An artist was exhibiting his painting of an old man chopping wood on a winter”s day. In response to the often posed question, “What are you trying to say in this painting?” the artist said, “I mean to say the imagination of man could be put to valuable uses if he were trained to master it and to sensitize it, and that the use of the imagination should be a required undergraduate course in all colleges and universities. I mean also to list a few of the uses to which it could be put and to refer the viewer to Seneca”s words on the subject on the imagination. Do any of you get this from it?”
When the viewers, who had been stricken wordless, recovered speech, one said, “I may be stupid, but I confess I can”t see any of that in it.”
“You mean,” cried the artist, “that I have painted this whole picture in vain? Then I might as well destroy it (taking it from the wall). Shall I destroy it?”
“No, no!” the viewers cried in chorus, “Don”t destroy such a work, by any means!”
“Well, then,” said the artist, returning the painting to its place on the wall, “when you tell me why I should not destroy it, you will have answered your question as to what I am trying to say by painting it.”
Dean Sparks, Lucerne
