One Night, As I Lay On the Couch...

... watching TV I met Hilma af Klint, the mother of expressionist painting

Some nights you watch a fluffy murder mystery set in a French village, starring a British antiques dealer, and while internal grumblings of Can’t We Think of Anything Else to Do? come a-visiting—because television rots the brain and there are books to read—the antiques dealer is shown a painting, a name is mentioned, you get intrigued, some Googling takes place and THEN SUDDENLY —

you meet the work of Hilma af Klint, the real first expressionist painter who pre-dated the boys’ club (Kandinsky, Mondrian, Klee). Born in 1864, Klint was into seances, spiritualism, quantum physics, and automatic drawing. After she died, her paintings went to her nephew, and her will stipulated that a chunk of her work remain hidden for at least 20 years after her death. Check out the documentary “Beyond the Visible” on Prime.

This is one of two prints I bought today:

“Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 3, Youth,” from 1907

Not Wasting My Life After All!

So if I had been sitting in a wing-back chair reading, say, my un-cracked edition of The Iliad 🤣, I would never have met Hilma, her work, and ordered two of her prints at a post-post Black Friday 25% reduction, shipping included.

Let’s take a minute to remind ourselves, that even when one is splayed on the sofa at 7 pm on a Monday night with a warm blanket, a crackling fire, and a fire-tending husband; even when one is wondering why she’s not reading The Iliad or at least a Booker-nominated author instead of watching this, that from a reclining position it takes all of five seconds to access the art of almost any painter who’s ever put a brush to canvas.

It’s a MIRACLE, this technology wizardry.

In the mid-1990s, when I had my first job writing for a website, I discovered WebMuseum Paris. The Internet was this new creature that appeared on our computer screens; we were still scratching our heads over the conceptualness of it all. If you go to WebMuseum today, you’ll get a look at websites circa 1994 because it hasn’t been updated. 😱

In 1995, I was delighted by the fact I could sit at my computer screen and treat myself to Great Works of Art. I could learn about Fauvism, make a computer screensaver of Gaugin’s “By the Sea,” and give myself an on-the-job arts education. Without leaving my desk and right under my boss’s nose.

Every day I dipped myself into art. Instead of scrolling through Facebook, I was liking Cubism.

Beauty, right at my fingertips!

I was reminded of this last night. How extraordinary it is to have instant access to art through our little phone computers. In 1995, it would have been unimaginable.

And of course, Beauty is always at our fingertips.

Beauty is in our fingertips!

Let’s end on a note of color

Can you imagine a life where we considered color in the same way we consider our purpose, or our next career move? My friend Annie emailed this to me a couple weeks back:

Big news: I am going to wear pink every single day forever. Today I'm pairing it with gold shoes.

This is big news I can get behind!

I like pink. I want gold shoes. I love Annie’s proclamation.

Another friend, a brainy writer who prefers black and muted tones told me last year:

“I’m enjoying an intrigued with baby blue.”

Here’s some baby blue as a sign off.

Love,

Beauty Hunter

“The Ten, Largest, Childhood, No. 2”, Hilma af Klint

NOT YOUR MOTHER’S BEAUTY SALON
The Salon for Beauty Hunters opens Jan 4. We are going to consider Beauty as the meaning of life. We are going to flirt with the idea that, as Mary Oliver writers, “Our work is loving the world.” We’re going to consider the persistence of beauty, the omniscience of beauty, and turn up our senses to expand our mind and spirit, and delight the senses.
What if life could get better with nothing having to change? Thank you, Beauty.
Email me back if you’re interested or have questions. 💃🏻🐬💥