Concerning Pop Art, they ask, "Is it where you put
art...you put paint in a balloon, and you blow it up so it's huge - and then,
then you POP it!" It's both a question and an answer in itself, and it's
thought simultaneously by a few children across the classroom. It's cute - but
too literal, almost unimaginatively juvenile - and they know, you can tell by
the looks on their faces, that this can't be the case. But what if?
On seeing Lichtenstein's Girl
With Hair Ribbon the generic, boyish response is that the figure is ugly,
it's rubbish. Dull - buried. They can't elaborate, it's simply known. But also,
she has severe chicken pocks, which lends the image an air of muted hilarity
among the other boys - or, perhaps, uncertainty. Later the teacher asks us:
'where is she looking?' - her eyes looking off to the left. Instinctively one
boy - who was previously described the figure as 'mank' - replies that she's "looking
back, into the mirror."
The comment is said and is gone. Amidst other replies, other
snippets of laughter, other claims of interest from the girls, of further criticism
and embarrassment from the boys - embarrassment at the female figure, at the
vivid flatness of the image exploding, perhaps, with an indescribable latency -
or boredom, dull and done with - the words are said, heard, but not held onto,
wrapped up by the end of the lesson.
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