I finally replaced my dryer yesterday, after engaging in a game of musical appliances that involved moving three–count ’em, three–dryers. Not by myself, mind you. But still, it was w-o-r-k. It was well worth the effort, though, or it will be after I finally get to dry my jeans. You see, they are so loose they’re threatening to fall off me, onna count of they haven’t been properly dried in months. I very nearly rewashed them, so that I could dry them, but I decided it would be a silly waste of water and electricity to wash and dry clean clothes.
The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele, Oil on wood, 141 x 176.5 cm (including frame), 1434-36
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’d like to commence with today’s Art History and Rules to Live By Lesson.
Once upon a time, when I was a wee lass, I took an art survey course which comprised, in part, the study, comparison, and contrasting of Medieval and Renaissance art. To wit, Medieval art is highly symbolic and not terribly concerned with the natural rendering of forms, while Renaissance art, though still highly symbolic, fetishizes the pursuit of naturalism. In other words, Medieval art appears–to our eyes–to be two-dimensional and stilted while Renaissance art appears to exhibit depth and shading and all those things we like to think make art look “realistic.”
The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele, detail
So, anyway, one day in class, Dr. StuffyPants was interrupted in the midst of mumbling about Jan van Eyck’s Madonna with Canon van der Paele by a student who asked, quite reasonably, I thought, if the apparent deformity in the Baby Jeebus’ right foot was due to the artist’s ignorance of anatomy or if it was a naturalistic rendering of the model’s malformed foot. Dr. StuffyPants blinked, and replied, “It’s dirt on the slide.” At which point, the entire class of about 200 students cracked up laughing. Which caused Dr. StuffyPants to become unglued. Which made my day.
The moral of this story, because you know there is one, is that it is generally good policy not to make up shit when you don’t know, or can’t think of, the answer. Not that I don’t believe he didn’t know the answer. The man was stuffy, certainly, and arrogant, for sure, but ignorant of the subject matter he was not. He was simply unable to think on the fly, and when a student asked him a question he was unprepared for, he couldn’t pull the answer out of his ass with a compass, a map, and two extra hands. No ma’am. Not if his life depended on it. If he’d just fessed up to his momentary mental lapse, all would have been well and he would have likely finished the lecture with his dignity intact. “I don’t know” is, after all, a perfectly acceptable answer. But, no, he told an obvious lie in order to save face, and it backfired, damaging whatever respect his students had for him. (And, lordy! I just looked him up, and he’s still teaching intro and survey classes.)
So, my secondary point is to share the source of my little giggle fest this afternoon. I overheard someone complaining that there was “dirt on the slide,” which in my world is code-speak for “someone is talking out of their ass.” Heh.
red paper boat 