RP: Shadows and Light: the artist in his art
Date: April 2, 2005
Character(s): Cedric
Location: museum + his barn
Status: Private
Summary: The artist in the art. Cedric learns a few things from his mother, and a canvas is prepared. This is sort of a continuation of Shadows and Light: a memoir. Adult material.
Completion: Complete
For the first time, Cedric thought he might truly understand his mother's life-long obsession -- the way it could take over her awareness and push out everything else.
There was no damn place in his office to get the right quality of light. Pulling at his hair in frustration, Cedric grabbed his sketch pad and went outside to sit on the museum steps where he could eat his lunch and draw. It was sunny here -- but perhaps a bit too sunny with the glare bouncing up off the white pavement, half blinding him. He needed it to be more ... controlled.
Snatching up his mostly forgotten lunch, he went inside again, up to the open third floor where the art would eventually hang. Some was already there adorning the walls, awaiting descriptive plaques giving title, artist, dates and other information. Cedric spread out his lunch once more and sat down in the middle of the wooden floor, pad on his knees, struggling to capture the living flow of the Thames. He worked with simple charcoal for now, still dealing with ideas, not final renderings.
Yet it wasn't really the Thames he wanted to draw -- that obsessed him.
Pulling out the restaurant napkin he kept in his breast pocket near his heart, he unfolded it, pressing it flat to the floor. Katie's face looked back at him. Smiling, he ran his fingers over it, then flipped a page in the pad and went back to work, drawing what he wanted to draw. If he drew her enough, would he get the obsession out of his system?
It was well after three in the afternoon before his back was aching too badly for him to ignore it, and he remembered it was a Monday -- he was supposed to be working, not drawing. He ran a museum, he didn't produce the art for it. This was just his little fancy. Unfortunately, he was finding it hard to concentrate on anything -- had been since Saturday.
Despite the late hour when he and Katie had returned to Stoatshead, he'd been up early on Sunday and out at his property, inside the tack room in his barn, digging through the trunk of his mother's old art supplies. He'd organized it all on the floor of the room to see what he had to work with -- mostly left overs: charcoals and quills and penknives, three stretched canvases on frames, tiny tins of ground minerals and plants used for tints, as well as small iron boxes containing magical substances like dragon's blood and dusted pixy wings, fur from selkies, venom from a manticore, dung from a mooncalf, and the ground bill of a cockatrice.
He'd not really known what those things did, only knew that magical tints weren't made like Muggle. So pulling out his mobile, he'd rung up his mother.
"Is something wrong?" she'd asked, voice thick with sleep.
And he'd only then realized what time it must be there. "Er, no, sorry. I, uh, wasn't looking at my watch." He'd done so then. A little after nine in the morning ... meaning it was 4am in Toronto. "Sorry, mum."
"What on earth has you up at this hour?"
"Painting."
A long pause. "Painting?"
"I'm ... well -- I need your help with recipes for tints. Would you share a few?"
"What are you going to paint?"
"The Thames." All right, so that'd been ... only half a lie. The Thames would be in the background.
She'd sighed. "Cedric, go to an art supply store and buy some acrylics if all you're painting is a river. You don't need special tint recipes for that."
Annoyed, he'd snapped. "It's not just a river."
"Ah. So what else is it, besides a river?"
He'd scratched a nail over the fabric of the ugly rug on the tack room floor. "A girl. A woman."
"I see." She'd been laughing at him. Not aloud, but he knew her. "Hermione?"
"What? Oh -- no. No, not Hermione." He'd frowned. Was she really that far behind? But yes, he'd reckoned she probably was.
"Then who?"
"Er, well, um -- Katie Bell."
"Jordan Bell's daughter?"
"I don't know. I suppose." It had suddenly struck him that he had no idea what Katie's father was named.
"Cedric, you are aware the Bells are a pure-blood family? Many of them supported You-Know-Who,"
"I know, mum. Katie's not like that. She doesn't care I'm not a pureblood and she fought Voldemort. She's got the scars to prove it. He almost killed her too."
She must have heard something in his voice. "How serious are things with Miss Bell? The last I heard, you were quite head-over-heels for Miss Granger."
