Pavel tchelitchew hide and seek

"Hide and Seek" by Pavel Tchelitchew

For years, this was my favorite painting. It hung at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and as a teenager and into my 20s I used to go into the city and sit on the bench that was in front of it for what seems in my memory to have been hours, losing myself in the dozens of childen surrounding and defining and blending into and growing out of Tchelitchew's tree of life.

Somewhere along the line, the painting was taken off display, and I was disappointed not to be able to show it to Becca when I took her to MoMA specifically to see it.

In 2002, though, I found the image reproduced on a poster available for purchase on the MoMA website and marked down to a lousy three bucks — so I ordered four of them, hung one above my bed and figured that sooner or later I'd run into three other people who like "Hide and Seek" as much as I do and be able to make them a present of it.

(I have in fact since given the extra copies awa