The Cat and the Spirit of Henry Moore
The Fine arts (ISO) class was located on the ground floor. Our desks were pushed together, making one big long rectangular table for all of us. Firstly, it made it possible to get away from the school stereotype, turning the classroom space into a studio, and secondly, in this scenario, children see each other’s faces and works, plus the joy of communication in the creative process.
And outside the window – May! Teachers know: dandelions, cheerful spring cries – both birds and children. And also, if it’s sunny and warm, students, especially younger ones, just go crazy! What kind of lessons are there…
It was a warm day. The window is open. Seventh grade.
The topic is difficult – “Volume in a drawing”, I teach them, contrary to all the rules, volume in complex forms at once. We have a regular school, not an art school, but only an hour a week! – there is no time for sequential drawing of a cube-cylinder-ball. The volume is best shown in the drawings of the brilliant British artist and sculptor Henry Moore, whose weighty book I brought to the lesson.
And as soon as I start talking about Moore and showing his drawings, the usual (as a result, unusual!) jumps into the window. a yard cat, gray, maybe striped, I don’t remember exactly anymore. She looks around, meows, and walks purposefully to the communal table. He jumps up, a second later finds himself in the very center, ritually, as cats do, sniffs the place, trying on, sits down, then lies down.
The children were taken aback, I’m with them.… I put my finger to my lips and speak very softly:
– Shh, don’t scare the cat away! The topic of the lesson is changing: once a model has come to us, we draw from nature.
Children are happily painting. The cat poses serenely.
Thank you for meeting me, spirit of the great Moore! It looks like you’re the one who blessed our lesson in the form of a cat.
Greetings from Hamlet
An artist friend had a natural skull in his studio apartment, not a plaster one. You know that a real artist absolutely needs a skull! They learn from it in order to draw a portrait correctly. And how many great canvases, both in still lifes and in the hands of characters, depict this more than just an object. Hamlet wasn’t the only one talking to the skull…
And I wanted to at least draw a skull with the seventh graders. More precisely, to live. I asked a friend to give it to us for a while. I prepared colored paper so that everyone could choose a suitable background for themselves – from black to brick red, grisaille looks good on this (gradations of the same color).
She told the children that the skull had been given to the artist by a doctor, an anatomy teacher.
And so at the end of the story, just before starting work, one girl asked:
“So it’s a living skull?”
Children’s questions are incomparable.
The death of the alarm clock
I had a fifth grade student named Kostya. He was wonderful, funny, and moderately mischievous, but it wasn’t that he wasn’t doing well at all with drawing, but… I never gave students a grade less than a four. At the same time, the children sometimes perceived the four almost with resentment. But Kostya understood his level.
One day, quite unexpectedly, Kostya came to our “Cat in a Poke” art studio.
I was surprised.:
– You don’t really like to draw, do you?
He replied:
– Olga Nikolaevna, I want to correct the four, I want to do it in the quarter and in the year five!
Kostya conscientiously attended classes at the studio, and it seemed that he even enjoyed it, because we had a free and fun time.
Once, on half-paper, on one side of which there was a drawing (someone brought student drawings and unnecessary calendars with a clean back for the studio; all teachers of art circles and studios know that there is not much paper when working with children), Kostya created an absolute masterpiece. On a complex fractional background consisting of brownish-ochre-red spots, creating a sense of a crowd and a rally, there was a large, round alarm clock with a clear blue (cobalt blue) on a black stand. On the left side of the painting, a brown tank was moving towards him. On the right side is the slogan: “Down with the alarm clock!” And the title of the work: “Death of the alarm clock.”
In general, Kostya expressed his protest, rebellion: time is a tyrant, down with time! I think many people, not only children, but also adults, would find emotional harmony with this vivid expressive picture, because it concentrated the aspirations and bitterness of all “owls” before the fatal inevitability of getting up to study or work. What’s the point of this story? The fact that everyone is capable of creating something brilliant.
“Something”, “Lonely Bear” and the music of life
In my practice, the topic of the lesson was often specific, related to the technique of drawing, for example: “Impressionism. Types of brushstroke” (gouache), but the content of the drawing is completely free. This gave the child the opportunity to show imagination and feelings without looking back. The miracle of a masterpiece arose. This is how an incredible “Fabulous Bear” appeared, or rather manifested itself from some dimension of its own (the author is a sixth-grader, the size of a half–human). Against the background of dark colored spots with bright cobalt blue flecks and white paper gaps, there is a sad bear with a white head. And the caption is a whole story: “A fabulous bear is looking for happiness, but he is unlucky, and he decides to stay in his native place…”
No less remarkable is the unimaginable “Something” the size of an entire paperback – something like a lamb, in a lilac-blue scale, looking at you from an alien, with a curly and somewhat chaotic brushstroke. At the same time, the work is harmonious and integral, created together by two boys from the sixth grade.
And there is no way to deny the worldly sophistication of an artist from the first class, who depicted as an “image” (a short-term task on a small sheet) a black-and-white line with a treble clef and several colored notes, with the caption: “A black stripe, a white stripe, and sometimes a colored life.” How accurate is this “sometimes”! But life is still music, even if it’s black and white.
Flying tulips
All elementary school teachers are familiar with the hustle and bustle before February 23 and March 8. But art teachers have a special responsibility: “Let the children draw portraits of their mothers!” For an exhibition or for a gift to their mothers.
Even with a step-by-step example on an easel (oval, beige color, proportions, etc.), this is incredibly difficult for primary school age. That’s why I preferred to paint flowers on large sheets with my students. Yes, that’s right: large flowers on large leaves, it turns out something like a floral carpet, it looks very impressive, bright and picturesque and decorative.
It’s hard to believe, but children are born realists, abstractionists, surrealists, primitivists, etc. – according to the type of artistic perception and thinking. And yet – there is something (angelic? God’s?).
Third grade. Nastya draws a tulip. A noble pink color, in a flawless blue sky with white clouds. The earth, which is probably also grass, is a soft mint-green color. But what is it? The stems do not touch the ground, as if they exist separately from both the flower and the earth. How are the birds? It’s like they’re dancing (or flying?) around your flower. The title of the work was simple: “Flowers for mom on March 8th.”
Now do a visual experiment: try to make this work in your imagination as if it were correct, that is, to finish drawing the stems to the ground. And everything will disappear: surreality, mystery, uniqueness. And some kind of impossible tenderness will disappear. And – the transcendence of this flower. Because the whole point is in this isolation from the earth! The mystery of art, creativity (forgive me for the grandiloquence).
Imagine how many children, looking at such a drawing, parents or teachers will say: “This is a mistake! You need to fix it, draw it right, like in real life.” And what will happen? An artist can die in a child. Do you think Nastya is some kind of special “mystical”, “quiet” or “romantic” girl? Not at all, except in Mandelstam’s definition: “Don’t compare: The living one is incomparable…”