"Not ... We're not seeing each other, mum. Well, just as friends. We've been friends a while. Months. Things with Hermione didn't work out. I just ... I don't know what happened with Katie. We were friends and then --" Then I woke up, he'd wanted to say, but that would sound silly. "I just want to paint her. She thinks I can draw. I want to try."
And that had won the longest silence of all. "She does, does she?"
And Cedric had felt suddenly stupid. "Maybe I shouldn't -- "
"Be still. I'll send you my recipes by owl, but you will likely need my help with some of them. And you'll have to prepare the canvas too."
"There are some here -- "
"Those are no good. Well, not like they are. You have to prepare them, not me. The magic comes from you, Cedric. You can't mix paints yourself and use my prepped canvases. What you need to do is take a knife -- is one there?"
Reaching out, he'd picked up one. "Yes, several."
"Good, take one of the larger ones, and be careful with it, but you need to scrape the surface -- every bit of the gesso off the old canvases. You understand?"
"Yes."
"Good. Expect the recipe book tomorrow. It will tell you how to prepare the canvas for your own magic. I'm going back to bed now."
He'd smiled. "Thanks, mum."
Indeed, by sunset Monday as he was leaving the museum, a large international owl swooped down, dropping a package into his hands before sailing off. He tore off the wrapping to find himself holding a black leather book. He could feel the magic yielding as he opened it; she must have spelled it for him only. Inside were pages and pages of tint recipes and other art potions. He was mindful of the gift -- painters rarely shared their recipes. Special shades and special magic could be closely guarded secrets. Even being her son, he hadn't been certain what he'd get.
But this looked to be a copy of her complete book, concealing nothing. He was a bit surprised that she'd managed to get it ready for him so quickly, until he read the note slipped inside the front cover. This was begun for you when you were two and three and we painted together under the pines in Tuscany. I've kept it up over the years, waiting for the day you'd ask for it.
He walked back to the front steps of the museum and sat down, head bowed, biting the edge of his hand, trying not to cry. Then he Apparated directly to his barn to get out the canvas he'd stripped on Sunday and a cauldron he'd scoured, opening the book to the first page. Canvas Preparation
He skipped the parts about stretching and the frame. He'd need that later, but he already had three that were prepared in that respect. He only had to reapply the gesso, the base, which would support the actual paint even after the canvas beneath began to deteriorate -- and that was what he had to make from scratch because it had to be his magic that went into it, not hers.
Reading through the recipe, he wished he were better at Potions. His mother had implied at times that his inability might be more the fault of the teacher than his (the student's) aptitude for the subject. He did exceptionally well in Transfigurations and Charms, but he hadn't wanted to continue to NEWTs in Potions if it had meant suffering Snape. But now he understood exactly how difficult real potion making could be. The gesso was the root of the whole painting. If he got this wrong, it would warp everything.
Chalk, gypsum, egg white and cheese glue ground with lime. That was easy enough ... but there was more to this.
Depending on the mood and force desired for the painting, the painter must include sweat, blood, sexual fluid, saliva, or tears. Combining fluids produces a more subtle reaction. For instance, sweat and tears will evoke stress or fear muted by longing or sorrow.
All gesso should include the painters blood, roughly one thimble-full per gallon. It will not be enough to taint the shade, but it will allow the painter's magic to penetrate. Without the blood and body fluid, the magic will be cold animation only with no power to move the one who looks upon it. The motivation in the fluid matters, as well. Tears gleaned from onions or other artificial means will yield nothing in the heart of the viewer. Sweat from work does not produce the same result as sweat from fear. Ejaculate from random fantasies will bring only vague stirrings. Match the body fluid to the intention. The artist must live the art. Always discard what is left. Never use it for a different painting.
Beneath this in different colored ink, she'd added: Be careful with the amounts, Cedric. A true artist leads his viewer through the power of the image, he doesn't compel a response by magic. The latter is crude -- the method of hacks.
That made him smile. It sounded so like his mother.
But the rest of it ... Well, he had the raw materials here to make perhaps a quart of gesso. He'd need to find a supply outlet for more if he decided to continue. But a quart ... it might be enough for the smallest of the three frames.
