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Art Class (5)
“It’s easy. When you gave this to , it ant you were sorry, right?”
He nods.
“Just be a little more honest.”
He looks like he kind of gets it, but not really.
“I’m not telling you to lie to yourself. Don’t you hate that your father is getting remarried?”
“…Yeah.”
“Nothing will change if you sneak off to your old house or throw a tantrum. You just have to tell him how much you love your mother, and how you’re not ready to accept another mother.”
All you need is the courage to express your thoughts and feelings honestly.
Most problems between people start from very small things.
Like how Marso didn’t explain why he postponed our date.
“I. I’m not good at talking.”
“There are other ways. If you’re not good with words, you can write a letter. Or give him sothing that represents your feelings.”
He stares at his plate silently, still hesitating.
“From what I saw, the woman you t yesterday is ready to accept you.”
It’s the second art class.
The assistant teacher placed a basket full of wooden pieces in front of the students.
“Today, we’re going to find so interesting wooden pieces.”
The principal, Pusang, explained the lesson.
“The one who finds the most interesting piece will get a reward. It’s 2 o’clock now, so let’s look for five minutes.”
The kids rushed to the basket.
So were smart and dumped the whole basket, while others watched what others were picking.
Interesting shapes.
The simple shapes like circles, squares, and triangles were only different in color, size, and form, so they didn’t catch the eye.
But they all made their own reasons.
“This is interesting, right?”
“It’s just a circle.”
“But it’s the only one with a curve, while the others are straight lines.”
“Oh, right.”
The kid who chose the circle also said.
“This is the most interesting one!”
“Why?”
“It’s crooked.”
The kid who found the parallelogram interesting because it was crooked.
I wondered what to choose and found a circle with a missing piece. The other shapes were all complete, but this circle had a pizza slice shape missing.
“Did you all find one?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s see. Jero, what did you choose?”
“This.”
Jero showed a blue trapezoid.
“What was interesting about it?”
“It looks like a hat if you use it like this.”
He was good at giving relationships to two different things, like he did with the orange and the roof last ti.
“I see. That’s a good way to look at it. Jacques, what did you choose?”
“A square.”
“You found the square interesting?”
“No. Actually. I don’t know.”
Jacques said honestly.
The kids laughed softly at Jacques’ words, and he glared at them, annoyed. Pusang patted Jacques’ head.
“That’s okay. It just ans there’s nothing you like in this basket.”
Pusang asked a few more kids.
There were only about 20 minutes left in the class, and it was the sa as the first and today.
We learned about shapes this ti, just like we shared what colors we liked and what we associated with them in the first class.
He seed to want to give us a chance to think deeply about color and form.
It was a bit disappointing compared to what I expected from what Henri Marso and Blanche Fabre said.
But I thought it would be a good approach for the 12-13 year olds.
It was education at their eye level.
“Oh, dear. There’s only 20 minutes left.”
Pusang checked the ti and urged the assistant teacher.
“Now, we’re going to make interesting shapes with the pieces you chose. You can make a house or a car. If you want to express a person wearing a hat, you’ll need Jero.”
“……?”
I’m flustered.
The kids in the class also look like they’ve been hit hard on the back of their heads, blinking their eyes.
“If you don’t hurry, the class ti will be over. It’s a very important performance evaluation.”
Mr. Puseng hesitates as if he’s embarrassed, then smiles at the kids.
“We have to hurry.”
The flustered kids quickly match their pieces with their friends sitting next to them.
One kid likes it when he matches the hypotenuse of a right triangle with another right triangle.
“It’s done! It’s a square!”
“It’s just a square! Go away. I’m going to make sothing else.”
Now I see that it’s a tangram ga.1)
The pieces are more diverse, but the point of making different shapes with the figures is no different from tangram.
If he had told from the beginning, I would have planned ahead, but now I have to improvise.
The kids try to co up with sothing as it’s a performance evaluation.
“Hoon-ah! Just a mont!”
