Vincent Van Gogh is remembered as one of history’s must successful designers. His designs, including the Starry Night and Sunflowers, have proven perenially popular, appearing on purses, umbrellas, scarves, inspirational posters, calendars, greeting cards, books, cereal boxes, pharmaceutical advertisements, and countless other products in the century after his death. Van Gogh’s designs, it would seem, have transcended the traditional relationship of contingency between design and product, where design is attendant to the product which bears it. It seems that these roles have been reversed by Van Gogh. The purse is secondary to the print of a cafe at night; the umbrella is nothing but a carrier for the print of a field at night.

It is tempting to see in the work of Vincent Van Gogh a design sensibility so satisfactory that design exists for the sake of design itself. It would be a folly to take this position however. For the work of Vincent Van Gogh is a product in itself: the product of culture. Van Gogh’s designs are evocative of intellect and a sort of bohemian sympathy. The irony inherent in his work, where concepts like the priceless, unique status of the original and the possibility that personal, subjective “expressiveness” may be understood objectively as “truth” by an observer are contrasted with industrial mass-production and the postulate of the possibility that personal, subjective “expressiveness” may be understood objectively as “truth” by an observer, shows Van Gogh as a forerunner to pop art and post-modernism.

Posterity records the second paperkin (prepared years prior to the perspicacious premise of the blogseum and its protocol becoming a preoccupation for production) as this programmed peon, C3P0, wearing a barrel with suspenders. The previous paperkin was of the Count Dracula surfing the sea in the moonlight; however, that particular prototype was pasted upon a piece of paper, part of a birthday card, rather than an autonomous paperkin unto itself. Both of these were lost years ago, though, and so this palimpsest is a reproduction of that primeval paragon, now preserved in the perpetuity and permanence of internet technology.

Perhaps what is most prominently apparent about this puzzling paperkin is that it is truly a manifestation of pure genious at play, the most peculiar pageant of creation of the brain. The impossible irony of the juxtaposition is momentous: a robot made of solid gold, possibly the most valuable thing ever, living in such abject poverty that he should wear a barrel with suspenders. Ponder that most profound paradox if you will. Or if you even can. Sometimes the things that are the most valuable are the very things we can never afford.

But it doesn’t stop there. Why should a robot wear anything? Would penury drive a machine to cover up his exterior? Surely a wealthy robot doesn’t wear a tuxedo. These inconsistencies are all part of the magic of creation, though. In the middle ages, the scholars wished to discover a pure language so communication with God could be established. And so babies were raised in isolation, with hopes that the lack of interference from this society stained with the profanity of original sin would allow a perfect and beautiful language to be developed. Unfortunately the experiment didn’t work and they only created derelicts. But the process is what counts, just as it does today.