The Artist at Work

"The Artist at Work" ("Jonas, ou l'artiste au travail") is a short story by the French writer Albert Camus from "Exile and the Kingdom" ("L'Exile et le royaume").

Synopsis

An artist who has had a poor and unnoticed career suddenly gains a patron, and then a show in a good gallery. He receives good notices for his work. He has finally gained the recognition he has felt for years that he deserved. But within weeks, he finds himself besieged by hangers-on, advice seekers, fans, would-lovers, new friends and critics. There is also no shortage of other well-known artists who offer their advice on how Jonas should proceed in his career.

Thus besieged, which he had wanted through decades of failed efforts as an artist, Jonas begins a terrible retreat that lasts for months, first moving his studio behind a curtain, then into the bedroom, then behind a curtain in the bedroom, then into the bathroom, and then finally onto a platform hoisted above a hallway where Jonas claims that he's at work on a mural. But, because of the height and darkness of the hallway, no one can see the mural nor can they get him to come down for meals, which Jonas hoists up to himself.

He stays there most of the time for weeks until, his children and wife pleading, he becomes ill and has to come down. As Jonas lingers in illness, his wife encourages a friend to go up and look at the mural Jonas has been working on. The friend, Rateau, climbs up and finds, to his astonishment, that all Jonas has painted are the words solitaire ou solidaire? (secluded or interdependent?). Unable to answer his own question, the artist can no longer paint and lies in a stupor.