The base itself wasn't difficult to blend -- it was just a foundation -- but the magic altered it. That took precision. Stirring at the right speed, in the right direction, for the right amount of time, and adding the materials in the correct order. The most difficult part was deciding exactly what he wanted to convey.
It wasn't desire ... or not of the usual kind. She stirred that in him, certainly, but it went beyond that. It was longing, too, and kinship, trust, affection -- all those things. He looked over his mother's lists of body fluids and suggested amounts for differing effects. But it felt rather ... clinical. She'd said he had to live it, or it wouldn't work.
Leaving the canvas and half-prepared mixture in the barn, he went outside, looking up at the sky. It was well past sunset now, and the full moon had punched a hole in the cloud cover. It silvered the budding trees and the grass and the jagged remains of the fireplace. He could feel the life in the ground, sluggish as it awoke to spring.
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
... And she turn'd -- her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs --
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes --
Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong";
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."
Tennyson. It wasn't a happy poem, as he remembered it -- a doomed sort of affair between cousins. Cedric might not be literally related to Katie, but he nonetheless worried. He couldn't stop how he felt, not any more than he could have stopped the Hogwarts Express. It had risen up behind him when he hadn't been looking, tapped him on the shoulder softly, then just bowled him over. But her friendship ... it meant a lot. She was like him -- kin in heart if not in blood -- and if things didn't work out, he'd be alone again. But if it did ... oh, if it did ... To have his best friend turn his lover -- it was what he wanted most of all.
Sitting down on the grass, he cast a warming spell (it was still chilly at night) and stretched out, studying the constellations arcing over him in a glitter of white and pale reds and blues. The stars were a constant. When he was dust for a thousand years, they'd remain.
He closed his eyes and thought about Saturday night by the river. That was what he wanted to paint. Katie sitting on the rail by the Thames. He just didn't know if he had the skill and talent to capture that, and not only for the art, but for the twist in his chest and the feeling that he couldn't get enough air, the giddy thunder-beat of his heart. Desire, yes, but not only -- Everythingblendedpulledtogetherstirredandgelling ...
He reached down and undid his zip, hands stroking himself while he tried to feel that, remember the damp sheen on her lips catching the lamplight, the glitter in her eyes, on her hair, the shadows from high cheekbones, even the tiny moles dotting her face. He would kiss each one of them and lick the taste of her off her mouth. He recalled her touch on his back when they'd danced and the feel of her whole body against his. Squeezing his prick, he moved his hand up and down in time to the song, slow, lazy -- like the movement of the water in the river, like their feet on the dance floor, like his hand on her back and hers on his. Would her hands on him be lazy like that? Gentle? Would she rock against him in a rhythm like the water?
Not enough. He wanted more. He wanted to feel her tongue sliding along his in firm strokes and the press of tongue tip to tongue tip. He hissed, imagining it. His prick hardened in his hand and he sped up, moving from fantasies of his tongue in her mouth to himself in her body. Enveloped. Limbs and logistics didn't matter and for a little while, it was just sensation and the up-and-down rhythm of his hand on himself, up-and-down like the round-and-round shuffle of their feet on the floor and her hip pressed into him, her breasts flat against his chest, the warmth of her warming him. Dancing was sex with clothes on.
When he came, it surprised him and his grunt was short and sharp. He hadn't realized he'd been so close, but all of a sudden he was tumbling over the edge, white seed spurting, pooling in his palm.
For a few seconds, he just breathed, then pushed himself up and didn't even bother to fix his clothing more than necessary. He had to hurry before his sweat dried. Back in the barn, he took precise amounts with tiny silver measuring spoons. Semen, blood, and sweat. Not too much, just enough. Less is more. Blood first, then sweat, then just a drop of seed. Essentials added, he had to stir immediately, first clockwise three times, then counter once, then clockwise again.
And stop. Lift the spoon carefully and turn on the heat, let it brew at medium for exactly one hour, not a minute more or less. It gave him time to go and clean himself up. When he came back to inspect it, it was bubbling slowly like a pulse beat. A strange sheen, almost pearlescent, rose up like steam. He held his hand over it for a moment, then sucked in sharp breath at the sensation of raw want it evoked.
