They say that a man studies all his life.
They also say that a man cannot be taught but he can only learn himself.
Who can become that special teacher that would let one study oneself and wouldn’t preach or get tired of teaching?
Such question won’t easily lead to an answer. It would sooner lead to new questions.
One of them – what is it that we really want to know? What do we want to master?
Sigmund Freud came to an interesting conclusion.
When a child keeps asking his endless questions (“Who?”, “What?”, “Why?”) he wants to ask something absolutely different in fact.
And that is: “How was I born? And why? Who am I?”.
And it stay true for every adult.
When answering the question “What do we want to know?” everyone would say something different
but all will surely be united by only one answer – we want to know ourselves and the meaning of our life.
We want to master the way of communicating with the world within and around us.
I specialize in the history of art but mostly I am interested in the potential of using art technologies in education.
One man told me: “I don’t understand art”. But since he was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met he added:
“But may be it is just because no one ever explained to me what the point of art is”.
And today I’ll try to do that.
But there is a problem.
Here you look at the picture (slide “The Last Day of Pompeii” by Karl Brullov)
and when they tell you it can teach you something the stereotype comes to your mind.
You think: “Here I can learn something about ancient history, nature cataclysms, human behavior at critical moments etc.”
And yes, all this really happens but!
Remember Freud – this is not what we really want to know, and this is not what the educational power of art is about!
Is the work of art able to tell you something new and important about yourself?
Is it capable of showing you the structure of the world and your own place in it?
Here are the questions that should be answered.
We’ll discover the educational capacities of art on the material of one piece of art.
We see a painting that is called “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going”
It was created by the French artist Paul Gauguin in the end of the XIX century. What do we see here?
On the island against the background of mountains on the bank of the stream human and animal figures are represented lying, sitting and standing.
But – and it is very important – the work of art speaks primarily the language of composition with us.
Here the composition is formed by means of waving lines.
What do we get when discovering these lines?
The lines come together in a compositional formula that is called a lemniscate.
Geometrically a lemniscate reproduces a mathematical sign of eternity.
Two round forms tend to turn into each other on a non-stop basis.
Compositional formula shows an eternal circulation that is going on here.
The art makes us think and then a visual notion appears – it is “repeating” – the history repeats itself.
Another type of compositional lines are sine curves. Ascending and descending rhythms form visual notions “flow” and “waving”.
Our visual thinking starts working again. It creates the notion “river of life”. And every character is a part of a wave in a stream life.
In the left upper part of the picture on the golden background we can read questions in French
«D’ou venons nous? Que sommes nous? Ou allons nous?».
They mean “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”.
So the work of art starts its dialogue with the viewer by setting up an educational problem and then it stimulates its solving.
What is a human being, his life and his death? – that’s the meaning of these questions.
The nature of these questions leads us back to the initial cognitive interest of the mankind.
How to read answers to these questions right?
At first the process of visual reading begins from right to left.
It is uncomfortable and “wrong” to our point of view.
Remember this feeling of discomport.
But why should it be from right to left?
The thing is that here we deal with an obvious and a very simple scheme.
Three phases of a human life are personified
by the baby,
the mature fruit gatherer
the old woman.
According to this scheme the answers will be:
Where do we come from? – from the non-existence before our birth;
“What are we?” – reaching towards the fruit of life;
“Where are we going?” – to the non-existence after death.
Therefore our movement from right to left presents the stereotype of the life development from birth to death.
And there you get the general formula of life – we get born, we tear off the fruit of life, get old and end our life journey.
How would you call such a formula? The harsh truth? Traditional vision? Cliche?
Yes you are right. As it is right that neither the picture is so simple, nor life itself.
Do you remember that discomfort that occurred at the necessity to read from right to left?
This subconscious desire to start backward journey is supported by some other signs.
At first the questions of the title are put in the left.
Secondly there are characters who turn and go backwards.
At third if we look more attentively the answer to the question “Where are we going?” in the left part of the picture is not so univocal as it seemed first.
Yes, on the one hand there is the fear and the despair of the human mortality.
Yes, here the human being walks to the edge in realizing the final of life.
But here he also starts looking for those guides who could lead him out of this deadlock.
And look – here on the hill – there is a statue – the statue of the goddess.
The statue is a representative of the higher world that knows no fear and no death.
Where are we going to? The goddess speaks of the final in a life journey as of the beginning of another one – along the river of eternity.
As a result this border of the human life is simultaneously formed by two opposite notions – “the end” and “the beginning” as a transition to the other.
This is how begins the backward movement – from death to birth.
And so we return to the figure of the sleeping baby. The history repeats itself.
This compositional idea now get a new embodiment.
Infancy if s point from where all comes and where all eventually gets back.
Paul Gauguin once said: “Life is so short – you have no time to prepare for eternity”.
Think about these words. The first part of this idea is not new but the second one makes look at the first part differently.
In this case the work of art is a tuning fork that attunes for the preparation to eternity.
And this is a general meaning of art.
As the philosopher Blaise Pascal said: “Dig deep in your thoughts and you will find there only the past and the future.
We never live in the present but only long for the future or call on the past. As a result we never live but only expect to live”.
I think that we all can assume there is truth in these words.
But the work of art that we see now changes these values.
It shows how the vanity, the fear and doubts step aside and a different understanding of life comes to the foreground.
And this way we open a new meaning of answers to the questions of the title.
There is no development from the beginning to the end but only eternity the man belongs to before, during and after his life.
How does the work of art educate a person?
First of all it develops the capacities of the viewer in a human being.
The viewer is the one who doesn’t look but sees. The one who is ready for discovering new meanings.
The viewer means the thinker.
The thinker who is asking questions and following the indexes, who is never satisfied by the found answers and is ready for new steps of exploring.
The work of art teaches understanding the real place of such life stages as childhood, maturity and old age.
Who is this story about? About some unknown Tahitians – characters of this picture?
Or is it about all of us – people who go along our own way of life?
This work of art demonstrates the ideal human being and its ideal relationship with the divine Universe.
But the work of art lets its every viewer try these ideal role on.
That is why with all the confidence I declare that there is no better source for a man to get to know himself but art.
Different works of art can give us different life lessons.
(slide “Noblewoman Morozova” by Vasiliy Sourikov)
One can show how you can challenge the official rules and get entangled in the network barriers.
(slide “Liberty” by Eugene Delacroix) The other — how easily the mankind can get to hating and slaughtering itself.
(slide “Giaconda” by Leonardo da Vinci)
The third work of art may show how fragile is the human soul that receives and transmits the energy of the spirit to the world.
(slide “The ball at Moulin de la Galette” by Pierre August Renoir)
The fourth one — how marvelous can be the holiday of the life dance enveloped by golden divine light.
I’ve been exploring the educational potential of art because it gives me an opportunity of getting to know the most effective strategies
that the mankind has produced for understanding itself and the ways of communication with the world.
Thank you for your attention.