So-So Blog

‘The End’ #2

Introduction
These are stories for artists and creators of work. People might stamp it as finished or beyond hope of resurrection, but the artist’s eye will always look at THE END from a different perspective.

Chapter One
Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1939. The postman called with a large package. It was received by a thin young man with a nose and a sweet disposition, a cartoonist called Antonio Prohias. Antonio politely thanked the postman and took the parcel into the kitchen. He opened it in silence. It was a collection of his drawings, targeted at a prestigious newspaper. It had been returned unopened. Antonio sat looking at this parcel for a long time.
Thirty-two years later, Antonio Prohias finally laid these drawings to rest in a cenotaph for Cartoonist Profiles. His more auspicious, recognised and celebrated creations gathered around the grave to pay their respects to their brother ‘Agapito’ – ‘The Unborn’. They looked like the demons of Bosch and Breugel and they all had inherited Antonio’s nose: El Hombre Sinestro, the Russian Communist Tovarich and Prohias’ legacy to the world, the MAD stalwarts, the Black Spy and the White Spy. No trinitrotoluene, no bullet holes, no intricate weapons of cartoon destruction. Symmetrical arms folded and heads bowed – a momentary reverent armistice.

Chapter Two
Manhattan, New York, 1972. Robert Mapplerthorpe dropped a jar containing an unborn human foetus. Forever scavenging for inspirational “found” objects to use in his art, he got it from an abandoned hospital on Staten Island (which has since been demolished). It slipped from his excited fingers and crashed to the ground. He stood there with formaldehyde splashes on his shoes. With a blank look on his face, he said to his companion, the poet Patti Smith, “You go in. I’ll clean this up.”
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