Heartpen: Poems of a Cardiac Quill

Allegory of the Four Painters

Bosch tasted the hues,

     A palette for his palate,

          Used alizarin crimson to bloody the plane

          Of a picture once plain

For a surplus of blues,

     In which foreground Apollyon glares out a sallet.

"O Bosch, lighten up!"

     Scolds Jean-Antoine Watteau

     Whose brush dances merrily hither and fro

On a canvas of princes, a kitten, a pup.

"Come, Bosch, see how lovely? I've painted them so!

Come look at my princes!" cries Antoine Watteau.

"Your figures are lacking, gents, do paint them longer!"

     Old Parmigianino is speaking of limbs,

          For all of his figures' elongated arms

          And legs are among his uncountable charms.

"A lengthier arm is an arm ever stronger!"

     "Insane!" Bosch retorts. "And you paint necks too slim!"

"You're all disappointments."

     Picasso leans back

     On all of his paintings in one giant stack,

His figures contorted, without ligaments.

And so on the four painters bicker and yell,

For which art is real art, can we hardly tell?

Meanwhile in the crowd a hand nudges a shoulder.

"I guess beauty's in the eye of the beholder."

Yet in the museum the four painters sit

And don't really bicker or yell, not one bit.

So though we have favorites, tiers, standards, charts;

Let's celebrate variation in the arts.