rothko musta been here
by bam
oh, look, you say. it is a house where they play paint-by-numbers. only, instead of paper, they play with walls.
why slosh paint all over, the way the normal people do? why not toss it just in little splotches?
the checkerboard effect: a dash of argyle here. stockholm down below. oh, look, over there, on the northern end, it’s a blob called scout, for reasons i cannot imagine. a variation of mud. one we all decided looked like something nasty smeared onto the wall.
the little one, not one to curb his words, told us impolitely just what he thought it looked like. the big one giggled. said, i wasn’t going to say so, but he’s right, you know.
which, of course, set me and the household critic back to musing color.
which, of course, set me, the chief supplier of said splotches, back to the little shop where the man sells many colors. so many colors we often get quite cross-eyed. and, eventually, rather color-blind.
who’s to tell the difference between the bluish-gray above and the grayish-blue below? does it really matter? well, yes, when you are married to the architecture critic. it all is scrutinized. it all is deeply thought.
so our house, quite often, looks as though it’s abstract art. looks as though mr. rothko’s been here, aiming opened cans of paint in the direction of our 8 1/2-by-22 plaster canvas.
it is our unique technique for deciding just which way the paint will roll. or, as those architecture people put it: we are eavesdropping on the walls, as they whisper to each other, discerning just who it is they wish to be. what is indeed their truest color? are they feeling blue? or are they deeply gray?
why horse around with little chips of paint, so small they make you squint? why not layer on the paint in splotches magnified, so big you really get the message?
and so it is that the room that once reeked of northwoods cabin, all done up in knotty pine, is now in midst of turning just a tad more uptown, morphing into music chamber where bass and keyboard will be bouncing off the pick-a-color-any-color walls.
and so it is that blue v. gray is once again the subject at the dinner table. no civil war, not here, just deeply-hued domestic debate.
trouble is, we are big on color around here. or at least one of us is.
the other, given his druthers, would paint the walls a minimalist palette. you might have noticed the kitchen walls are white on white on white. you might have gathered that one of us needed much convincing to lock her inner-paintbrush down deep inside where, every white-washed day, it hollers to be freed.
if keeping score, however, (and who would stoop so low?) the pyramid of drippy cans underneath the stairs might suggest that she who’s keen on color is ahead, 9 rooms to 3.
yup. the walls in the house where we live are, variously, schoolbus yellow (it’s not called that, but it might as well be), navy, gray, chinese red (known to the wise-guy architect—the one we pay, not the one we live with—as north shore red, poking not-so-gentle fun at the ubiquity and lack of imagination of those in these here parts who can’t help but ooze their country-club aspirations), and a few splashes of creamy, buttery yellow, besides.
once, not so long ago, in a fit of multi-chromatic fuming, one of the critics around here pooh-poohed someone else around here’s so-called kindergarten taste when it came to coloring on the walls. argued that to walk in here was to stroll through a box of crayola crayons.
harrumph.
at least i didn’t go for the 64-pack.
and so, in attempt to appease the color averse, we are down-hueing the formerly knotty front room. we are ditching sour lemon from surrounding walls. we are going argyle.
or at least that is now the bluish-gray of the western wall. with north, east, and south to follow suit, shortly.
ah, but as long as there are rollers, and painty puddles in which to roll, there stands a chance that we will once again change our mind and change our color.
mark rothko where art thou?
i have long been convinced i might be in a minority in the home-decor-with-hubby dept. (although, truth be told, things here are rather finer for his highly educated eye.) anyone decorate with a mate? anyone have a riotous color war on which to report? anyone else hem and haw over a scant degree of difference in the various hues at hand? go ahead, splash color…
ahem, ’tis me–mr. less is more. great piece today, even if i have an arrow or two sticking out of my back. :)!
oh dear darling mies, those could only be cupid’s arrows…..you are so adored for the way you hold your colors……
Oh boy……..i can’t wait for bdk and bam to visit mem and vam (that is the first time I’ve typed those initials….. they look good)…..currently there are quite a few 2×2 paint samples stuck to various walls (I like the big splotches, seems like a better way to go)………..but by then the final choices will have been made (all joint decisions mind you) and applied (hopefully)……….then i’ll just stand back as the ‘arrows’ of critique fly………although they’ll have to be brightly colored arrows……….let me apologize to bdk now because i believe my days of subtlety are over (i’ve earned the right) and you are well aware of the bright and lively personality I’ll be sharing those walls with………as to your formerly knotty pine room — my vote is for the bluish-gray at the top…..it’s beautiful………
hey jersey girl–welcome to the family! we are thrilled to have you. and thanks for your comments on bam’s blog and for being so sweet to mem, especially at this particular moment.anyway, just for the record, i believe in liveliness, but i also believe in restraint, which is why, i would say, the kitchen picture on the front of this blog looks so good. can you imagine that red and white williamsburg pattern with a riot of colors around it instead of the soothing white on white? i couldn’t eat my cheerioes if the room was like that or even listen to bruce springsteen. i’d be “born to run” right on outta there, if you know what i mean.cheers, take care and best to michael.
