The story "Art for Heart’s Sake" was written by Reuben Lucius Goldberg (1883-1970), an American sculptor, cartoonist and writer.
After graduating from the University of California in 1904 he works as a cartoonist for a number of newspapers and magazines. He produced several series of cartoons all of which were highly popular. Among his best works are "Is There a Doctor in the House?" (1929), "Rube Goldberg’s Guide to Europe" (1954) and "I Made My Bed" (1960).
The plot of the story under discussion is intricate. It centers around an old man Collis P. Ellsworth who has troubles with his health when his financial transactions end in failure.
In order to find for him a new interest Doctor Caswell offers him to take up painting, just for pleasure. And it was a great surprise when Ellsworth’s awful painting was not only accepted for the Show at the Lathrop Gallery, but took the First Prize!
At the end of the story the protagonist says that art is nothing, that he bought the Lathrop Gallery, what surely doesn’t coincide with the reader’s expectations.
The problems raised in the story "Art for Heart’s Sake" are urgent nowadays – money can buy everything, art is eternal, but everybody values it from one’s own point of view, at the same time not everyone is allowed to realize what real art is.
The controlling idea of the story conveyed by Goldberg sounds like this – you can buy the gallery, but you cannot buy the art itself.
Speaking about the meaning of the title, art’s aim is to eradicate human shortcomings, but in this particular case its effect was quite contradictory.
The story's subject matter – the passion of the old man for large buyings...
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