The Anecdotal Life Part: 103

Just after my birthday, my friend Susan and I jumped aboard the huge Blue and Yellow Mega Bus parked next to the White Marsh Mall. Three hours and forty five minutes later, New York showed up and I do mean showed up. We were up on the second level of the bus. I always thought the train was fairly good for seeing the view, but no, the bus was. The cab ride was as breathtaking as always and we zipped uptown to the Whitney. I had waited forever, it seemed, for this particular Ohio artist to be acknowledged properly and the Whitney gave him a whole floor. Imagine having enough work for a whole floor---and here's the shocking part, that definitely wasn't all his work. Charles Burchfield was born in 1893 and died in 1967. During his later years I was being introduced to his work by an avant-guard, cadre of watercolorists "posing" as professors in my art school. Usually in a gallery, I am caught up by one or two paintings in particular, but poor Susan and I were stunned by one glorious piece after another. The works are very dark initially since he had the misfortune to be alive in World War I, the Great Depression, World War II and instead of these terrible events beating his spirits down, this man's concepts slowly arose through the years of work to overwhelm the two of us with joy. It happened subtly, like the sun creeping in behind the fog. An all dark painting would have some small yellow, saving grace tucked into a scene that made you smile unexpectedly in spite of the gloom. And that man can do gloom. He knows every nuance of black and grey in existence. As his time on our planet went on, his paintings showed more and more yellow and lightness. Glory bloomed in front of our eyes. He used patterns with abandon and created little cathedrals of light in so many pieces, one after another. Just when we swore we'd seen the best, another would rise up and capture us. His work was visionary like Chagall's work. We went back throughout the show about three times and then, reluctantly home. The Whitney is not a large museum. It does not, however, avoid the experimental arts currently available. We missed the unusual music happening on one floor and some tremendously unusual art on another floor as well. I was somewhat sorry about that, but not in the end. I wanted to be enveloped by Burchfield's work and I most certainly was. It all brought back a time when a friend took me through his neighbor's art collection , all housed in a good doctor's home on a simple street in Dearborn, Michigan. I remember I was astounded to see a little Rembrandt print, a small Picasso print, and completely floored as I turned the corner to the living room to encounter a large, vainglorious yellow painting behind the couch by Burchfield. Lucky, lucky me. "Deja vu, all over again."
Copyright: August 3o, 2010.