Klee at the Tate! Happy New Year

Fire Full Moon  by Paul Klee

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-paul-klee-making-visible

From this far vantage point of March 11, I look back with wonder that the year started with one of those “turning point” events that take on new layers of meaning as the days go by.  I was in London visiting the family at the end of 2013 and had all of the 31^st to myself.  It was rainy most of the day with  breaks of bright sun so all was silvery and celebratory. I decided to go to the Tate Modern in the afternoon  - what better setting for the last day of the year, where you can walk alone along the embankment on the Thames and yet feel a camaraderie with others.

What was on at the Tate:  an exhibit of Paul Klee paintings.  I had not  known about the exhibit, nor did I guess that this visit would touch me so deeply.   Seeing the artist's paintings in person, many galleries of paintings  - well how to describe it?  You hear people say that when a person dies she sees her whole life pass before her vision in an instant.   In the shimmering spaces of the exhibit there was a visual sense of seeing the whole of a creative life on display with each canvas but a keepsake of a still living genius - so boundlessly joyful.   At times I had to stop and say  “how did he think of that color?  To put that color right there in that dark area....what is that color?”  The canvases floated on the walls, or seemed to, held up with light, not with hooks.  People drifted through the galleries  - it was not crowded -    gallery, paintings with the viewers in a slow dance.  

Much later, coming out of the museum at twilight,  the clouds had cleared and the pink sky reflected in the puddles on the embankment  where visitors  strolled along on their reflections…. a New Year's eve shift. 

the white house

Many days I drive along Sunset Street on my way home from a work errand.  Driving by, I always admired a small white frame house – vintage 1946 or so – that was set apart from the other houses on the street.   It was a pristine house, very simple and well kept, sitting in the middle of an expanse of grass with no fences, no complicated landscaping - just the house and its clean white color creating a satisfying contrast with the background trees and green grass.

It was for sale for quite awhile.  I told my friend Fran who is looking to buy a home about it.  “You might look at this lovely little house on Sunset,” I told her. To myself, I thought, “The house reminds me of a young girl sitting in the grass with her new dress spread around her at a picnic.”

One day I drove by and the for sale sign was gone and so was the house.  A bulldozer was sitting in the middle of the lot next to an excavated place where the basement had been. A large sign with a well designed logo from a building company or bank was posted inviting inquiries.  Lately several new structures are going up.  They are at this point situated along one side of the property so perhaps new buildings  are to come.  To my eye the spacing is off with these new buildings.  Like too many apples and pears in a still life. There is a kind of “more bang for the buck” feel to it. Today, a red haired man was getting out of a white car as I drove by. He was gazing at the building site as he closed the car door. 

“You never know” I thought.   I’d imagined an identity for the white house, and the for sale sign was part of the story.  Who would buy the house?  Would they landscape?  Remodel?   That it might disappear between one drive and another did not occur to me.   I remember feeling unsettled, the day I drove by and saw the empty lot.  Perhaps I felt that way because the actual story of the house was more true to life than the one I was imagining.  Or perhaps because the new story is not one I had thought up myself.