The artist in the art indeed.
Character(s): Cedric
Location: museum + his barn
Status: Private
Summary: The artist in the art. Cedric learns a few things from his mother, and a canvas is prepared. This is sort of a continuation of Shadows and Light: a memoir. Adult material.
Completion: Complete
For the first time, Cedric thought he might truly understand his mother's life-long obsession -- the way it could take over her awareness and push out everything else.
There was no damn place in his office to get the right quality of light. Pulling at his hair in frustration, Cedric grabbed his sketch pad and went outside to sit on the museum steps where he could eat his lunch and draw. It was sunny here -- but perhaps a bit too sunny with the glare bouncing up off the white pavement, half blinding him. He needed it to be more ... controlled.
Snatching up his mostly forgotten lunch, he went inside again, up to the open third floor where the art would eventually hang. Some was already there adorning the walls, awaiting descriptive plaques giving title, artist, dates and other information. Cedric spread out his lunch once more and sat down in the middle of the wooden floor, pad on his knees, struggling to capture the living flow of the Thames. He worked with simple charcoal for now, still dealing with ideas, not final renderings.
Yet it wasn't really the Thames he wanted to draw -- that obsessed him.
Pulling out the restaurant napkin he kept in his breast pocket near his heart, he unfolded it, pressing it flat to the floor. Katie's face looked back at him. Smiling, he ran his fingers over it, then flipped a page in the pad and went back to work, drawing what he wanted to draw. If he drew her enough, would he get the obsession out of his system?
It was well after three in the afternoon before his back was aching too badly for him to ignore it, and he remembered it was a Monday -- he was supposed to be working, not drawing. He ran a museum, he didn't produce the art for it. This was just his little fancy. Unfortunately, he was finding it hard to concentrate on anything -- had been since Saturday.
Despite the late hour when he and Katie had returned to Stoatshead, he'd been up early on Sunday and out at his property, inside the tack room in his barn, digging through the trunk of his mother's old art supplies. He'd organized it all on the floor of the room to see what he had to work with -- mostly left overs: charcoals and quills and penknives, three stretched canvases on frames, tiny tins of ground minerals and plants used for tints, as well as small iron boxes containing magical substances like dragon's blood and dusted pixy wings, fur from selkies, venom from a manticore, dung from a mooncalf, and the ground bill of a cockatrice.
He'd not really known what those things did, only knew that magical tints weren't made like Muggle. So pulling out his mobile, he'd rung up his mother.
"Is something wrong?" she'd asked, voice thick with sleep.
And he'd only then realized what time it must be there. "Er, no, sorry. I, uh, wasn't looking at my watch." He'd done so then. A little after nine in the morning ... meaning it was 4am in Toronto. "Sorry, mum."
"What on earth has you up at this hour?"
"Painting."
A long pause. "Painting?"
"I'm ... well -- I need your help with recipes for tints. Would you share a few?"
"What are you going to paint?"
"The Thames." All right, so that'd been ... only half a lie. The Thames would be in the background.
She'd sighed. "Cedric, go to an art supply store and buy some acrylics if all you're painting is a river. You don't need special tint recipes for that."
Annoyed, he'd snapped. "It's not just a river."
"Ah. So what else is it, besides a river?"
He'd scratched a nail over the fabric of the ugly rug on the tack room floor. "A girl. A woman."
"I see." She'd been laughing at him. Not aloud, but he knew her. "Hermione?"
"What? Oh -- no. No, not Hermione." He'd frowned. Was she really that far behind? But yes, he'd reckoned she probably was.
"Then who?"
"Er, well, um -- Katie Bell."
"Jordan Bell's daughter?"
"I don't know. I suppose." It had suddenly struck him that he had no idea what Katie's father was named.
"Cedric, you are aware the Bells are a pure-blood family? Many of them supported You-Know-Who,"
"I know, mum. Katie's not like that. She doesn't care I'm not a pureblood and she fought Voldemort. She's got the scars to prove it. He almost killed her too."
She must have heard something in his voice. "How serious are things with Miss Bell? The last I heard, you were quite head-over-heels for Miss Granger."
