war of art

August 29 2019

By Sammy Iovino – March 2019

No one remembers the Scourge of the late 20’s. People today have no idea what it was like to have endless beauty one day and only gray, the next. A rainbow of colors on a spectrum unbound by limits. Works by masters and apprentices, both, all telling a story with countless interpretations and emotions. All gone. Centuries of creations all destroyed because of one man. One man who wrote a book. A man who had an idea, who had a following: the Zealous. Together, they successfully tore through every museum and private collection; all government structures and universities; every building and home that contained any piece of art; they were all ransacked.

All art supply stores: Dick Blick, Michaels and every department store was burgled, removing every crayon and ounce of paint, anything that could be used to create. They were unstoppable. Their numbers were far too great for any military force or municipality.

And when they had every known piece of work, they went through again and took drafts and scribbles, sketches and doodles… they took any palettes of dried paint and oils; they even took shavings from colored pencils and crayons.

After they had everything, they put it all in massive vats, larger than buildings, they scraped, melted and boiled everything down. They spent months, locked in factories, devising, plotting, creating. And then the day came: the Reveal. ON live TV, in front of the entire world, they unveiled their end game in the square outside of St. Peter’s Basilica, in Rome: In arguably the epicenter of some of the greatest works produced by the unmatched masters of long ago and in an act of sacrilege to their craft and memories, they displayed a cache of weapons; thousands of handguns and assault rifles; bazookas and grenades; and in the middle: crates and crates of paintballs. Millions upon millions of tiny little orbs, filled with the very materials that were used to create all the artwork they savagely ruined.

Their leader, Tzu Sun, grabbed the first weapon and inserted a clip. He cocked the gun, aimed and fired a shot directly at the spire in the square’s center. A rainbow colored splotch formed on the marble like a Rorschach. His followers roared with excitement. Thousands of men, women and children flailing around like animals, howling and chanting. In the midst of the celebrating, guns, filled with paintballs, were dispersed throughout the crowd. The cheering slowed until silence was left, and once every weapon was handed out, the followers directed their attention to their leader who was now standing upon a stack of ammo crates, holding a book, his book. He spent the next several minutes reading from a passage at the end;

“The Master, together with his Zealous, gathered harmoniously within the square, took up their brushes of metal, and in front of an awe-filled, world audience, created the single greatest work ever known to mankind: The War of ART!”

As he yelled out the title, he pointed his gun into the air and fired an entire clip of paint as the Zealous went insane. He then through the book into the crowd, signaling the start. The sound of guns drowned out the screams of delight as paint shot out in every direction, covering everything in the square. Followers shot whatever they could and grabbed more ammo, again and again. When paint covered every surface, they turned the guns on each other in an epic game of paintball, the largest ever played. It went on for a solid 5 minutes before the last of the paint was used. There were cries of laughter and of pain as people hobbled around and nursed welts from the close-range hits they endured, and as the commotion died down, the Zealous looked among them. The entire plaza was enveloped in color. Media drones overhead captured their creation for the world to see. As the MAster and his Zealous marveled in their creation, the audience sat silent, mourning the cost. Tzu Sun looked into the camera of a drone that hovered in front of him and with pretension and an ignorant sense of self, said, “you’re welcome!”

For Ben:

As he smiled and admired what he had done, an audible thump could be heard. Then another and another. Hundreds of bodies hit the floor. The collective mood turned from joy to fear as the Zealous started dropping, dozens at a time until the square was filled with thousands of people, lying on top of each other. Tzu Sun looked around in horror as every one of his followers fell and lay motionless. The fumes from the old paints became toxic when mixed with the CO2 from the guns, poisoning everyone. Tzu Sun started feeling faint and dropped to his knees. He looked up to the sky and stared into the sun as his eyes started getting heavy. He knew he was going to suffer the same fate and just before he fell, he noticed something flying straight down at him. And with a flash, it was all over. The UN had authorized the dropping of a bomb on the terrorist group. It was the first time in history that an entire terror organization, every cell, was gathered together in one spot. The group had even announced the day for months on social media and television. They advertised where and when they would all be, plus it was in his book. It took 5 minutes to unveil The War of Art, but it took 6 minutes for the missle to travel from the other side of the world.