A lazy afternoon

I found myself observing the rather famous painting, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Never before have I been impressed by it. I had always found it boring. Oh, look! A park! My, you never see paintings of those! So rare and original! Pffft. Not hardly.

Of course, that was then and this is now. As I looked at it, the teacher's voice blended into a mumbling background noise pointing out the use of shape and line and vanishing points. I saw a shadow I hadn't seen before that put everything into a new perspective. I imagined someday making a movie, and in that movie having a scene that copied the positions of people and water and trees in this painting. There was beauty and interest there that I can't put into words. Suddenly this simple, over-publicized painting was as fantastic as it must have always been. If only I'd seen it sooner.

I sat in a room full of people that seem to be from every walk of life, to a very ridiculous scale. Really it was truly amazing to see the large variety of people that take the early morning classes at a community college.

We have true to the 'T' starving artists, lazy college students that need a fine art credit (how such a species manages to get to school so early is truly a mystery to me), a druggie or two, a hippie (different from a druggie- he's a druggie with class!), a pretty Belgian transfer student, about three to five attractive guys from all different genres of macho male (ya know, gear-head, jock, rich kid, musician, et cetera) that all took turns hitting on transfer babe, Belgian transfer babe's posse composed of the remaining top 5% most attractive women in the class, a couple of those who love art and like to think of themselves as art buffs but really couldn't do anything artistic well enough to save their own lives, one handsome and inspired Mormon, and me.

Out of all of us, which ones looked up at the famous painting on the overhead and were truly impressed with what they saw? I always wonder, when I see a piece I'm not impressed with. Who likes this? And why? Are they seeing something that I can't see? Are they better artists than me and that's why they see it?

Or do they just look at it long enough to finally see its genius?