Richard Godwin Guest Writes

Richard Godwin has appeared on the NOIR scene seemingly out of nowhere. This fellow from across the pond is gaining wide notice for his gritty realism, sharp tongued characters and poignant interviewing style that readers can find more of at his blog. In the meantime, buckle up for this tasty tale.




THE ICONOCLAST
by Richard Godwin

The flesh lacerated easily as the bells tolled in the far away hills. The smell of pine needles was sharp in the air.

The artist watched as the man struggled on the floor, blood pouring from the wound.
The fountain in the piazza gushed with water and he looked down at the face of his antagonist, thick with ill-breeding and a greedy diet, and slashed him again, tearing the flesh like butcher’s meat.

Shock was written all over his face as the painter bettered him, leaving him in a pool of his own blood.

‘This for a tennis match’, he said.

Caravaggio leaned down, etching victory into the man’s mind.

‘If you think this is about tennis, then you are more foolish than I thought.’

He left him crawling towards the fountain.

At his studio, he collected his canvases and left, reappearing at a town a few miles north.

From there he kept traveling, painting as he stopped and sometimes for the briefest of brush strokes.

He detailed the knife attack into one of his scenes, a portrait of such shocking realism, that his contemporaries could not understand the genius he presented.
Not bothering to sketch or draw, he placed oil straight onto canvas, creating masterpiece after masterpiece, trampling the idols that lay before him like scattered offerings to some other god.

The colours that dripped from his brush were illuminated as if by a candle, drawing the viewer inwards to the work.

Women would offer themselves to him, baring themselves in hope of receiving his lust.
And he took them, often together, on the floor of his studio, painting them like that, sated with desire and transposing their nude and sullied forms into his scenes.
His pursuit by killers aided his creative output, and painting after painting was finished in the direst of conditions: garrets, basements, shabby studios, fitting to a novice, not one of his rank among the masters.

And still, the work broke with tradition, showing new ways of representing the old materials.

Street hardened faces loomed out of snapshots of everyday life. Beggars and street tricksters, real beyond measure plied their trade, and even Christ was shown naked in his lust.

Flesh more animate than the living who strode the streets, defecating and copulating in rancid glory, walked from his paintings and defaced the corridors of galleries and churches, fucking in the pews.

The Pope was not spared: a lustful man prone to breasts and a little fondling, he knew from the portrait what was being shown about him.
Wanted and on the run, Caravaggio drove himself further into his work, breaking again with what he had already achieved, a peerless accomplishment in the golden time of art.

Paint dripped flesh from the canvas, revealing the parade of human flesh in its lusts and religious ecstasies.

Nuns merged with street prostitutes, who shone with a sated beauty, religious on their tired beds soiled with the seed of sailors and killers.

Assassins held knives like the pickpockets in the back alleys, silently taking their proceeds.

All these peopled his canvases and secured his place in history, while the jealous and the aggrieved hunted him across Europe.

He bedded the wives of the rich and powerful, aiding them to orgasm they knew they would never find with the men who paid for them.

He left them desirous of more and washed his canvases with the salt smell of sex, letting sensuality seep through the pores of the paint.

His admirers hid their knowledge of his genius, as those others who tried to compete hid their jealousy.

Women envied the young men who came to him. He took them too, enjoying both fleshes.
The icons of the past were not safe. Religion was turned into a strange feast of worship and decay.

Bacchus danced from goblets of wine and religious ecstasy became a frenzied orgy.
Pimp-like priests admonished adulterers to chastity while ladies of rank copulated with male servants, riding them like beasts into the night behind the curtains that adorned his scenes in folds of luminous silk, mirroring the flesh that hung from women, large and buxom, breasts tide-like in their movements.


He entered his own canvases, perhaps escaping from his pursuers, knowing that timelessness would secure his presence watched by the eyes of others, as he watched and noted expressions, desires, habits, light.

The chiaroscuro effect he used to such effect sent its silent message clearly, beckoning the viewer to a new kind of experience, where the motifs were fed into a carnal land of crucified ecstasy.

Even now his eyes shine out at you, beckoning you like Bacchus, lips plump with wine.
Some think him the greatest of painters.

His peers feared to understand him, seductive and erotic as his works were in their naked beauty.

The smashing of icons was his trademark and the need for them his undoing.
When finally the killers caught him in Malta, the knights of St John were impotent to help.

He had finished the piece they had commissioned from him, and Pope and criminals alike would not tolerate his irreverence. As the paint dried from his last piece, they found him and entered his flesh, hungry for the penetration that would end their hunt.

Their murder of him was some apotheosis of their own sexuality.Even then his eyes defied them, sending the killers into a rage which unmanned them there on the island where the sun had not stopped shining for all his days there.

‘From the man who sent me’, the assassin said, driving his knife home.

‘You cannot end me’, he said, and he seared him with a glance.

When they left they felt flat. Even bragging could not wash away their sense of shame. Malta had his last days. Worshippers flocked to his bed as he lay there, the energy taking its time to leave him. And still canvases formed in his head, as the sun burned in the sky.