"Great, now people will really know that we're weird!" I remarked, half jokingly half in earnest, a few weeks ago when the professor excitedly told me that he had found an artist who could knock off Franz Klein's famous, abstract painting, "Untitled, 1957" for a very reasonable price.
He, having long admired the original work, was hoping to get a high quality print of it, but a real painting (albeit a knockoff) he decided was even better. After all, we could never afford the millionaire's price tag should the real one ever go up for auction.
The painting is big, very big, 4 feet by 3 feet big. And, it is black and stark and very abstract. Wham! It makes an impact! I hesitantly agreed to place the order.
The professor is consistently better than I am at envisioning how something will look in a space. He is always more successful at selecting and placing furniture, hanging wall hangings, and decorating our home in a way that achieves the look we both desire. He is also much more opinionated about how things should look. We are well matched -- he has a wife who is, most of the time, willing to try his ideas and I have a husband who is more talented than I at making our home visually pleasing.
The painting arrived this past Friday. The professor was out of town attending a conference so the sealed mailing tube lay on the kitchen counter for two days. Saturday night, with bated breath, we opened it, unveiled it so to speak, unfurling it on the dining room table. It is everything I thought it would be -- big and black and wild -- but it also possesses a warmth and a sense of organic movement that I didn't anticipate.
It's growing on me. Yesterday afternoon we taped the painting up above the hi-fi to see what it does to the room. We agree that it looks even better hanging on the wall. So, I guess before too long we'll stretch the canvas over a frame and really hang it.
Once again the professor has successfully shown me that I can enjoy and admire something that at first I thought was too much. And, he was right, it does look good hanging in our house.
Postscript: This morning I walked into the living room in the dim light of dawn having forgotten about the painting; the big black image on the wall startled me. Yes, this is definitely a process!
A knockoff of:
"Untitled, 1957"
Oil on canvas by Franz Klein in 1957.
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