Checkered House 1943

Grandma Moses gives us this view of a ‘Checkered House’ with oil on board, at an unknown date. The colors are like simpler versions of an Impressionist palette, all beiges, reds, greens, and blues. Check out the checkered house! The surface of this building is unreal! Like a crazy quilt, or a game board. What does it mean to play house? Do we play with the landscape like this too, imposing a kind of order, a geometry onto the messiness of nature? And what about those figures, those tiny dark figures, like ants, populating the scene, going about their business? Is this what it means to build a world, a life? How often do we reduce the world to a game, or a pattern that we can control? I’m reminded of Philip Guston’s late work. He wasn’t at all like Grandma Moses, but he also was interested in these kinds of flattened, cartoonish, and yet deeply meaningful forms.