Flypaper

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Flypaper:

Flypaper is a short story written by Simon Armitage and was first published in New Writing in the year 2000. It mainly deals with what makes good art and how some people both live and die for their dreams, buy also how power makes you do many things.
The main character is a mysterious man. He is an artist and he likes to be noticed, but he is also anonymous and remains throughout the story to be unknown. He is very unique and original, who expresses his art by making imprints in wet cement. He always leaves his fingerprint in the cement, to assure the public that it’s his work. He makes his art in public places in England, where it can be seen by many people, even though he isn’t in it for the money or the fame. What makes him do it, is uncertain, but to keep the mystery about himself and his identity intact is what is most important. It could be the excitement of being caught that drives him.
By making his art in public places, where many people pass every day, he leaves the people with a feeling of wonder and unanswered questions, which might be the goal of many artist. He is very interesting, not because his art is wonderful in it's own form, but because of the way he does it and his secrecy about it. And it has made him well known all over the country.
One time he made a provocative imprint of his buttocks in front of the New National Gallery of Sculpture. You can draw many things out of this. Either he is an artist who wasn’t accepted when he showed his art along with his identity, and now is messing with the critics by showing them that he also is entitled to the approval, like any other artist. Or maybe he is so pleased with himself that he’s trying to say that his art is original and great, and the art in the museums are boring. It’s the critics that decides what good art is, and he isn’t pleased with that.
As mentioned before he is very interesting, and his identity gets so exciting that both TV-shows and tabloids promises that person who can reveal him, a big sum of money.
Council leader Perry and chief architect Rossiter are very interested in this money, and wants to find out who the artist is, for whatever it takes and has their special reasons for it. Re-election is coming up, and Perry would like to keep his job in politics, and is certain that he will get a lot of prestige and publicity by revealing the artist and for Rossiter it’s about keeping his job. Perry seems to be a man who is very determined and tough, and he wont let anything get in the way of his own success. Perry and Rossiter wants to catch the mysteriously artist, and to do that they decides to demolish the old city fountain and replace it with a wet sheet of cement. And as they expected loads of interviewers shows up to hear the news, and Rossiter provokes and challenges the artist to make an imprint in the wet cement.
As presumed, the secret artist shoes up at night by and starts preparing his new piece. Of course Perry and Rossiter are there, hiding and waiting for the right time to take action.
The artist is wearing a rope and a home-made crown of barbed wire, like a crown of thorns. He takes the rope of, and lies down in the cement with his arms stretched out and his legs crossed, just like Jesus on the cross. He is really living up to the fact that artists have to be special and fascinating. He is one with his art because he uses his own body to make it, which indeed make him special. Suddenly the concrete starts rising, but yet he makes no movements what so ever, nor when Perry and his men try to get to him. The unknown artist is willing to sacrifice his life for his art, he simply commits suicide. This way it will remain mysterious forever, just like he probably wanted. At first Perry, Rossiter and the men assisting them, doesn’t do anything, but after a while they try to drag him out of the cement, but fails. Therefor there plan has also failed and on top of everything a human life was sacrificed. It was the artists own choice, but still they helped this process along.
This mysterious artist was so eccentric, as so many other artists usually are, that he actually was willing to die for his art, something that forever will inscribe him in history.
From Norman Wailers point of view, this is exactly what the world wants to see:
“Arts serves us best precisely at that point where it can shift our sense of what is possible”, page 7, line 31.
Norman Wailers opinion is that if art frightens you, it’s good. The artists really have to go to extremes to frighten modern people, who are used to see and hear about violence and death every day.
In Flypaper it’s the fact that there is a real man under the concrete which makes good art. Many people would be fascinated, but also a bit repulsed that anyone would go so far. The artist died in the image of Christ, which surely will provoke many people. Jesus died because he believed in his cause, and I think that this artist sees his similarity with Jesus, because he also died for a cause which meant everything to him. Jesus travelled around and created miracles and it’s something that never will be forgotten, and the artist leaves his signature all over the country, so that he never will be forgotten, like Jesus is his idol. Jesus died to finally be one with God, and the artist died to be one with his art. He is able to see a connection between himself and Jesus.
In picture 3, an artist has also gone to extremes so his art will be noticed. Piero Manzoni, Artist’s Shit no. 47, is as the title tells us, some of his excrements put in a can. Here is questions to why he did that, what’s make is famous, and perhaps some would wonder if there really were excrements in it or not. The two other pictures by Hannah Wilke and Marc Quinn is also something out of the normal. Posing as Mary Magdalene transformed into Christ, will probably provoke many people, which might is her intentions to do. Quinn makes a self-portrait made of his own blood and parts of a refrigerator. This is actually disgusting, but it’s still the reason to why it’s popular. They are, just like the mysterious artist, very special.
The title Flypaper, could actually be the name of his last piece of art. He is like a dead fly stuck on flypaper, an unknown fly. And there’s nothing unique or special about a fly, it is just like any other dead fly. Not special, unique or known, just like our mysteriously artist.