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that had often hung in the dining room of the de Menils' New York townhouse. Stella's only comment: "For Jasper, this is a very large painting." They walked over to a grouping of paintings by Yves Klein. Stella liked all of them, studying with particular interest the gold monochrome, Untitled (1960). It was a large, heavy panel with circular indentations that was covered entirely in gold leaf. Stella observed it with a technical curiosity, touching it, wondering how thick the frame must be to support such weight. They stopped before one of Stella's paintings, Lake City (1962), a modestly scaled, U-shaped canvas that used copper paint. He studied it. Dominique mentioned that it looked soiled in places. "It doesn't matter," the artist replied. "Leave it as it is. Paintings change color with time." They stopped in front of Stella's large gray canvas, Avicenna (1960), a pattern of concentric dark gray lines around a rectangular white void. "He contemplates his gray painting with obvious satisfaction," Dominique noted. Stella was standing so that he could see both his piece and Jasper Johns's Gray Alphabets (1956). The artist told Dominique that they had become closer in tone than when they were fi rst made, that his painting had become lighter and Johns's had darkened. Stella walked by works by Robert Rauschenberg, mumbling pleasant comments, before coming face- to-face with Jasper Johns's Star (1954), a small, pale construction, in oil beeswax and house paint, of a Star of David. Stella gasped. "How did you get it?" he demanded of Dominique. "I told him that Walter had kept track of it and grabbed it when it suddenly appeared on the market. It is a high point of the collection for him." They walked up to a pair of paintings by Barnett Newman. Stella looked at Newman's large, intense red canvas, Be I (1949), with a thin white line that ran down the center. But he was particularly struck by Ulysses, the important abstract expressionist painting that had once belonged to Christophe, a canvas that was over eleven feet tall with two soaring rectangles of vivid blue and black. Stella took a few steps back and looked intently at Ulysses. "It is Newman at his best," he exclaimed to Dominique. "It rises! It rises! Yet it is dense. It's like a cathedral. Cathedrals are strong, but they seem weightless." He looked at it from a great distance and just said, "It soars!" Dominique and Stella continued their visit to the twentieth-century galleries. The artist studied her Mondrian paintings with an obvious interest and a Brancusi sculpture, which he felt would be better displayed in the middle of the room so that it could be seen from all sides. Stella paid great attention to the cubist paintings but did not even glance at an important Cézanne watercolor. As they walked back to the entrance of the museum, the artist told Dominique how much he loved the architecture of the building. He said that he expected it to be downtown and several stories tall, that it was so refreshing to fi nd that it was in a neighborhood and that it fi t in so well. "He likes everything about the museum," Dominique noted, "the covered walks, the classical feeling, the chalk white walls. He is almost emotional about it and tries to press me on how good it is. He understands that I do understand how he feels and our handshake has the warmth of an embrace. He hops in his car and is gone." Excerpted from Double Vision by William Middleton. Copyright © 2018 by William Middleton. Excerpted by permission of Knopf. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PHOTO: COURTESY MENIL ARCHIVES, THE MENIL COLLECTION. PHOTO DAVID CROSSLEY, COURTESY MENIL ARCHIVES, THE MENIL COLLECTION. PHOTO HICKEY-ROBERTSON, COURTESY ROTHKO CHAPEL ARCHIVES. COURTESY MENIL ARCHIVES, THE MENIL COLLECTION. COURTESY ADELAIDE DE MENIL. COURTESY DE MENIL FAMILY PAPERS, MENIL ARCHIVES, THE MENIL COLLECTION. PHOTO HICKEY-ROBERTSON, COURTESY MENIL ARCHIVES, THE MENIL COLLECTION. PHOTO BALTHAZAR KORAB, COURTESY MENIL ARCHIVES, THE MENIL COLLECTION. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Jimmy Carter, Dominique de Menil, at the fi rst Carter-Menil Human Rights Prize, Rothko Chapel, December 1986 Menil House in Houston, architecture Philip Johnson, interior design Charles James The Menil Collection, Renzo Piano's fi rst building in America Dominique Schlumberger in 1930, age 22, just before she met Jean de Menil John de Menil, East Hampton, late 1960s Dominique de Menil with Nelson Mandela, Rothko Chapel, December 1991 Barnett Newman's monumental sculpture Broken Obelisk (1963-1967), dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., Rothko Chapel Architect Renzo Piano, Dominique de Menil, then Mayor of Houston Kathy Whitmire, at the dedication of The Menil Collection, June 1987 69