Juskinder: Emphasis on depth

A young woman from Stuttgart, who painted well, at her first exhibition, a critic, who had no ill intentions but just wanted to push her, said to her: "Your paintings show your talent and are quite pleasing to the eye, but your depth is far from enough." ”

The young woman did not understand what the critic was referring to, and for a moment she forgot his comment. But the next day the newspaper published the critic's afterthought, writing: "This young female artist is very intelligent, and her paintings look satisfactory at first, but unfortunately these paintings lack depth." ”

The young woman began to think. She looked at her paintings as she rummaged through her old satchel. She carefully examined all the paintings she had painted, including those that were in the process of being created. Then she screwed on the paint bottle, dried the pen, and went out for a walk.

That evening, she was invited to visit. People seem to know the newspaper review, praising her outstanding talent and paintings that at first glance leave great satisfaction and comfort. But from the whispers of the people in the corners and standing with their backs to her, if the young woman pricked up her ears and listened, she would hear something like this: "She has no depth, that's what it is." She wasn't bad, but unfortunately she didn't have depth. ”

For the entire week that followed, the young woman did not paint anything. She sat silently in her room, like a patient who had fallen into the deep sea, thinking desperately, with only one thought in her mind, and hugged it tightly, wrapped around it: "Why don't I have depth?" ”

In the second week, the woman tried to continue painting, but she drew nothing but a few clumsy drafts. Sometimes she couldn't even draw a line. Finally her hands were shaking so badly that she couldn't even put the pen in the paint bottle. Then she began to cry and shouted, "Yes, that's right, I have no depth!" ”

In the third week, she began to flip through albums, study the works of other painters, and go to galleries and museums. She read books on art theory, walked into bookstores, and asked the clerks to look for the most in-depth books in the library. She got a book written by a certain man named Wittgenstein, but she couldn't read it at all.

At the exhibition "Five Hundred Years of European Painting" at the Municipal Museum, she joined a group of students led by their art teacher. In front of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, she suddenly stepped forward and asked, "I'm sorry... Can you tell me that this painting has depth? The art teacher grinned and replied, "If you want to make fun of me, you should get up early, lady of mercy!" All the students laughed loudly, and the young woman turned around and left, and when she returned home, she cried sadly.

The young woman was getting more and more eccentric. She hardly ever left the studio anymore, but she couldn't draw anything. She took medicine, in order to keep her head clear, but did not know why she should clear her mind. She got tired and slept in a chair because she didn't dare to go to bed, afraid of the depth of sleep. She also began to drink heavily, not turning off the lights all night. She no longer paints. When a arts and crafts merchant called from Berlin and asked her to paint a few paintings, she shouted into the microphone: "You let me be quiet!" I don't have depth! She occasionally pinched substitute clay, but without a fixed shape. She just stuck her hand in the clay or rubbed it into small balls of mud. She didn't trim the edges, she didn't pay attention to her dress, and the whole house was a mess.

Her friends were anxious for her. They said: "We have to care about her, she is in a crisis. The crisis may be interpersonal, artistic, or economic. The first situation we can't help, the second situation must be overcome by herself, and if it is a third case, we can donate some money for her, but it may embarrass her. So they limited her to inviting her to dinner or to social events. But she always refused on the grounds that she had to work. In fact, she never painted, just sat in her room, staring blankly ahead, or pinching substitute clay.

Once, she was so desperate about herself that she finally accepted an invitation. A young man she liked, who wanted to take her home after the party, wanted to sleep with her. She said he could have done it because she liked him too, it was just that she didn't have the depth and he had to be mentally prepared for it. Hearing her say this, the young man said goodbye to her.

The young woman, who had previously painted so well, was now becoming more and more depressed. She stays closed all day and no longer receives visitors. She gained weight due to lack of exercise, and she aged prematurely due to alcoholism and medication. Her room began to smell musty, and she herself was stinking and sour.

She received an inheritance of thirty thousand marks and lived on it for three years. During that time, she went to Naples once a year, and no one knew why she went there. Whoever greeted her, she muttered only a few vague words.

When the money was spent, the woman cut through all the newspapers she subscribed to, cut them full of holes, and then rode to the TV tower and jumped from a height of 139 meters. But on this day it was windy, and instead of falling to her death in the asphalt square under the tower, she was blown by the wind through a field of oats, fell to the edge of the forest, and fell on a fir tree, and despite this, she died on the spot.

Thanks to the road tabloids for learning the news. The suicide itself, the interesting drifting route, and the fact that this is a very promising female artist, and once so beautiful, all of this has a very high news value. Her house looks so messy that you can take colorful pictures of the landscape: thousands of bottles with the bottom of the bottle facing the sky, traces of destruction everywhere, shredded paintings everywhere, clumps of substitute clay on the walls, and even poop in the corner of the room! People boldly made a second eye-catching headline, and a special report was also published on the third page.

The critic mentioned at the beginning wrote a short essay in the supplement expressing his shock at the young woman's horrific end to her life. He wrote: "For those of us who are still alive, it is shocking to watch a gifted young man not find the strength to persevere in the circle. If it is mainly concerned with the care of human nature and the companionship of reason in the field of art, then the mere sponsorship of the state and the assistance of private individuals are not enough. However, the cause of this tragic ending ultimately seems to be her. Because her early works still seem naïve, they do not show the kind of startling inner contradictions, but from the stubborn pigment blending technique used to convey information, can not glimpse the inner confusion, spiral-like stubbornness, and at the same time the highly emotionally impulsive but obviously futile resistance of a creature to the self? I almost want to say, isn't that a reckless and cold coercion of depth? ”