Senecio lives!

Several years ago I wrote about my connection to this painting 'Senecio' by Paul Klee, so I'm not going to repeat it here. Instead I'll explain why my attention was drawn to the painting anew.

Last night, during a commercial break from the news, my eyes caught an advert that appeared to be set in Italy, selling t-shirts. As I don't have the kind of body that looks good these days in a t-shirt, I wasn't too interested ... until one of the actors turned his back to the camera. On the reverse side of the shirt there was a print of Senecio! It was only visible for a few seconds, and I wonder how many people noticed it.

This morning, by chance, I happened to be in our local shopping mall where is situated a branch of the clothing company that created the television advert. I entered and explained that I was looking for the t-shirt worn in the new advertisement by actor/model Ran Danker (I could identify him, but not his two cronies in the advert). The salespeople didn't know what I was talking about at first, but after a few minutes, they found the shirt that RD was wearing and its catalogue number. Another minute later and I was looking at the shirt itself, or more accurately, at its back. Indeed, Senecio lives. Naturally I bought the shirt.

I wonder whether the Klee estate gets a cut from this sale.

[Although Blogger says that it sends the contents of a blog entry automatically to a list of emails, more often than not this doesn't happen. I have a working hypothesis that having a picture in the blog entry prevents it from being sent. I'll soon see whether my hypothesis is confirmed.]

Update from two months later: I get the impression that the advert that caught my eye was broadcast once only (at least, I've never seen it again), so it was very much serendipity that allowed me to catch it.