The old man had entered the contest for wood sculpting six months ago. Now, at the deadline, it was finished. As the crowd walked by and viewed his creation, they remarked that he should not have carved a living tree. His vision wouldn’t have worked on a dead one.
As more people viewed it, he wondered if the world had forgotten abstract art. Did everything have to be realism? He got angrier by the minute at their criticisms and tried to explain abstraction.
He got angry and threw his ax in the middle of the tree.
He won the award.
Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields and Friday Fictioneers!
The Write Scribe 
Funny how that works.
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Art is just the way we react to particular arrangements of matter
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Interesting definition. 🤔
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Ha, passion and anger have an important role to play in art, for sure!
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I’m sure many abstract artists get impatient with those who can’t ‘see’ their work. Nicely done, Rosemary.
Susan A Eames at
Travel, Fiction and Photos
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Dear Rosemary,
Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Rochelle: I, of course, know that. This was a work of fiction.
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The axe obviously completed his creation, in the opinion of the judges.
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You got it exactly!
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I have known a artist or two who would react in this way. You made me smile,
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An axe sculpturer! Good for him.
Click to read my FriFic tale!
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Meaty take, on realism vs abstraction in art.
Realism, in the sense that this is a real tree, and thus a living being, which should be left alone, would definitely work against this artist.
In the common sense, that of portraying objects as they actually appear in the world around us, the carving could be said to be realistic.
This apparently was not the artist’s intent at all. Im sure he had something much grander or more symbolic in mind.
But im notsure in what sense he uses the word “abstraction”. He leaves me as confused as the onlookers seem to be, Im afraid.
Perhaps that is the point, that he is unable to communicate his intent. The character of theartist who speaks better through his artwork than through his words is well-portrayed here.
As for the final work, hatchet and all, for which he won the prize, this seems to allude to therandom, capricious nature of recognition inart, and is insightful, indeed. 😊
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Ha! I love that his axe landed in the tree, I bet if i’d have tried it would have landed handle first, the embedding of the axe deserves first prize!!
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He won because no body understood what he created or because he was really good?
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He won because the judges thought the ax somehow completed the abstraction.
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So–they didn’t understand abstraction, but they understood rage and murder. That’s a pretty sad commentary.
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The axe somehow completed the abstraction or so thought the judges.
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The subjectiveness of art. Great take.
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I get why he won but he should have been disqualified for carving into a living tree
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