I was pleased on that first visit to find examples of the work of Paul Klee.
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Ships Departing by Paul Klee |
Klee had been a favorite from the time I was a child. I was very taken by his use of color in his abstract compositions. I particularly remembered a picture of his depicting a reclining nude in a rainforest setting.
When I got home I searched the Web for that particular picture I remembered with such fondness. It came as quite a surprise that no such painting by Klee seems to exist. Looking around at the work of other artists of the same period I decided that what I thought I remembered as a work by Klee was probably The Dream, painted in 1910 by Henri Rousseau.
So, a very long-held and cherished memory was a very poor representation of reality. It got me thinking about what memories consist of, how they are stored and recalled, and what unreliable records they often are. One of the things that distinguishes this particular memory is that it was possible for me to test its accuracy. Many -- perhaps most -- memories are not so easily verified or refuted.
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