My brother and I married sisters, so my wife’s sister and my brother’s wife are the same person, a double sister-in-law from my point of view. The winner of numerous awards, she’s a distinguished artist, working in oil, pastel, acrylic, and mixed media, whose joy in color is evident in most of her work.
Over the years she’s given us two of her large paintings. Both contain images of water surrounded by trees, a lake in Vermont, where she attended camp as a girl, and a wintry pond on their farm in upstate New York. The first one hung in our Brooklyn dining room for the past ten years. At the moment it’s resting against a wall, waiting for our decision as to where to place it. The second hung in my Jerusalem study for more than 30 years. A few weeks ago, it arrived with 98 other cartons, where they had been residing in a Bronx warehouse.
Unlike the first painting, whose location is still undetermined, I knew immediately where I wanted to place the second. Just as it had graced my study in Jerusalem, I wanted it for my study in Brooklyn. The reason was more than sentimental. The painting is an exercise in shades of black, gray, and white. Only when you look closely, do you also see an occasional dash of green. Philistine that I am, I knew that the painting would complement the room’s color scheme, with its black sofa, white desk, and green lampshades. I would place it above the black sofa.
First, I had to move the sofa away from the wall. In the space between the sofa and the wall, I placed a ladder, on which I climbed, holding the painting. After numerous failed attempts, I managed to hang it on the hook that I had hammered into the wall. I straightened out the painting, pushed the sofa back against the wall, and stepped back to admire the effect.
To my dismay, I noticed a two-inch gash in the canvas. I wish I could accuse the packers of having ripped it, but I’m pretty sure that it was my fault, caused when climbing the ladder with the painting. The painting and metal ladder must have collided, with this fatal result.
Fortunately the gash resembles some of the strokes of color on the canvas, so that it’s not immediately noticeable. I asked my wife to look at the painting and tell me if she could see anything wrong with it. She could not. But I know it’s there, and my pleasure in the painting, while great, is diminished by the knowledge of my guilty clumsiness. I would feel bad about damaging any painting, but I feel especially bad about damaging this one, not only because of its beauty, but also because of the artist who made it.
Just as the imperfection of a loaf of challah – a bit of dough is taken from the loaf and thrown against the oven wall – reminds us of the destruction of the Temple, the little gash in our painting reminds me of the ultimate dissolution, the eventual destruction of all things under the sun. But I enjoy eating challah, even though a piece has been taken from the loaf, and I will enjoy looking at the painting, even though I know that, like me, it will not last forever.
2010-2011 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved
Followers of Zen would say that it's now perfect - that imperfection makes it so.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have two of her works and they give me great pleasure when I look at them (they're at the top of my stairs, so I see them quite often).