"Not ... We're not seeing each other, mum. Well, just as friends. We've been friends a while. Months. Things with Hermione didn't work out. I just ... I don't know what happened with Katie. We were friends and then --" Then I woke up, he'd wanted to say, but that would sound silly. "I just want to paint her. She thinks I can draw. I want to try."
And that had won the longest silence of all. "She does, does she?"
And Cedric had felt suddenly stupid. "Maybe I shouldn't -- "
"Be still. I'll send you my recipes by owl, but you will likely need my help with some of them. And you'll have to prepare the canvas too."
"There are some here -- "
"Those are no good. Well, not like they are. You have to prepare them, not me. The magic comes from you, Cedric. You can't mix paints yourself and use my prepped canvases. What you need to do is take a knife -- is one there?"
Reaching out, he'd picked up one. "Yes, several."
"Good, take one of the larger ones, and be careful with it, but you need to scrape the surface -- every bit of the gesso off the old canvases. You understand?"
"Yes."
"Good. Expect the recipe book tomorrow. It will tell you how to prepare the canvas for your own magic. I'm going back to bed now."
He'd smiled. "Thanks, mum."
Indeed, by sunset Monday as he was leaving the museum, a large international owl swooped down, dropping a package into his hands before sailing off. He tore off the wrapping to find himself holding a black leather book. He could feel the magic yielding as he opened it; she must have spelled it for him only. Inside were pages and pages of tint recipes and other art potions. He was mindful of the gift -- painters rarely shared their recipes. Special shades and special magic could be closely guarded secrets. Even being her son, he hadn't been certain what he'd get.
But this looked to be a copy of her complete book, concealing nothing. He was a bit surprised that she'd managed to get it ready for him so quickly, until he read the note slipped inside the front cover. This was begun for you when you were two and three and we painted together under the pines in Tuscany. I've kept it up over the years, waiting for the day you'd ask for it.
He walked back to the front steps of the museum and sat down, head bowed, biting the edge of his hand, trying not to cry. Then he Apparated directly to his barn to get out the canvas he'd stripped on Sunday and a cauldron he'd scoured, opening the book to the first page. Canvas Preparation
He skipped the parts about stretching and the frame. He'd need that later, but he already had three that were prepared in that respect. He only had to reapply the gesso, the base, which would support the actual paint even after the canvas beneath began to deteriorate -- and that was what he had to make from scratch because it had to be his magic that went into it, not hers.
Reading through the recipe, he wished he were better at Potions. His mother had implied at times that his inability might be more the fault of the teacher than his (the student's) aptitude for the subject. He did exceptionally well in Transfigurations and Charms, but he hadn't wanted to continue to NEWTs in Potions if it had meant suffering Snape. But now he understood exactly how difficult real potion making could be. The gesso was the root of the whole painting. If he got this wrong, it would warp everything.
Chalk, gypsum, egg white and cheese glue ground with lime. That was easy enough ... but there was more to this.
Depending on the mood and force desired for the painting, the painter must include sweat, blood, sexual fluid, saliva, or tears. Combining fluids produces a more subtle reaction. For instance, sweat and tears will evoke stress or fear muted by longing or sorrow.
All gesso should include the painters blood, roughly one thimble-full per gallon. It will not be enough to taint the shade, but it will allow the painter's magic to penetrate. Without the blood and body fluid, the magic will be cold animation only with no power to move the one who looks upon it. The motivation in the fluid matters, as well. Tears gleaned from onions or other artificial means will yield nothing in the heart of the viewer. Sweat from work does not produce the same result as sweat from fear. Ejaculate from random fantasies will bring only vague stirrings. Match the body fluid to the intention. The artist must live the art. Always discard what is left. Never use it for a different painting.
Beneath this in different colored ink, she'd added: Be careful with the amounts, Cedric. A true artist leads his viewer through the power of the image, he doesn't compel a response by magic. The latter is crude -- the method of hacks.
That made him smile. It sounded so like his mother.
But the rest of it ... Well, he had the raw materials here to make perhaps a quart of gesso. He'd need to find a supply outlet for more if he decided to continue. But a quart ... it might be enough for the smallest of the three frames.
