Warning: Spoilers ahead. I believe it was the artist Thomas Merton who said, “art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” It’s a line that seems to be writ large through some of the performances in Netflix’s zany high-art horror thriller, Velvet Buzzsaw. The Dan Gilroy (he of Nightcrawler fame)-directed film stars some of your favorites playing truly outlandish art world stereotypes, with each one suffering because of it, and many ultimately losing their lives to the literally deadly art. But what about ol’ Piers? What do John Malkovich's drawings at the end of Velvet Buzzsaw mean about the fate of his character? Well, we’ve got you covered there. Piers, if you recall, is a world renowned artist who’s in a bit of a slump. He got sober recently and, apparently, his output has suffered tremendously. The rest of the art world doesn’t necessarily know that, however, and many — like Jon Dondon (Tom Sturridge) — are still trying to poach him away from Rhodora (Rene Russo) in order to make money off of his work. Only... there’s just one painting, so his new representative Jon Dondon is none-too-pleased.
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Following Dondon’s dramatic death at the hands of the art installation/the soul of artist Ventril Dease, he returns to Rhodora’s tutelage and she suggests something very specific: to head to her beach house and not return until he’s made something exclusively for himself. In this moment — a rare bit of earnest support and non-greed from Rhodora — she gives Piers the permission to ignore the art critics like Morf (Jake Gyllenhaal) and the buyers and obsessives, and get back to the basics of what makes art so magical. This leaves Piers free to leave, not get further entranced by Dease’s work, and truly make something original, even if it never, ever sells.
This is why Piers (and characters like Daveed Diggs’ Damrish and Natalia Dyer’s poor Coco) doesn’t die in the film: the evil force imbued in the art only affects those who have succumbed to greed rather than caring about the art for the sake of it.
Which is exactly what Piers is doing at the end in that mid-credits sequence: creating art, solely for himself, on the shores of Rhodora’s beach house, ignorant to the gruesome murders and greed happening in the art world. The impermanence of it — how his lines are washed away by the tide, his linework akin to the beautiful, temporary patterns of animal travel that dot beaches — is also part of the point: even if the art world promises infamy, nothing truly lasts forever. Especially art, so if you do it solely for yourself, and not for the greedy hangers-on that promise fame and fortune, you’ll be happy forever.