White, blue, ‘Photo’, French, simple, too simple. It doesn’t ignite my thoughts. French, I don’t speak French. All of the others are so much different. I don’t like it, not yet. Must be modern. I paused, read, reflected. I was wrong. It was not modern art, not even close to that. I chuckled. Joan Miró, the one artist I wouldn’t have guessed. How is it that Miro’s surrealism could be a descendant of a peinture-poésie like this one? It’s basically a white canvas!

White, all the painting was white. The word ‘Photo’ was printed beautifully close to the top left corner of the canvas. In the opposite angle was a blue daub of paint, that kind of blue only seen in the best summer days. Some French words that translated to ‘this is the color of my dreams’ were written elegantly below the plunge of blue accompanying it gracefully.

Dad, check, mom, check, sisters, check and check. Finding them was not hard it was close to lunch time and people were leaving from the Met Museum. They were all around and around they were and it was all real. White canvas, beautiful, exceptionally simple. I looked at it again. Miró said that he simply painted the word ‘Photo’, that he had no memory of the actual image. I closed my eyes and found that there was no photo. I had no picture of it in my mind either, I still don’t know what the photo was or is. I peeked through my eyelids; I was still at the museum. I stared, the blue paint moved, it spread up and down, riving the background apart revealing a sky, that summer day when everything is perfect. Am I dreaming? My hands were on the back of my head; my fingers struggled to move rubbing with the green grass. The air was cool and smelled so delightful. Someone had to be around. I sat. Turned left, turned right, twisted backwards. Nothing. I was alone, a green field behind me. I asked myself “What is happening?” A blue sky, birds somewhere in the blue sky or somewhere within the woods whose ends I could barely see. There was no need to shut my eyes in order to imagine what was better than this, what is better than this? Breath, in, out, beauty. A woman ran in the horizon, her perfume visible even to my distance. She was and is pulchritudinous. I feel my hand moving. A cloud with no beginning or end passed overhead it covered all the sky, but one smudge of it. I had one last glance of the lady and walked towards the horizon.

My eyes opened. I saw the purpose of the painting. Miro’s “This is the color of my dreams”, was more than alive to me, it was a part of me. I felt it. The pure memory of the doing of this painting made me shiver. I had recreated the painting in my mind, the occasion was flawless. A clock tells me half an hour has passed. Must be leaving soon. Mom, check, dad, check, sisters, both there.

I remember it, the painting. I had critiqued without feeling, but had found a reason for such beautiful simplicity. Observation is not enough to tell what something truly is and represents. I must feel. The doing of this painting was a transcendental experience. Wasn’t it? I felt. There is no judging aloud with observation only. ‘Photo’, no meaning. Its lack of connotation lets everything else have one, lets everything else have a meaning. White, blue, Photo, perfect.