I’m wheeling a patient down the hall in nursing home (bringing them back from a dialysis trip), looking at the paintings on the wall. Most nursing homes have really crappy art work -- paintings of rich people having picnics in top hats or girls in nightgowns playing with kittens -- paintings that are sold in crappy five and dime stores for $15 each -- really bland paintings that are supposed to I guess in some way provide comfort and peace and thus cause patients to fall asleep with their mouths open because the paintings are so lifeless and boring. That would be my idea of hell, ending up having to spend my last years looking at those paintings. Please let me out of here!
But this nursing home has a Van Gogh –
Irises.
A nice painting.
I could handle a nursing home with a good collection of impressionist prints. I think if I could have any one painting I would want Renoir's
Dance at Bougival.
I could stare at that painting and remember what it was like to hold a woman in my arms.
Though I suppose when I am in a nursing home I may be a little demented, and want something that mirrors my inner thoughts. I could ask for a print of Munch’s The Scream:
Or some Goya.
"Satan Devouring one of His Own Children."
But the administrators probably wouldn't let me hang those up. Can't scare away families looking to place their loved ones.
