DOI Artikel:
Anne Brigman, What 291 Means to Me
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31336#0021
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WHAT 291 MEANS TO ME
To tell what “291 ” means to me, seems more complicated than attempt-
ing to describe the famous “Nude Descending a Stairway.”
It was my first morning in New York.
I was obsessed with the fear that I would get lost. Fifth Avenue seemed
less stationary than a moving sidewalk.
Then I saw the Flat Iron Building, in the morning light, breasting the
winds of heaven like the Victory of Samothrace.
Perhaps, because it was like a snowy mountain peak; perhaps it was its own
soaring beauty, but the fear left me and I laughed as though I had found a trail.
And truly I had, for only a few feet away across the sidewalk, were the
numerals that have grown to mean more than numerals.
It was an insignificant doorway and it lead into a more insignificant hall,
but on the wall was a poster illuminated at the top with the sign of the Golden
Disc (Sun) (which?).
Again the finding of the trail!
Came a rattle and whirling in the darkest corner, and lo, the elevator
about as large as a nickel-plated toast-rack on end, with a six-foot African
in command.
“Does this go up to the Little Galleries?” I breasted.
“Yassum!”
A flash of teeth, a tattoo of huge knuckles, a pull on the rope and we were
crawling up inch by inch to Mecca.
When I stepped out on the fourth floor, it was into a pile of boxes and
papers and excelsior, evidence of fully finished picture unpacking!
But there wasn’t a sound.
I knew the dark brother in the elevator was watching through the grill,
and I felt like Brer Rabbit when he was “dat nerbous, dat he kicked out
every tahm a weed tickled him.”
The door of the elevator had closed; it was shaking into the third depth.
Ahead was a tiny hall. There was a strange painting on its small, gray
wall. It was in yellows and reds and blues. Something in me called it the
“Valley of Crocheted Bed Slippers”—something in me that grinned at first
—and later through the many months held to the name in all seriousness.
To the left was a second tiny hall, which opened into two other rooms,
one a second cousin to a hall bedroom; the other, the Little Gallery.
From pictures of it, I knew it: its drop lights, its gray walls and simple
hangings, and the great copper bowl filled with branches of russet oak leaves.
But the things on the walls!
I had come across the continent to see photographs!
I didn’t know that these were Matisse drawings, or that those wild riots
of color were Marins and Hartleys. It was just a head-on collision to my
plain little brain.
I was now wilder than Brer Rabbit and would have fled, had I not been
held by what I now realize was the power of pure beauty of color and rhythm.
17
To tell what “291 ” means to me, seems more complicated than attempt-
ing to describe the famous “Nude Descending a Stairway.”
It was my first morning in New York.
I was obsessed with the fear that I would get lost. Fifth Avenue seemed
less stationary than a moving sidewalk.
Then I saw the Flat Iron Building, in the morning light, breasting the
winds of heaven like the Victory of Samothrace.
Perhaps, because it was like a snowy mountain peak; perhaps it was its own
soaring beauty, but the fear left me and I laughed as though I had found a trail.
And truly I had, for only a few feet away across the sidewalk, were the
numerals that have grown to mean more than numerals.
It was an insignificant doorway and it lead into a more insignificant hall,
but on the wall was a poster illuminated at the top with the sign of the Golden
Disc (Sun) (which?).
Again the finding of the trail!
Came a rattle and whirling in the darkest corner, and lo, the elevator
about as large as a nickel-plated toast-rack on end, with a six-foot African
in command.
“Does this go up to the Little Galleries?” I breasted.
“Yassum!”
A flash of teeth, a tattoo of huge knuckles, a pull on the rope and we were
crawling up inch by inch to Mecca.
When I stepped out on the fourth floor, it was into a pile of boxes and
papers and excelsior, evidence of fully finished picture unpacking!
But there wasn’t a sound.
I knew the dark brother in the elevator was watching through the grill,
and I felt like Brer Rabbit when he was “dat nerbous, dat he kicked out
every tahm a weed tickled him.”
The door of the elevator had closed; it was shaking into the third depth.
Ahead was a tiny hall. There was a strange painting on its small, gray
wall. It was in yellows and reds and blues. Something in me called it the
“Valley of Crocheted Bed Slippers”—something in me that grinned at first
—and later through the many months held to the name in all seriousness.
To the left was a second tiny hall, which opened into two other rooms,
one a second cousin to a hall bedroom; the other, the Little Gallery.
From pictures of it, I knew it: its drop lights, its gray walls and simple
hangings, and the great copper bowl filled with branches of russet oak leaves.
But the things on the walls!
I had come across the continent to see photographs!
I didn’t know that these were Matisse drawings, or that those wild riots
of color were Marins and Hartleys. It was just a head-on collision to my
plain little brain.
I was now wilder than Brer Rabbit and would have fled, had I not been
held by what I now realize was the power of pure beauty of color and rhythm.
17
