Art for Heart`S Sake

The story “Art for Heart’s Sake” was written by Reuben Lucius Goldberg (1883-1970), an American sculptor, cartoonist and writer. After graduating from the University of California in 1904 he works as a cartoonist for a number of newspapers and magazines. He produced several series of cartoons all of which were highly popular. Among his best works are “Is There a Doctor in the House?” (1929), “Rube Goldberg’s Guide to Europe” (1954) and “I Made My Bed” (1960).
The plot of the story under the study is quite intricate. It presents an old man Collis P. Ellsworth who has troubles with his health when his business ends in failure. In order to find a new interesting occupation for him Doctor Caswell suggests his patient to take up painting, just for fun. Frank Swain, a student of the Atlantic Art University, agrees to teach him. After a while he created an awful smudge called “Trees dressed in white”. And it was a great surprise to everyone when Ellsworth’s dreadful painting was not only accepted for the Show at the Lathrop Gallery, but took the First Prize! The explanation of this fact was quite simple – he had bought the gallery some time ago. That surely doesn’t coincide with the reader’s expectations and creates a humorous effect.
The problems raised in the story are urgent nowadays – money can buy everything, art is eternal, but everybody values it from one’s own point of view, at the same time not everyone is allowed to understand its value and importance.
The given extract is a third person narration linked with some pieces of a dialogue. The indirect method of characterization prevails in the extract. For example, the author does not say directly whether his characters possess some good or bad qualities, instead of it he makes them act and speak and everything can be caught between the lines.
From the point of view of the genre, the extract can be obviously regarded as a humorous story. But the author’s main instrument is not humour, but irony. There are no jokes that make us laugh in the text, but the whole situation reveals the ironical paradoxes of human life.
The very title is an allusion to a well-known doctrine preparing the reader to some elevated or didactical narration about the world of high art. The representatives of the “Art for art’s sake” theory considered art as the main principle of their existence, but as the story progresses the reader comes to know that the title presents the ring of irony. On the contrary the whole plot is quite trivial and commonplace, the characters are ordinary people, not great talents or artists.
As result money is the main doctrine and art is nothing. The last statement proved to be a peculiar echo of the title.
Sometimes the irony borders on satire on the bourgeois society, where a gifted person can run an elevator to pay tuition, while someone much less talented but having great capital can spend his money on absurd things.
In this text we can observe three principal categories:
– Temporality.
It can be traced through such words as Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Four o’clock. Spring. Summer.
– Locality. The scene is set in Collis P. Ellsworth’s house in New-York.
The New-York is a city of contrasts. On the one hand it is a financial and business centre of the world, and on the other hand it is a cultural capital of America. Lathrop Gallery, the Metropolitan, the Museum of Modern Art and many others are situated here.
– Anthropocentricity. Four characters are presented in the text: Collis P. Ellsworth, the old man; Frank Swain, the student of the art college; Dr. Caswell and Koppel, the male-nurse. The last one is of less importance, he appears only episodically.
Even the names of the rest tree characters contribute to the general tenor of irony:
“Ellsworth” means “everything that has its value or price”.
“Swain” is a shepherd or a village boy, a simple-minded person.
“Frank” has a meaning – “showing one’s thought and feelings.
Both his name and surname characterize him as a person who devoted himself to the world of art.

The ironical effect is achieved by means of different stylistic devices. The irony in the whole text is generally based on the contrast, even on the contrasts between the behavior and the manner of speaking of the different characters. To achieve the contrasting effect the author makes the abundant use of the figurative and colloquial language (Gosh! Rot)
On the syntactical level there are elliptical sentences (Four o’clock. Fine, fine…) that are the characteristics of spontaneous colloquial speech.
While painting the portrait of old Collis P. Ellsworth, the author lays particular stress on the way he speaks. Such verbs as “to snap” (“to snap” – to speak abruptly and sharply), “to grunt” characterize his as a tactless and even rude person. He is fond of putting on frills and looking at people appraisingly. Every word the author puts into his mouth speaks volumes for his nature. He calls Koppel, the male-nurse who takes care about him, “Old pine-apple juice”. This metonymy reveals his attitude to the others.
The simile “like a child playing with a picture-book…” contributes to his description, just like the epithet “elfishly” – that means a person who is fond of playing tricks on the others, like an elf.
A simile in the phrase “The trees in it looked like salad thrown up against the wall” helps us to imagine the picture and creates a humorous effect. The epithets and metaphors are also employed to characterize results of mr. Ellsworth’s attempts to paint “trees dressed in white”. (strange anomaly; god-awful smudge; laud, raucous splash etc.)
On the syntactical level the use of parallel structures helps the author to convey the fast and unpredictable development of the events:
“Swain became dumb with astonishment. Koppel dropped the glass with juice he was about to give Ellsworth. Doctor Caswell managed to keep calm”.

But the main source of irony is the contrast between elevated world of art and utilitarian world of money and business. It can be revealed by means of conceptual analysis.
The text is a bright example of a conceptual category of information. The concept is “art in the world of money” and it is conveyed through three thematic nets: Art, Health and Business.
They are expressed by such words as:
Art (picture; paint; crayon; Lathrop gallery; exhibit etc.)
Health (male-nurse; doctor; stethoscope etc.)
Business (purchase; downtown; enterprise, doubtful solvency; five dollars; etc.)
In the text these thematic nets are connected to each other, creating a bright and vivid picture.

In the story we can observe the conventional sequence of compositional elements: an exposition, the gradual mounting of tension with final climax and denouement.
From the point of view of methods of the presentation the text can be divided into three parts. The first one is a dialogue between Ellsworth and Koppel. The second one is a narration about Frank Swain teaching Ellsworth painting. The third one is a description of the picture “Trees dressed in white”, while the last one is a narration about
In my opinion, the climax of the story coincides with the following sentence:
“To the astonishment of all "Trees Dressed in White" was accepted for the Show”.
The denouement is presented in the last sentence: “Art is nothing. I bought the Lathrop Gallery”…, where everything is made clear.
The ending is clear-cut, but it is unexpected, thus, the method of defeated expectances can be observed in the text.

As for the message of the story, we can come to the conclusion, that Goldberg raises one of the most urgent problems of time and makes the reader understand that in the world of business, money is the main doctrine and art is nothing. So, the whole text can be regarded as a subtle parody on contemporary bourgeois society, where everything can be bought except talent. But the person with talent can be bought or hired as well.
When an entirely new world of art opened up its charming mysteries for Ellsworth, he regarded it only as a new way of earning money or another kind of investment. He purchased Lathrop Gallery, just like he purchased that “jerkwater railroad in Iowa”.