WHEN I WAS A YOUNG BUDDING SNOB

 

One day when I was a young budding snob of eighteen still living at home in Azusa, California (not really a hotbed of snobs, being basically a working-class community), I was walking through a big department store, the five-story May Company at the Eastland Shopping Center in West Covina.

I say walking through because I have no idea why I would have been shopping there, not having much disposable income at eighteen. Maybe it was part of my snob training as there certainly were no five-story fairly fancy department stores in Azusa. Although I was concentrating on being an intellectual snob, not a possessions sob. Still, there I was walking through the store and, I assume, happy to be there. Possibly I was on a buying mission because I remember walking one of the main aisles taking quick glances down tributary aisles as if looking for something in particular.

During one quick glance in the Home Decorating department, my eyes were captured, and my mind was enraptured by a piece of nicely framed artwork leaning against a bunch of others at the end of a tributary aisle. Not an original work of art, of course, but a full-size print meant for home decoration. Usually in the Home Decorating department, these prints were of mundane generic landscapes (often with sheep), seascapes (sometimes with sailboats), and still-lifes (usually of fruit), that sort of common art commonly found among the common. The one non-generic exception might be Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night has always been popular. Except when he was alive, of course. 

So what piece of art print captured and enraptured me? It was this.

I thought it was just...just...incredibly beautiful. Very red, of course. With a contrasting bit of blue (blue is my favorite color), several intriguing shapes, and numbers! There’s always incredible significance to numbers. This piece was not generic! And it certainly wasn’t mundane. It was a very, very significant work of art, I was sure of that. And I had to have it. So I disposed of what little income I had and bought it.

I rushed home, hung it on a wall in my bedroom, and proudly displayed it to my parents. 

“It looks like a fat lady bending over and tending to a garden,” my father immediately said.

Oh, you plebian, you philistine! I thought of my paternal progenitor, nice guy though he was.

"It’s obviously about how computers are taking over the world," I told my dad. "Look at those numbers, look at that punch pad display!

All this happened before I entered the local community college (or Junior College, as we called them then. Oh how embarrassing!). I was entering my first year of college in the Spring semester, having missed the Fall semester as I was busy at that time with my fabulous 22-day career in the United States Air Force (but that’s another story). 

One of the courses I picked for my first semester was Art History 102, and I was very excited about it. I was convinced I would gain the knowledge, sophistication, and refined taste to appreciate my new artwork at an even deeper level than I already—and quite naturally—did.

Being Art History 102, I knew I would be inculcated with art from the renaissance to the present day, where I figured my piece came from. But could I wait until the end of the semester to find details about my artwork? Of course not. So, a couple of weeks in, I happily brought in my piece to show my instructor, assuming he would not only know the work but would be mightily impressed with my excellent eye for art.

I don't remember my instructor's name. I remember I liked him a lot, though. He gave terrific lectures. I may well have revered him.

He took a quick look at my piece (which I had carried around campus all day to all my classes) and said, “Oh, yes. It’s by Paul Klee.”

Paul Klee? Paul Klee? We were still studying the Baroque period that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1740s. So I hadn't heard of Paul Klee. But even without instruction, I had heard of Van Gogh,

I had heard of Picasso.

Why hadn't I heard of Paul Klee? Hell, was he possibly a second-rater?

"It's called," my instructor continued, "La Belle Jardinière. The Beautiful Gardner."

What? My plebian, philistine paternal progenitor had been correct? He had a better eye for art than mine? It was a painting of a fat lady bending over and tending to a garden! Of course, my father was a worker in the potted plant nursery business. He spent his days among gardeners. So, that might have given him some unique insight. But, still…

It was the most valuable lesson I ever learned at college.

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By the way—Paul Klee was anything but a second-rater. Learn more about him HERE.