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Taking advantage of a convenient opportunity, Mary and I hit the Seattle Art Museum this morning. My head’s been swimming with unformed ideas, and this little distraction offered due pause.
We caught the bus well after the morning rush. The ride into town was foggy and cool, and we got a good chance to do some half-hearted leaf peeping. (OK, this is a term we’ve been hearing a lot lately, so I thought it about time that I introduced it. Couldn’t resist.)
We checked our coats and then started at the fourth floor and worked our way down. It’s funny, the place I go to when I’m in this environment. Echoes of footfalls on polished hardwood floors compete with the bell of an arriving elevator, or hushed conversations, or the cries of a child restrained in its stroller. The labyrinth seems endless, and timeless. Angled lines, disfigured shapes, crisp colors and dulled tones, I find myself distracted by someone’s abstraction; by a confrontation in the concept that most of what my eyes see appeared to be nothing before the artist started.
Of course, some of it is just a bunch of crap. Sure, it’s hung in a museum, but I can’t take it any more seriously than some of those animal paintings I see when I do the Ballard Artwalk. “I just feel ripped off,” Mary says, so aptly expressing herself. Yeah, I think that’s about right.
On the other hand, I was totally blown away by a piece by Jackson Pollock. I mean, wow, I’ve never seen one of his pieces in person before, but the style was so distinct that there was no mistaking it (not that I could distinguish it from a copy, or anything). The colors were dark and ominous, and the paint was thick. It looked like grit and sand had been added to this amazing texture, which only amplified another dimension. The accompanying plaque said that this painting, “Sea Change,” was painted in 1947, and that it “takes its name from