to bdk………..wow…….dinner conversations are going to be I-N-C-R-E-D-I-B-L-E… no, that’s not a challange, wink, wink, just duck the arrows, smile……..can’t wait……….love you already……….and thanks for the welcome…..
bam1, given your savvy, i suspect that your rothko reference of course nods towards sundays sotheby’s auction, which set a record for modern art sold at auction: “The 1950 Rothko painting, “White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose),” of blocks of color, sold for $72.8 million to an anonymous bidder by telephone, Sotheby’s said.” And if you didn’t know about that, well then, you are just so in the know that there is no knowing not. know what i mean?now, i recall as a youth, late middle school -aged perhaps, painting rita franke’s front door. rita was (and remains) gorgeous, stately and an earth woman (this was the 1970s, era of marimekko and guitar masses) and she had chosen an orange hued terra cotta. not one to deal in swatches she had me paint the whole door, then she sighed “no, that is not quite right” and dashed off to don lazar’s (editors note: the local paint store back in our little town, for the non-family “pullupa” readers). while i waited on woodland avenue she had another couple quarts mixed of a slightly less burnt orange shade, which i then proceeded to apply with alacrity. she smiled and laughed and said that was just right, and for years we laughed at the “two coat” memory. all througout the afternoon her husband, big al, had been nowhere around, meditating probably. such were those times but that second choice endured for years, even the last time, if memory serves correctly, that i passed the old franke homestead.and best greetings to vv in pv!
correction – the auction was yesterday not sunday. maybe not that anyone is concerned…and yet for this i endure another round of image verification! okay here goes…5, 4, 3, 2, 1…add comment
It’s hard to bust in on a family table but I shall, with this obnoxious observation, that I think the color thing is in the main gender-connected. When we first looked at our house, all painted in this depressing, alienating grayish-whitish-lavenderish yuck, I could not get out of there fast enough. It took quite a lot of persuading by my visionary husband to get me to go back for a second look. By then I had planned out every room (reds and golds downstairs, with a painted rooster in the shallow decorative fireplace, who knows why exactly, and golds and greens upstairs), found painters, and proceeded to commit to several unnecessary thousands of dollars worth of work. We actually got the place three years ago, and I couldn’t have spent a single night in it if we hadn’t painted before we moved in. I could barely breathe in the suffocating whitish lavenderish grayish alienation. Now my husband, he just saw a nice plain house. But longsuffering fellow that he is, he let me have my way with the walls. Color, or the lack thereof, does not really affect him physically. In fact most husbands I know don’t get hysterical about wall color. Some wives I know go through multiple wall treatments before settling down, and have made a study of color’s effect on their families; one I know has redone the vibrant, beyond-crayon-box colors of her home twice in a few years; and one I know has faithfully restored her Victorian mansion with crazy, and different, historical wallpaper in every room, with borders and medallions on ceilings and dramatic paint to coordinate. bdk, you could never eat your cheerios there, for sure. I get a little dizzy in there myself.Right now our little first-floor bathroom looks like your room in the picture, with two unsatisfactory oranges on the walls. What I’m really after is a two-tone popsicle effect, like bright tangerine and brighter tangerine. I don’t know, after all that muted decorum in the rest of the house, I just want a bathroom that is a little…ridiculous…or maybe funny, and cheerful. That may actually happen, as the wise plumber fixing that very bathroom told my attentive and helpful little daughter today, when she is going off to college. We’ve grown to live with the rothko look in there. Maybe I’ll just get a bunch of those dear little paint samples and roll them on in squares all over the bathroom walls, and then maybe we can sell the house for 72 million should we ever decide to move.bam and bdk, I like the top blueish-gray the best too.
thank god, when you all come over to play checkerboards with us (i’ve made up a nice little board game with all the leftover infinitesimal color squares), you won’t gag at the walls. because, drumroll, people, we went with door no. 1. the blueish-grayish up above, the one that jcv and vv soon-to-be vam (whoa baby, vam and bam and baby bam go to tam!) both put in a chip for…….and dpm too, i think (dang, that i can’t scroll up and reread when writing here in comment land). anyway, all of you who like a little argyle in your socks will be welcomed. we will serve tangerine popsicles so jcv feels right at home…….we’ve got a quart of scout if anyone is into mud…….
Hello bdk, bam, uncle david, jcv, and vv, er, um vam–I’m just sittin’ here at the computer enjoying today’s conversation at the “table”. Like I can actually SEE you all here at the table. I love today’s puac. Very cool.PS Wassup with “Image Verification”?
uncle david…………. best greetings to you and becca too!
I am way late in joining the paint debate. Wait, what happened to that earth tone color that went with the buttery yellow? I’ve been left in the dust. Blueish gray– good with the furniture, but with the buttery yellow????