color to paint that dark starry night, or which greens would be best to depict those tall thin cypress trees? Or did he worry about where he’d get money to buy bread or did he just count on the kindness of strangers in little out of the way cafes to treat him to a pint and a loaf?
Did he worry about toxic substances in those green paints? I worry about toxic chemicals in my paints. They’re made of petroleum, after all, and we’re running out of that and what will I do when I can’t paint anymore? When all the paint is gone—all the greens are gone--and the world reverts back to black and white? What will any of us do?
(shrugs) It won’t matter because nobody buys real art anyway. Sure, they’ll go up to Wal-Mart or online at some poster shop and buy a cheap reproduction for 14.95 and slap a $200 frame around it. I even did that once, when I was young. It was Vincent’s Starry Night, as a matter of fact. I didn’t know any better, didn’t know it was cranked out in China by the thousands….millions, maybe…and sold for almost nothing. Art as commodity. All I knew was that I liked his pictures and wanted some of them in my home.
An art consultant called me once to do three paintings for a new space. That girl was nuts…she wanted me to redo a painting I’d already done, in a different size because they had a specific niche to fill on one wall. Crazy woman saw a two-inch picture on my website that looked like crap on her computer monitor and she wanted me to copy it. So I tried—three times! The blue’s not right, she says. The purple’s not the same, she complained, it doesn’t have enough red in it. On and on til I’d had ENOUGH and told her to find someone else. Then she got all nice as pie and begged me to reconsider. It seems she had waited until the last minute and had an ART EMERGENCY. Geez.
I wonder, did Vincent ever have an art emergency? Would he care if he knew how many dorm rooms and young teen apartments were decorated with his paintings…or, in the case, bad copies of his paintings on really bad paper? Or would he care if he knew how many interior designers fretted over those cypress greens, and whether they would match the designer upholstery?
Or would he be happy that his art was out there for people to enjoy?
I just wonder what he would say.
END
Bobbi A. Chukran is a playwright who lives in Texas. She writes award-winning comedy plays and blogs at http://bobbichukran.blogspot.com.
Read more about Bobbi’s work at http://bobbichukran.com
I wonder if Vincent Van Gogh ever lay in his bed late at night, his heart pounding, wondering why nobody liked his paintings enough to buy them? Did he give it a thought? Or was he more concerned with what color to paint that dark starry night, or which greens would be best to depict those tall thin cypress trees? Or did he worry about where he’d get money to buy bread or did he just count on the kindness of strangers in little out of the way cafes to treat him to a pint and a loaf?
Did he worry about toxic substances in those green paints? I worry about toxic chemicals in my paints. They’re made of petroleum, after all, and we’re running out of that and what will I do when I can’t paint anymore? When all the paint is gone—all the greens are gone--and the world reverts back to black and white? What will any of us do?
(shrugs) It won’t matter because nobody buys real art anyway. Sure, they’ll go up to Wal-Mart or online at some poster shop and buy a cheap reproduction for 14.95 and slap a $200 frame around it. I even did that once, when I was young. It was Vincent’s Starry Night, as a matter of fact. I didn’t know any better, didn’t know it was cranked out in China by the thousands….millions, maybe…and sold for almost nothing. Art as commodity. All I knew was that I liked his pictures and wanted some of them in my home.
An art consultant called me once to do three paintings for a new space. That girl was nuts…she wanted me to redo a painting I’d already done, in a different size because they had a specific niche to fill on one wall. Crazy woman saw a two-inch picture on my website that looked like crap on her computer monitor and she wanted me to copy it. So I tried—three times! The blue’s not right, she says. The purple’s not the same, she complained, it doesn’t have enough red in it. On and on til I’d had ENOUGH and told her to find someone else. Then she got all nice as pie and begged me to reconsider. It seems she had waited until the last minute and had an ART EMERGENCY. Geez.
I wonder, did Vincent ever have an art emergency? Would he care if he knew how many dorm rooms and young teen apartments were decorated with his paintings…or, in the case, bad copies of his paintings on really bad paper? Or would he care if he knew how many interior designers fretted over those cypress greens, and whether they would match the designer upholstery?
Or would he be happy that his art was out there for people to enjoy?
I just wonder what he would say.
END
Bobbi A. Chukran is a playwright who lives in Texas. She writes award-winning comedy plays and blogs at http://bobbichukran.blogspot.com.
Read more about Bobbi’s work at http://bobbichukran.com