Page 32 - Studio International - July 1966

`You could buy it,' came the laconic reply. I did not know that this 'simple' act of buying a small,
As I have said, my relation to buying pictures had been inexpensive Paul Klee was going to change my life. Nor
non-existent. It may be hard to imagine that today, that by becoming the owner of a Klee I had entered a
especially in Hollywood, but as I have said the act of new social dimension; I had become, willy-nilly, an
buying a picture would have meant to me some Museum institution—a collector.
`acquiring' a classic, or as if someone might have said The first few people who looked at my painting,
`You can buy the Crystal Palace.' At that time art laughed. 'What on earth is that ?"Did you actually buy
auctions were hardly reported : the 'art craze' had not that ?"What do you see in it ?"How childish!' They
started. That belongs to the last fifteen years. 'Art' was humphed, hunched their shoulders, regarded me pity-
neither a pastime, a fashion, nor an investment, and ingly, and dropped the subject.
certainly not 'status'. The Hollywood of those days may
have been famous for 'conspicuous waste' but this would They ask me what I like about Klee. It is the most diffi-
have been parties, yachts, Cadillacs, golden door-handles, cult question to answer, what you like about any artist.
or two hundred pairs of shoes—not pictures. But I suppose I respond to a certain kind of humour,
My husband and I had not yet exchanged wedding childlike, gay (which may be why I like Primitives also).
presents, and when he came home that night, I asked if I like Klee's fantasy, poetry, imagina tion : the fact that
he would give me this Klee— if he would consider giving he makes you see what he has not painted. He once said
Paul Klee
Buntes (Gay colours) 1932 me a painting for my wedding present. He pulled out his `I don't paint the visible, I paint the invisible.' I like his
Gouache cheque book and said 'How much ?' delicate colours, his understatement: his sensitive per-
94x 11+ in.
Colour block by courtesy The young man looked at his cheque and nodded. And ceptions about the fragile and the strong: both Nature
of BBC Publications so I became the owner of a painting. and human beings and the complex interrelationships of