Art...

Speed dating had seemed like it might be a fun idea. So far she had had three brief "hey, how are you? what do you do?" conversations that could have all been with the same person for how much they stuck out. At least this guy was a little different. 

"The Scream hunh?" He was gesturing to the print on her handbag.

"Yes."

"Art is a scam you know."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, it's all about fake elitism and money laundering. You always hear that artists we know today were penniless in their time right? That's because it's not about paying the artist, it's about passing money around the obscenely wealthy. It's all about endowments to museums and then museums using those endowments to buy an art piece that they could have just handed over, but then what would they get? Oh yeah, a tax write off. It's all a scam."

She started to say something but he was on a roll.

"Warhol kind of got it. At least at the beginning. When he had his Factory cranking out pieces. He started out showing that it was all bogus but then once he started making real money off of it he decided to talk about art being a fraud but still make fraudulent art because he wasn't going to be a sucker right? And now we have Banksy who is like painting public buildings so everyone can enjoy his art, but he's not even that great of an artist right? He makes was looks like stencils of other people's work but since he keeps his ID secret people think it's a giant political statement."

She tried again but he kept on.

"And what about that painting he auctioned off that was shredded as soon as it was purchased? I'm supposed to believe that nobody knew that was going to happen? I mean there is no way that the frame didn't feel different. The art house had to know. And there were too many really good recordings of it happening. So now the buyer owns a very expensive box of shreds that are probably worth more than the picture would have been and he can donate it to a museum or sell it to a collector and the world keeps on going. It's all a scam."

"It seems like you are saying the business of art is a scam, not art itself."

"Same thing."

"Not really. Take this for instance. You recognized it as The Scream, but which version is it taken from?"

"What?"

"He made multiple versions. And it's not originally called The Scream, that's a translation bit. It's The Shriek. It's the shriek that echoed through nature. The figure on the bridge is reflecting that shriek. It's not screaming."

"Okay..."

She held up a finger, "And he continued to use this particular figure as almost a signature in multiple other pieces he created. Why would you think he would do that? Marketing?"

"I..."

"Time to switch!"

"Oh darn. And we were just getting started." She reached out to shake his hand.

"I'm sorry, I sort of went off on a tangent there and wasted our time. I'm Gary, I'm an Account Executive for Bartles and Briggs, maybe I'll see you here again sometime?"

"Oh I doubt it. But if you want to stop by The Crypt at some point I can show you around."

"The Crypt? You mean the.."

"The art studio over on NW 23rd. I own the place."

He had the good graces to look at least a little embarassed but couldn't really say anything as the next date was already trying to take his seat.

Munch kept himself sane by putting the shriek he heard in his head on paper. And he had to keep doing it and keep doing it. The Crypt featured her favorite local artists doing their version of that. Trapping images on canvas or in sculpture to get them out of their heads. When she opened, The Willamette Week had reviewed her gallery as "The nightmare space you didn't know you needed." But that wasn't fair. They weren't all nightmares. Some of them were crimes. 

"The Scream? I never really got that one. More of a Dogs Playing Poker guy I guess..."

Speed dating was probably not for her. 

The Crypt Keeper