A visit to Seattle

Yesterday, March 20. 2012, I took advantage of my SAM membership to see the Gauguin show in Seattle. Kiki Cardarelli went with me. Much of it was spectacular. As always with shows including works borrowed from other collections, no photos were allowed. I bought the catalogue. We had parked at a public structure a couple of blocks up the hill from the museum and daunted by the size of the book, I asked them to ship it home.

Kiki led me to a restaurant at Pike’s Place market, where we watched the grey water slosh under an equally gray sky and admired the red accents of cranes waiting there for containers to unload. The ferry arrived to snug against the buildings cluttered at the water’s edge and I decided against eating another French fry. Traffic was light going home.

I look forward to the catalogue arriving so that I can study the images and reference them against the experience of seeing the actual work. The ferocious impact Gauguin made upon me when I was nineteen has weakened some, and I see him as more adroit than savage, but his urge to dig out emotions at that layer below the everyday social world is, oh, so worth holding onto.