“What are you going to do?”
The kids co to and try to fit their pieces with the toothless circle I chose.
But they soon give up and leave as they can’t think of a way to join them.
“10 minutes left.”
Mr. Puseng announces the remaining ti smugly.
I’m flustered.
I can’t figure out how to use the toothless circle.
I look around for a square, but most of the kids have already found their partners.
“5 minutes left.”
If I hesitate any longer, I won’t be able to collect any pieces, so I grab the kids who are as clueless as .
They are the ones who chose the yellow isosceles triangle and the small triangle of the sa color.
Just different-sized triangles.
“What do we do?”
“We’re screwed.”
“Are we getting zero?”
Is my head this hard?
“We have to wrap it up soon.”
At Mr. Puseng’s words, I quickly gathered the pieces.
I made the isosceles triangle the body and put the toothless circle on the vertex as the head.
When I put two small triangles on top of it, the kids are happy.
“It’s a cat!”
“A cat!”
“Teacher! We finished too!”
“I was flustered.”
Grandpa laughed when I told him what happened at school.
“But you did well in the anti.”
“I just did what I could.”
I wonder if I could have thought of sothing better if I had more ti.
I think he should have explained from the beginning that we were going to make sothing together.
“Grandpa thinks it’s a very good lesson.”
“In what way?”
“Creativity is when you connect sothing completely different. Could you think of a cat when you chose the toothless circle?”
I shook my head.
Grandpa smiled and took out his tablet.
“Let’s see. It should be here sowhere.”
He rummaged through the folder he used when he taught at the university and opened a docunt related to creativity and gestured to .
“Grandpa had this research result when he was at the university.”
“What is it?”
“It’s similar to what you did today with the tangram ga. When they told the kids what to make and then gave them the tangram ga, most of them made houses or cars.”
I nodded.
“But when they told them to choose their favorite shape and then make sothing, the proportion of houses or cars decreased significantly.”
“Oh.”
“When you’re told to make sothing, houses or cars are very easy to think of. So they all show similar results.”
“I think I get it.”
The experint was conducted in various ways.
When they told them to choose their favorite piece and then make sothing, the kids made different shapes.
Today, I followed Puseng’s instructions and chose so interesting and strange pieces to make sothing out of them. I ca up with a very creative shape.
“Our brain tends to rember words that are similar. When you think of a house, words like bed or comfort co to mind naturally.”
“Yes.”
“So, what you associate with sothing right away is not very creative.”
I realized that grandfather was right.
We feel unfamiliar when we connect different concepts.
"There is an artistic technique that uses this. It has a strange na too."1
Grandfather showed a bizarre painting.
There were countless n in coats floating in the air.2
“What is this?”
“It’s a work by René Magritte, an artist. It’s called Golconda.”
I didn’t know how to react to this strange scene. People who should be on the ground were in the air.
“What does Golconda an?”
“It’s a city in India. There used to be a diamond mine there.”
“Oh.”
Diamonds have been a symbol of wealth since ancient tis, along with gold.
I observed the painting more closely.
The n were all wearing polite hats and neat coats.
“When was this painting made?”
“In 1953.”
I guessed that was the typical look of office workers at that ti.
They were depicted as raining from the sky, and the painting was nad Golconda.
It was clearly a European setting, but an Indian city.
Interesting.
Maybe it was a representation of the urban n who pursued wealth symbolized by diamonds.
I wanted to focus more on the unfamiliar experience that the image gave , rather than finding a aning.
I shared my thoughts with grandfather, and he nodded.
“Grandfather, you also find it interesting that we can’t tell who those people are.”
“Yes.”
They all wore bowler hats and coats, so they were indistinguishable.
Was it a sign of anonymity?
Maybe it reflected the tendency of the people in the 1950s who were swept away by the huge capital and could not exist as individuals.
Making it strange.
It was a very fascinating technique.
1 Dépaysent
2 Golconda, René Magritte, 1953, oil on canvas.
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