The base itself wasn't difficult to blend -- it was just a foundation -- but the magic altered it. That took precision. Stirring at the right speed, in the right direction, for the right amount of time, and adding the materials in the correct order. The most difficult part was deciding exactly what he wanted to convey.
It wasn't desire ... or not of the usual kind. She stirred that in him, certainly, but it went beyond that. It was longing, too, and kinship, trust, affection -- all those things. He looked over his mother's lists of body fluids and suggested amounts for differing effects. But it felt rather ... clinical. She'd said he had to live it, or it wouldn't work.
Leaving the canvas and half-prepared mixture in the barn, he went outside, looking up at the sky. It was well past sunset now, and the full moon had punched a hole in the cloud cover. It silvered the budding trees and the grass and the jagged remains of the fireplace. He could feel the life in the ground, sluggish as it awoke to spring.
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
... And she turn'd -- her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs --
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes --
Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong";
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."
Tennyson. It wasn't a happy poem, as he remembered it -- a doomed sort of affair between cousins. Cedric might not be literally related to Katie, but he nonetheless worried. He couldn't stop how he felt, not any more than he could have stopped the Hogwarts Express. It had risen up behind him when he hadn't been looking, tapped him on the shoulder softly, then just bowled him over. But her friendship ... it meant a lot. She was like him -- kin in heart if not in blood -- and if things didn't work out, he'd be alone again. But if it did ... oh, if it did ... To have his best friend turn his lover -- it was what he wanted most of all.
Sitting down on the grass, he cast a warming spell (it was still chilly at night) and stretched out, studying the constellations arcing over him in a glitter of white and pale reds and blues. The stars were a constant. When he was dust for a thousand years, they'd remain.
He closed his eyes and thought about Saturday night by the river. That was what he wanted to paint. Katie sitting on the rail by the Thames. He just didn't know if he had the skill and talent to capture that, and not only for the art, but for the twist in his chest and the feeling that he couldn't get enough air, the giddy thunder-beat of his heart. Desire, yes, but not only -- Everythingblendedpulledtogetherstirredandgelling ...
He reached down and undid his zip, hands stroking himself while he tried to feel that, remember the damp sheen on her lips catching the lamplight, the glitter in her eyes, on her hair, the shadows from high cheekbones, even the tiny moles dotting her face. He would kiss each one of them and lick the taste of her off her mouth. He recalled her touch on his back when they'd danced and the feel of her whole body against his. Squeezing his prick, he moved his hand up and down in time to the song, slow, lazy -- like the movement of the water in the river, like their feet on the dance floor, like his hand on her back and hers on his. Would her hands on him be lazy like that? Gentle? Would she rock against him in a rhythm like the water?
Not enough. He wanted more. He wanted to feel her tongue sliding along his in firm strokes and the press of tongue tip to tongue tip. He hissed, imagining it. His prick hardened in his hand and he sped up, moving from fantasies of his tongue in her mouth to himself in her body. Enveloped. Limbs and logistics didn't matter and for a little while, it was just sensation and the up-and-down rhythm of his hand on himself, up-and-down like the round-and-round shuffle of their feet on the floor and her hip pressed into him, her breasts flat against his chest, the warmth of her warming him. Dancing was sex with clothes on.
When he came, it surprised him and his grunt was short and sharp. He hadn't realized he'd been so close, but all of a sudden he was tumbling over the edge, white seed spurting, pooling in his palm.
For a few seconds, he just breathed, then pushed himself up and didn't even bother to fix his clothing more than necessary. He had to hurry before his sweat dried. Back in the barn, he took precise amounts with tiny silver measuring spoons. Semen, blood, and sweat. Not too much, just enough. Less is more. Blood first, then sweat, then just a drop of seed. Essentials added, he had to stir immediately, first clockwise three times, then counter once, then clockwise again.
And stop. Lift the spoon carefully and turn on the heat, let it brew at medium for exactly one hour, not a minute more or less. It gave him time to go and clean himself up. When he came back to inspect it, it was bubbling slowly like a pulse beat. A strange sheen, almost pearlescent, rose up like steam. He held his hand over it for a moment, then sucked in sharp breath at the sensation of raw want it evoked.
The artist in the art indeed.