THE PUZZLING SKI PARTY : Jigsaw Creates Quite an Impression on Art Critic
Things were getting desperate for our skiing party. Harvey had wrenched his back before the trip to Mammoth, but he and Isabel own the condominium we were occupying and the rest of us freeloaders weren’t about to let them retract their invitation. Ann was shell-shocked from overwork and had already announced her intention to make this “a rotting vacation.” That left Jim, Paul, Isabel and me raring to hit the slopes but creaking from the previous day’s cross-country workout.
A buncha aging jocks and jockettes, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The temperature was 45 Farenheit and it was hailing when it wasn’t raining. Skiing while it’s snowing can be enchanting--provided the wind is light and the white stuff doesn’t soak through your clothes while you’re dangling in a chairlift--but gliding through the rain has no redeeming features. Paying $24 a day and fighting soggy crowds to do it is lunacy.
So what to do? Read each other’s magazines? Watch the day-old TV weather report, predicting a 30% chance of precipitation? Finger the ski clothes at the local emporiums? Stock up on polypropylene socks and silk underwear in hopes of clearer and colder weather?
No, we needed a project to combat cabin fever, so I turned to a jigsaw puzzle I had started the previous evening. Not just any puzzle, this was a crummy reproduction of Mary Cassatt’s Impressionist painting “The Boating Party,” carefully selected from a stack of less artful subjects.
I had noticed right away that the puzzle had no edges, but as a guest I didn’t want to say anything. Isabel soon delivered them, neatly lined up on an 18x24-inch cardboard rectangle and wrapped in tin foil like a TV dinner. She and her family had started the puzzle on a previous vacation and couldn’t bear to dump the finished part into the box with the unused pieces, so they just preserved it.
We had a head start and about that nobody was complaining. As the temperature rose and the water rolled off the roof, we got serious about our cultural mission. We discussed the various ways Cassatt painted water, how she connected the oar to the boat and how the baby’s pink dress differs from the woman’s. We memorized every fleck of red and each bit of bubbly white in the water, every crack in the man’s jacket, and cursed the artist for being such a Modernist. A little more detail would have been appreciated under the circumstances.
Some members of our party were more dedicated than others, but when the summery scene began to shape up, those of us who cared gave it our rapt attention. We divided into teams of Them and Us and even resorted to filching each other’s pieces as we raced the gaps in one patch of painted water against those in another.
Isabel got frantic and tried to cram pieces into places where they obviously didn’t fit, as if the painting were printed on elastic. I screamed at everyone who sat in front of the light and distorted my perception of the colors. Jim invented his own vocabulary and occasionally announced, “I’m looking for a piece with an innie and two outies .” Ann cruised by the table periodically, saying, “I think it’s interesting that you like puzzles,” which meant she doesn’t.
Eventually, we found all the pieces we had sworn were missing and we dragged Harvey out of bed to plug the final hole. Isabel had already started talking about buying puzzle glue and framing the Cassatt to commemorate our achievement. We knew her well enough not to try to talk her out of it. Paul proved his manual dexterity by flipping the puzzle in mid-air so we could glue the back side to newspaper. Isabel found an $18 oak frame at the hardware store that was only a little too small for the puzzle. We coaxed it into the frame on the short side, but the length wouldn’t make it.
Having experience in matters of art, I marked a quarter-inch strip on one end and cut it off with kiddie scissors. I know what you’re thinking, but here’s how I figured it: Once Mary Cassatt’s masterpiece has been reduced to a jigsaw puzzle, hacking off a quarter-inch of it probably doesn’t matter. Besides, I just paid my dues to the International Assn. of Art Critics, so they can’t revoke my membership in the organization till next year. By then, I’ll be skiing or piecing together a Jackson Pollock.
