Van Gogh Reborn!

267

Art Class (5)

“It’s easy. When you gave this to me, it meant 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 something that represents your feelings.”

He stares at his plate silently, still hesitating.

“From what I saw, the woman you met 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 some 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.

Some 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. Jerome, what did you choose?”

“This.”

Jerome 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 time.

“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 means 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 same as the first and today.

We learned about shapes this time, just like we shared what colors we liked and what we associated with them in the first class.

He seemed 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 time 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 Jerome.”

“……?”

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 time 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.” 𝗳r𝐞𝐞w𝐞bn𝚘ve𝚕.co𝐦

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 something else.”

Now I see that it’s a tangram game.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 me from the beginning, I would have planned ahead, but now I have to improvise.

The kids try to come up with something as it’s a performance evaluation.

“Hoon-ah! Just a moment!”

“What are you going to do?”

The kids come to me 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 time 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 me.

They are the ones who chose the yellow isosceles triangle and the small triangle of the same 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 meantime.”

“I just did what I could.”

I wonder if I could have thought of something better if I had more time.

I think he should have explained from the beginning that we were going to make something together.

“Grandpa thinks it’s a very good lesson.”

“In what way?”

“Creativity is when you connect something 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 somewhere.”

He rummaged through the folder he used when he taught at the university and opened a document related to creativity and gestured to me.

“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 game. When they told the kids what to make and then gave them the tangram game, most of them made houses or cars.”

I nodded.

“But when they told them to choose their favorite shape and then make something, the proportion of houses or cars decreased significantly.”

“Oh.”

“When you’re told to make something, houses or cars are very easy to think of. So they all show similar results.”

“I think I get it.”

The experiment was conducted in various ways.

When they told them to choose their favorite piece and then make something, the kids made different shapes.

Today, I followed Puseng’s instructions and chose some interesting and strange pieces to make something out of them. I came up with a very creative shape.

“Our brain tends to remember words that are similar. When you think of a house, words like bed or comfort come to mind naturally.”

“Yes.”

“So, what you associate with something 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 name too."1

Grandfather showed me a bizarre painting.

There were countless men 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 mean?”

“It’s a city in India. There used to be a diamond mine there.”

“Oh.”

Diamonds have been a symbol of wealth since ancient times, along with gold.

I observed the painting more closely.

The men 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 time.

They were depicted as raining from the sky, and the painting was named Golconda.

It was clearly a European setting, but an Indian city.

Interesting.

Maybe it was a representation of the urban men who pursued wealth symbolized by diamonds.

I wanted to focus more on the unfamiliar experience that the image gave me, rather than finding a meaning.

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 Dépaysement

2 Golconda, René Magritte, 1953, oil on canvas.