Article contentNever off-putting or pretentious — a testy, all-too human protagonist like Lila helps offset that possibility — Fischer Guy skilfully manoeuvres a tightrope tethered between the inner life of the artist and the oblivious exterior world in which artistic and intellectual freedoms are imperilled by those for whom ignorance is its own primitive art form. The loss of individual choice is a sort of death for artists and art and a warning to everyone else. The ballet slipper crushed under the heel of the jackboot represents the end of personhood, the sublimation of all that makes us who and what we are, whether we are rehearsing arias or trimming trees.