Every Picture Tells a Story

Every Picture Tells a Story

There are two ways in which we acquire art. The less obvious way is that when I have bought a house (primary or secondary or, even tertiary) I am usually quite rabid about getting the place set up to be immediately useable. To me, usable means with art on the walls. That approach requires me to be a devotee of art.com, where I shop for and buy relatively inexpensive artwork that fits the spaces I need to fill with the “artwork” I prefer with the color palette that more or less works for the room. It is a chapter from the hotel room school of art, but I have found it works well for my slap-dash and transient manner of home ownership, which is an outgrowth of my move-every-two-years-while-growing-up acquired lifestyle.

The second way of acquiring art is more traditional and it involves finding some interesting and meaningful piece on our travels that we feel we simply must have and must find the right spot for. That is supplemented by the gifted artwork from family and friends, which usually involves smaller pieces, but which are usually very special to us by nature of the intended grantor. Both means of acquisition invariably lead to a rethinking of the hanging and display of art in our home (depending on which one we are nearest when we acquire the piece). In a perfect world, we would just take down a meaningless piece of trash art and hang a perfectly equivalently sized and colored and framed piece of meaningful art in its place. That rarely happens. Size, color and framing are usually such that hanging the new meaningful piece requires readjust and realignment of at least a half dozen other pieces.

The reasons for this added work can vary. First there is the possibility that the trash art has become comfortable and pleasing to the point of transforming into a circumstantially meaningful piece of family art history. Something happened in the room in its presence and the piece has become imprinted with the memory of the event. Or maybe it has just become so familiar that the comfort of its presence is hard to be without. We find that there are a number of such pieces in our home in San Diego and every time we consider removing them, we vote against change in favor of consistency. The other reason is that the very reason the subject matter of the art was enough to catch my eye in the art.com array has only become more important to us. There is a print of a Botero-like large couple relaxing on a picnic blanket enjoying their labors in the vineyard. They are looking away from the “camera” and as such are looking out over both their past labors and their future pride and joy. It speaks to Kim and me in ways that are hard to explain, but the bottom line is that it is staying and would be hard for us to displace since it is beside our bed and provides us with comfort at a place of comfort.

We are moving soon from NYC to San Diego and thereby closing down our New York City apartment for good. That gives us a net reduction in wall space and meaningful artwork that will need to be placed in the San Diego house. We have already gone through the art several times and determined which trash art we are prepared to give away. It is good stuff, but has no place in our newly reduced home configuration. In fact, in the corner of our guest bedroom we have about a half dozen pieces that are stacked against the wall in one corner (how stylish of us!) that are part of this give-away cache. We plan to have the kids over for a grab-fest, knowing that my oldest son will take what’s left over and market it online for whatever the market will bear (framed art has at least the intrinsic value of the cost of the framing, it seems). The triage process has confirmed that there are three types of art that will need to be moved. There are the personal and family mementos (for instance Kim has some Japanese art that she inherited from her mother, which holds great spiritual meaning to her). There are pictures and paintings done by or given by family and friends that are part of our :Meaningful Collection”. There are meaningful pieces we bought along the way (we rarely, if ever, buy expensive investment-grade art) that we actually like in terms of content or artistic quality. And yes, there are still things we think are the right size or color to be useful somewhere unique. For some reason, long vertical pieces always find a home whereas long horizontal pieces rarely can be fit anywhere.

We have a house in Ithaca, which is where I am as I write this piece. In fact, it is the feeling of being surrounded by haunting reminders of my life and times on every wall that has caused me to write this particular story. I do not choose to tell the stories of each piece, not because they do not make interesting stories, which I believe they do, but because some stories have imbedded pain that is best not shared. By the way, I always feel the pain is an important part of life that is worth reviving and remembering, just best not shared publicly. So let me tell the tale of two pieces that I feel I can share. The first is medium-sized piece that sits on the dining room wall. It is a lovely hand-rubbed antique wooden frame with a golden matting and a print of Cornell. The view is the quintessential Cornell scene of the McGrwa Bell Tower overlooking Cayuga Lake. It screams the anthem, “Far Above Cayuga’s Waters….” But the print is strangely set in the matting with a stripe of white across the top. I could easily repair the placement of the print in the mat, but choose not to do so for memory purposes. This frame was given to me by my first wife’s mother, one of the loveliest women I have ever met. She was kind, intelligent and, more than anything, thoughtful and caring. I put my Cornell print in that frame myself and it signified the importance of Cornell to me set in the simple beauty that she discovered, crafted, hand-rubbed and gave me to house my beloved print. I think of her when I look at the art and I think of my imperfection in the framing as important reminders of lessons in life.

The other art I can see over the desk in the study, a small nook offset between the living and dining rooms and around the stair. These are actually a set of black and white photographs purchased from Time/life, simply framed, but displaying the great inventors or explorers of out time. There is Jonas Salk, Albert Einstein, the first IBM room-sized computer, the Wright Brothers and Kitty Hawk, Sir Edmund Hilary on his famous step on Everest and Margaret Meade. I will not repeat all the meaning each of those evoke in me but suffice it to say that I am tremendously inspired by each and every one of those famous photographs and consider the set to be a big and meaningful part of my life.

The point is simple, in the words of that bard of my youth, Rod Stewart, every picture tells a story, don’t it?