Pickman's Model [short story]

Possibly my favorite Lovecraft in that it is almost an apologia for his own work, conjuring a painterly doppleganger for himself and then using words to describe ostensibly indescribable paintings. It's meta-, but in a controlled way that never suggests the author wearing a shit-eating grin. Instead, it's easy to picture him in torment.

"The madness and monstrosity lay in the figures in the foreground—for Pickman’s morbid art was preëminently one of daemoniac portraiture. These figures were seldom completely human, but often approached humanity in varying degree. Most of the bodies, while roughly bipedal, had a forward slumping, and a vaguely canine cast. The texture of the majority was a kind of unpleasant rubberiness. Ugh!"

As authors like Honoré de Balzac and Guy du Maupassant knew very well, a frame story, that is, a story within a story, can be an extraordinarily effective literary technique to heighten the drama and suspense of an otherwise memorable tale.

We encounter such a frame story in H.P. Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model, a harrowing yarn about an show more artist and his diabolical art. Written in 1926, the tale’s narrator, Thurber, a Bostonian gentleman and art connoisseur, speaks of the paintings and drawings of artist Pickman in ways that anticipate how many modern artists employ graphics and digital technology to create their own dark worlds of horror and terror.

We join Thurber and his chum Elliot as the two men share an intimate evening over drinks and coffee. Both men have a keen interest in art and thereupon Thurber relates his last strange meeting with artist Pickman.

Right from the outset there’s a strong sense of foreboding and unease when Thurber tells how, after encountering the paintings and sketches and other mysterious events in Pickman’s hidden cellar studio, he’s lucky to be sane at all. Not only that, after such a traumatic, gut-wrenching, agonizing episode, Thurber neither knows nor cares what ever happened to his onetime friend, an inspired artist to be sure, but a creature he knows not be he human or non-human.

It all begins the night Pickman invites Thurber the gentleman art lover to his special studio in the slums of Boston’s North End, a locale, he confides, not without its dark, disturbing histories, dwellings and streets soaked in the macabre and past horrors, miles away from well-to-do neighborhoods, much better suited for the more recent style of ingenious work he has been moved to fashion. Ah, the importance location and atmosphere have for an artist’s studio - we hear echoes of the magic contained in certain Paris garrets and flats as detailed in Honoré de Balzac’s The Unknown Masterpiece.

Then, with a voice rattling with anxiety, Thurber alludes to how Pickman shared a sampling of his latest art and aesthetic theories along with speculations of a decidedly philosophical nature, such concepts and formulae “wild enough to qualify him for the Danvers asylum.” Cause for any levelheaded art lover to panic – not only is he in the company of a superb painter but an artist who in all likelihood happens to be a madman.

H.P. Lovecraft draws on the longstanding tradition of romanticism - genuine artistic creation inextricably linked to madness, far distant from even the vaguest sniff of a conventional or humdrum mindset. And, as fans of the author have come to appreciate, Lovecraft takes such madness to the furthest extremes of terror.

To underline Thurber’s shock and alarm, his disgust and repugnance, when he finally takes a gander at Pickman’s new art, we come upon this revealing line: “Gad, I wouldn’t be alive if I’d ever seen what that man—if he was a man—saw!”

One of the things I love about this Lovecraft story is the fact that it is just that, a story – the manner in which the drawings and paintings are described leaves much room for a reader’s imagination; we can fill all the artist’s canvases and papers with creatures of our own devising – for myself, I envisioned hordes of diabolical, ghastly creatures crawling out of Hieronymus Bosch hell realms to fill modernistic science fiction landscapes. Thus, I can appreciate Thurber's widemouthed reaction in the above illustration.

“That nauseous wizard had waked the fires of hell in pigment, and his brush had been a nightmare-spawning wand.” Tell it like it is, Thurber! Is it any wonder at this point our narrator asks Eliot to pass the decanter so he can take another swig of liquor. With Pickman the artist and Pickman the man (or non-human, perhaps), we are as far removed from a Sunday painter as possible. I’m with Pickman and Thurber – such art will not be exhibited on the wall of a respectable art gallery hosting a lady's tea.

But in any case, we have seen in our mind’s eye the work of an artist who defies all boundaries of sanity, an artist who can inspire us to expand our vision in unique ways so we are better postured to fuse our imagination with not only his art but also the wider spectrum of H.P. Lovecraft's literary artistry. Hold on there, Mr. Reviewer! Is it possible for a fictional character to so empower an author's audience? I myself see no reason why not.

Can it get darker and deadlier? Yes, it most certainly can, since, after all, this is H.P. Lovecraft. Finally, Thurber comes upon a depiction of this unforgettable creature: “It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel.”

How could an artist’s mind travel down into horrifyingly ghoulish, morbid psychic tunnels? What does it take for a creator to trek through unspeakable, insane territories such that he can string together concatenations of vision and imagination that breathe life into such a creature? To find out where all this hair-raising art leads, take a deep breath and read the story for yourself.

Link to the complete story, Pickman's Model by H.P. Lovecraft: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/pm.aspx


"Well, I should say that the really weird artist has a kind of vision which makes models, or summons up what amounts to actual scenes from the spectral world he lives in."
- H.P. Lovecraft, Pickman's Model show less

Lovecraft once again points out the fallacy of human curiosity and makes it very clear how we are all going to go the way of the dodo and just want to lay down and die. Some of his characters are little stubborn and their nosing gets them in the end. This is probably one of his more visceral stories. It is about evil and evil being more evil than evil. Netflix recently released a short film version of this and while the stories differ slightly it was well done. It seems Hollywood has a monster of a time attempting to translate this mans work onto film.

A re-read.
When someone speaks of an artist's model, the first thing that probably leaps to mind is an attractive woman. But when an artist specializes in painting the weird, the grotesque and the macabre, the feminine form is likely not what he's seeking out. When the artist in this story invites a fan to see his secret studio, in the depths of Boston's North End slums, what is revealed has implications for the whole city.

Short story, narrated by main character Thurber, who tells his friend Eliot why he dropped an artist he admired named Pickman. It seems Pickman fell out of favor with society after he created some extremely gruesome paintings. But Thurber still remained fascinated, until the day Pickman took him to his “secret place” where he has been working on his latest paintings…

A really creepy, atmospheric, and riveting tale.

Second person works here, as does the creepy guy who paints monsters. Still just OK.