Chapter 11

Professor Hue stood in front of the class prepared to teach another crop of young fresh minds how to appreciate art. A projector was showing a picture of painting with a red apple on a table. He strutted back and forth for a moment giving everyone a chance to examine the picture.

He asked, "What is this a picture of?"

Sean raised hand. He noticed no one else was raising a hand, but that was actually pretty normal and he didn't think anything of it. He liked it when classes started with easy questions.

"You!" Professor Hue shouted while pointing at Sean.

Confident that he had the correct answer, Sean said, "It is a painting of an apple on a table."

"Wrong!" Professor Hue shouted.

"What?" Sean asked looking back at the picture.

"You are wrong!"

Sean said, "Wait a minute. That red thing sure looks like an apple to me. That brown wood surface that it is resting on, looks like a table."

"You're only seeing the superficial. This is not what the picture is of."

"So what is the picture of?" Sean asked looking around the room.

There were a number of students who were shaking their heads. Obviously, Sean wasn't seeing the same thing everyone else was looking at. He looked again at the painting and rubbed his eyes. That didn't work, it was still a painting of an apple on a wood table.

"It's about love waiting in absolute loneliness. It's of a fresh, ripe, virginal woman waiting to be found by the right man."

"What woman?" Sean asked. "There's no woman in that picture. I only see an apple."

"That's because you're seeing it with your eyes," Professor Hue said.

"That's because we see with our eyes," Sean said as if he was explaining a fact to a little child.

"No!"

Sean snorted. Pointing to the appropriate body parts, he said, "We see with our eyes, hear with our ears, smell with our nose, taste with our tongue, and touch with our skin."

"Where did you learn that nonsense?"

"I learned that in elementary school. I can arrange some experiments to prove that to you, if you would like."

"Don't tell me you're a science major," Professor Hue said in disgust.

"Okay, I won't tell you that," Sean said.

"Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"A science major," Professor Hue said.

"You told me not to tell you that," Sean said.

"I'm ordering you to tell me that now."

"Make up your mind," Sean said.

Professor Hue asked, "Are you a science major?"

"Yes," Sean said.

"I told you not to tell me that," Professor Hue said.

"You just finished ordering me to tell you that. You look a little young to be suffering from Old-timers disease. You might want to get that checked out by a doctor," Sean said shaking a finger at Professor Hue.

Professor Hue waved an arm in the air theatrically. Trying to sound lofty, he said, "Scientist have no appreciation for beauty. They are emotionally void – empty of all feelings."

Professor Hue gave a little dramatic hop that might have been a move stolen from ballet, but it if had been then it was a very poor imitation of one. He felt that art, drama, and dance had a lot in common, although he wasn't very good at the drama and dance parts. Still he tried.

He said, "We have artists, because the world needs beauty and people who appreciate it."

He looked at Sean and, in a very stern voice, said, "You do not get a hug."

"A hug? Why would I want a hug?" Sean asked blankly.

Professor Hue turned to the rest of the class and asked, "Does anyone else want to tell me what that is a picture of?"

A timid young woman slowly raised her hand. He called upon her.

The young woman said, "That is a picture of temptation."

"Interesting," Professor Hue said. "Why do you say that?"

"You have to remember that Eve tempted Adam with an apple. In this painting, we have an apple sitting there all by itself. It is ripe and delicious looking, the epitome of temptation."

Professor Hue said, "Very good. You get a hug."

He pranced over to the young woman and hugged her. Sean watched the scene completely confused by it.

Professor Hue asked, "Does anyone else want to say what this is a picture of?"

A guy dressed all in black answered, "It's a picture of rot."

"That is a dark interpretation. Why do you say that?"

The guy said, "What you see is a nice red apple, but you can't see the rot inside. It's puissant corruption hidden behind a facade of beauty. We all know that beauty is only skin deep."

"I like that," Professor Hue said. "You get a hug."

He pranced over to the young man and hugged him. Sean listened to the exchange completely confused by it. He didn't know why the guy in black seemed so happy about getting hug.

Professor Hue asked, "Does anyone else want to say what this is a picture of?"

Sean said, "You said it was a woman. She said it was temptation. He said it was rot. Which one of you is right?"

"We all are," Professor Hue answered. "We each see something different in the painting."

"So I see an apple on a table. I guess that means I'm right, too."

"You're hopeless," Professor Hue said shaking his head sadly.

Sean said, "I read the textbook and I remember what it said about this picture. This painting was made during a practice exercise in a still life class."

"Who told you to read the textbook?"

"No one."

"You are not to read the textbook until I tell you what to read out of it. Too much of the material in it is concerned with minutia and facts that get in the way of true appreciation of art. It is a perfectly horrid book and I wouldn't use it at all except there's one or two pages that one must read about the artistic spirit."

