I painted the hallway walls

as a child In thick lines of .

Spanish White.

Poor reproductions of Birkenhead Street in

1998.

~

My mother followed behind

with a roller brush wet with 1/4 Spanish White

I watched the pictures

fall away,

and traced the lines underneath with my brush;

white on white, like ghosts.

~

Between 1938 and 1939, the famed

Le Courbusier stood naked painting

flourishes of colour and sex

on the Côte d’Azur;

urinating on the walls of Eileen Gray’s masterpiece E.1027.

~

Gray once said in response to Le Courbusier:

‘A house is not a machine to live in […]

It is the shell of man—

his extension,

his release,

his spiritual emanation.’ 1

~

Because of his greatness

the paintings are left intact,

graffiti like.

Painted over her extension, release,

her spiritual emanation.

Because a woman couldn’t be so great.

~

I painted the hallway walls

as a child

In thick lines of 1/4 Spanish White.

Poor reproductions

of Birkenhead Street in

1998.

~

My mother followed behind

with a roller brush wet with 1/4 Spanish White.

I was sorry to see my pictures

disappear,

~

like ghosts.

~

1 Alistair Gordon, Le Corbusier’s Role in the Controversy Over Eileen Gray’s E.1027 in The Wall Street Journal: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324354704578637901327433828, accessed 11/01/2017

PDF: Christine McFetridge – E1027