The Painting
We had our house painted about a month ago (mostly trim--it's an imaginary brick house), and the fellows who did it were so nice that we had them repaint our master bedroom/bathroom. Gloria's always wanted to repaint, and our bathroom had wallpaper that was unicorns/ponies/candy canes.Or something. I'm a guy, so I never actually saw the wallpaper. I'd hear Gloria mention it occasionally, but it was like hearing an astronomer describe something they'd just seen through a telescope that you never accessed.
They repainted and then Gloria decided she'd like one wall painted in another color to match some secret color scheme that exists only on a gigantic color wheel spinning in low-Earth orbit.
It's fine by me. Walls break up the space into room-sized partitions that facilitate privacy. And they provide a base for the ceiling. As long as they still do that, I don't care what color they are.
So they repainted. And left.
Then I saw Gloria staring at the bathroom wall.
This is a bad thing. Any of you guys out there know that women staring at something is a very, very bad thing, because that can mean only one thing: it's about to change. In gaming terms, it's the +3 Stare of Disruption.
"I see you staring at the wall," I said. "I will notify ye olde townsfolk of the coming apocalypse."
"Stop it," she said. "I just think this last wall should be red. I could repaint it myself."
"Are you familiar with the paperhanging episode of 'I Love Lucy'?"
"I'm not hanging wallpaper," she said. "I'm just painting."
"Point taken," I said. "So this wall has been painted, then repainted, to prepare it for being--painted."
"Exactly," she said. And "exactly" is the right word, because Gloria is very exact when it comes to color, and life. She's very precise.
I'm not precise. I go for wide variety and quantity instead of precision. She's a javelin. I'm a water balloon.
So yesterday I walked into our bedroom. She was staring at the wall.
"Oh, no," I said.
"Don't worry," she said. "We're going to need some new art."
"New art?" I asked.
"To match the wall," she said.
"Wait a minute," I said. "When you buy art to match a wall color, it's no longer art. It's a handbag, or maybe a belt. You've accessorized creative expression."
"All right, all right," she said. "I saw something yesterday that might look good in here. It's a print of jazz musicians playing in New Orleans."
"Outstanding! Because behind Shreveport, that is my single favorite city in the world. Were there no prints available of the 1918 flu pandemic?"
"Well, maybe they weren't from New Orleans. Maybe it was St. Louis--or Chicago."
Maybe they were. But I'll still be suspicious.
I wonder how artists feel about people buying their prints to match the color of their walls? I know this: Van Gogh cut his ear off after someone commissioned him to paint the famous poker- playing dog scene. True story.
I always thought it would be really funny to represent the history of art as a series of poker-playing dog paintings. So you'd have an Impressionist version, a Modernist version, a Cubist version, etc.
That's probably just funny to me.
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