de chirico and the demon, casting their spell

A minister – a man who expelled demons – looked upon the painting in horror. A demon hid behind the face of Mercury. The painter had hid the demon there, standing behind himself hiding in the face of Mercury, so that together – with the pieces of both man and demon souls wrapped in the acrylics – they could curse the foolish ones that stared too long at the canvas. Those foolish men and women that sat in benches and tried to sketch out the shapes and colors by hand shall never achieve this artist’s skill. The patrons that gawk and gape shall fall in love with bad paintings and become laughingstocks. The gallery attendants that stand around and blankly watch to make sure the art never moves will feel the evil inside of them, of sparked and sparkling imaginations in dull professions. This, the minister saw.
The minister called over the security manager. The minister shouted his holy warning to the ceiling.
“Remove this painting, lest the museum wallow in this terrible curse!”
The security manager, a practical man, decided that the time had come to expel the minister from the museum.
For, this is an art museum, after all. Curses are just as important as Christ’s Medieval Blessings and the Iconography of saints.
The painted curse will wait for you. Do not look too long lest the evil fill you up.
And if you do look too long, seek out a blessed saint to expel the curse. Sit in front of the painted blessings until the holy eyes close.

(de Chirico, after his time walking with the demons, selling his soul for glory and fame, then fell into arrogance. he declared himself the greatest painter, the heir to titian. he decried the moral decrepitude of his times. like all who sold their soul to the devil to be the greatest of anything, he was unappreciated and derided and he lived a long life in shame, wrapped in the cloak of classicism in a world devoted to modernist regressions.)

[I'd share with you the painting itself that inspired this post, however it is not an easy thing to find in the world, and it is also certainly an evil thing to find. a beautiful, evil thing.]