"I thought the section on perspective, light, and arrangement of subject was pretty good. That whole bit about how the eye moves around the canvas was fascinating," Sean said.

"You science types are all alike. You're all so worried about technique and trying to develop a comprehensive theory of art that you have no appreciation for what the artist is trying to convey," Professor Hue said.

Sean said, "According to the book, the artist who painted that picture was supposed to learn about light and shadows. He wasn't trying to convey anything other than he knew how light interacted with objects."

"There you go with the facts again. Art isn't about facts. It is about feeling," Professor Hue said with a pout.

"Is that a fact?" Sean asked.

"Yes."

Sean said, "That's weird."

"What's weird?" Professor Hue asked.

"You just told me a fact about art while telling me that art isn't about facts."

"You're hopeless."

Sean frowned and thought about it. He said, "I hope not. Wait a second! I can't be hopeless, I still have hopes. At least, I hope I do."

Professor Hue said, "You're trying to confuse me with logic. It won't work. I'm immune to logic."

"Really?" Sean asked with a puzzled expression.

"Yes. Now I'm going to show another painting. I don't want you to look at it with your eyes."

"Okay."

After a second, Professor Hue said, "What do you see?"

"Blackness," Sean answered.

"That's a very strange interpretation of this classic painting. Tell me why you say that?"

Sean said, "I have my eyes closed. No light is reaching the rods and cones on the back of my eyes so all I see is blackness."

Professor Hue screamed in frustration. He said, "Open your eyes and look at the painting."

"You told me not to look at it with my eyes."

"You have to look at it with your eyes to see it."

"You just finished telling me that I'm not supposed to see it with my eyes. How am I supposed to see and not see things with my eyes? That doesn't make sense."

"Are you particularly dense?"

"No. Last time I weighed myself, my weight was appropriate for someone my size and build so that would suggest that I am of typical density."

"Open your eyes and look at the painting."

Sean opened his eyes and looked at the painting. He shook his head.

"This is a very famous painting titled, 'Nymphs by a Pond.' What do you see?"

"I see a very unrealistic painting of nymphs by a pond," Sean said with disdain.

"Why do you say that?"

Sean said, "Everyone knows that water nymphs have blue hair. The artist put the wrong color hair on them."

"Maybe they are wood nymphs," Professor Hue said.

"No. Wood nymphs have green hair," Sean said.

Professor Hue said, "Have you ever seen a wood nymph?"

"Yes. I know a whole bunch of them," Sean answered.

"You do?"

"Yes."

"So tell me about these nymphs."

"The artist got the nymphs all wrong. Not only do they not have brown hair, they have bigger breasts than the artist drew. They don't wear clothes. They also have a carefree expression on their face. Nymphs aren't serious at all. They like to get chased a lot, but they really enjoy the catch."

Professor Hue said, "There's hope for you yet. At least you have an imagination."

"I tell him facts and he thinks it's imagination. He imagines things and think they're facts," Sean said shaking his head.

"What was that?" Professor Hue asked.

Sean said, "I was agreeing with you. You are immune to logic."

Professor Hue said, "Everyone look at this next picture."

There was picture of an abstract painting comprised of dots of various colors randomly placed on a canvas. Some of the dots looked like they had run.

"What is this painting of?"

Sean looked away. He started humming as if that would make him less noticeable. Professor Hue turned to Sean and said, "You! What is this painting of?"

Sean answered, "It is a painter's drop cloth."

"Wrong!"

"I beg to disagree. I've seen painter's drop cloths that look exactly like that," Sean said.

Professor Hue said, "A painter's drop cloth is an accident. This was an intentional piece of art."

"Yeah, the artist intentionally made a painting of a painter's drop cloth," Sean said. "It's a very realistic depiction of one."

"You're wrong," Professor Hue said.

Sean said, "Prove it."

"There's no proof in art. That's a concept of science, not of art."

Sean said, "How can you say I'm wrong?"

"You're trying to use that logic stuff again. I told you that I'm immune to it," Professor Hue said shaking his hand at Sean.

"So how did he make it?" Sean asked.

Professor Hue said, "He dripped paint on the canvas from his brush."

"How does paint get on a painter's drop cloth?" Sean asked.

"It drips off the painters brush onto the drop cloth."

Sean said, "It sounds to me like the pattern on a painter's drop cloth and the pattern on this painting were made in identical ways."

"One was done by an artist and the other is done by a common laborer."

"Assuming he was starving artist, what did the artist do to put food on his table?"

"He waited on tables at a local restaurant."

"He sounds like a common laborer to me," Sean said.

Professor Hue said, "Stop with the logic! Logic has no place in art!"

"Are you sure?" Sean asked.

"Yes."

"How about mathematics?"

"There's no place in art for mathematics!"

"The textbook had a whole chapter on the mathematics of certain kinds of mosaics," Sean said.