Rothkie

Untitled Watercolor by Mark Rothko, 1945

I've had the pleasure these past three months to teach art history to my seven-year-old granddaughter every Wednesday morning.

We've already Zoomed through the careers of such greats as Georgia O'Keefe, Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper, Wayne Thiebaud, David Hockney, Andrew Wyeth and Pablo Picasso. Alice Neel is on deck.

Before the first lesson, I searched the web for guidance on teaching art to a child and found it in the unlikeliest of places: the so-called Scribble Book of Mark Rothko.

During the Depression, Rothko—still the starving unknown—ran inexpensive art classes for kids at the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he was known affectionately as "Rothkie."

In the Scribble Book, he jotted nearly fifty pages of notes that pedagogues later boiled into Rothko's five principles for teaching art to kids:

Teach kids that art is self-expression—and that everyone starts life as an artist. Just as kids do when handed crayons—until life gets in the way—adult artists are expressing their felt emotions when they make art.

Don't quash their expressiveness—it's fragile. Long demos rigid assignments turn kids off to art, so avoid them. Rothko would simply set out his students' supplies and let them leap into free-form creation.

Exhibit students’ works. The art teacher's purpose is to instill self-confidence. Rothko would organize public shows of students' art across New York City, including one at the Brooklyn Museum. He also exhibited student work alongside his own at his very first solo show at the Portland Art Museum.

Teach art history with modern art. Kids can learn from modernists, whose work is like their own. The Old Masters were too precise and fussy.

Cultivate creative citizens. The teacher's other purpose is to drive imaginations. “Most of these children will probably lose their imaginativeness and vivacity as they mature,” he wrote in the Scribble Book. “But a few will not. And it is hoped that in their cases, the experience of eight years in my classroom will not be forgotten and they will continue to find the same beauty about them. As to the others, it is hoped, that their experience will help them to revive their own early artistic pleasures in the work of others.”

Shoes

Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.

― Marilyn Monroe

Fashion footwear―boots, shoes, sandals and slippers―no longer captures the bulk of consumer spending in the category, according to retail analysts. 

"Athleisure"―sneakers, flats, slip-ons and flip-flops―has walked off with it.

The reasons for the shift lie deep in women's psyches. 

I suspect they're taking over the world, and need the proper gear.

But who knows where this will end?

Will women acquire even more pairs of shoes?

The average American female, surveys show, already owns 17 pairs of fashion shoes; and many own three times that number.

How many pairs of world-dominion footwear will they buy?

Psychologists, of course, have puzzled for more than a century over women's shoe-fetish. 

Sigmund Freud thought shoes symbolized vaginas; and feet, penises. So for Freud, trying on shoes was a sex act. 

Jacques Lacan thought buying shoes represented an act of domestic defiance. You're proving to yourself you're a master, not a slave. (If you're old enough, you'll remember Nancy Sinatra's hit song.)

Psychologists today are more apt to point to the physical "high" that buying shoes triggers.

Trying on shoes releases a flood of dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin; and paying for them tickles the part of the prefrontal cortex psychologists call our "collecting spot."

But I think the mystique assigned to women's footwear is overblown. 

Most women, if you asked them, would say that buying lots of shoes is simply practical. 

Like belts and purses, shoes are a cheap way to stay abreast of fashion trends without replacing your whole wardrobe every year.

Which leads me to Vincent van Gogh...

A Pair of Shoes by Vincent van Gogh

In the year 1886, Vincent bought a pair of old shoes at a flea market in Montmartre and took them home to use as prop.

That prop turned into one of of art history's most renowned paintings.

Philosophers in particular have celebrated "A Pair of Shoes."

In "The Origin of the Work of Art" (1935), the Existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger―who exalted German peasants―claimed Vincent's painting was the very embodiment of the peasant's fate: food insecurity, ceaseless poverty, over-size families, and premature death.

The shoes, Heidegger wrote, are "pervaded by uncomplaining anxiety as to the certainty of bread, the wordless joy of having once more withstood want, the trembling before the impending child-bed, and shivering at the surrounding menace of death."

Heidegger's interpretation came under fire 30 years later in "The Still Life as a Personal Object" (1968), by the philosopher Meyer Schapiro.

Schapiro―a Marxist who exalted the urban poor―claimed that "A Pair of Shoes" didn't depict a peasant's shoes at all. 

It depicted the artist's own shoes.

Vincent always painted peasants' shoes in a "clear, unworn shape," Shapiro wrote, because (like Heidegger) he believed peasants were noble. 

But Vincent depicted his own shoes as rumpled and ratty, because―down and out in Paris―he was rumpled and ratty.

Shoes don't star only in paintings, however. 

They star in countless fairy tales, story books and motion pictures, as well. 

Just think of all the plots that feature shoes: Cinderella, The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, Puss in Boots, The Red Shoes, The Wizard of Oz, The Absent-Minded Professor, The Devil Wears Prada, Kinky Boots, Barefoot in the Park, Forrest Gump, Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Get Smart, to name but a few.

That's a lot of shoes!

Hiking Boots by Bob James

Lace Curtain

The greatest generation was formed first by the Great Depression.

— Tom Brokaw

My parents both experienced the Great Depression.

But their experiences could not have been more different.

My mother's was a "lace curtain" home. As a 10-year old, she was hardly aware, much less affected, by the disquiet outside.

But she did recall vividly that strange men often appeared at the back door, asking for a sandwich.

She also recalled a Thanksgiving when her grandparents fed hot turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes to strangers they gathered in the cellar.

My father's was a much different home.

He never spoke of it, not once, nor of the Great Depression.

I only know things turned so desperate, his dad sent the baby sister to an orphanage.

If you don't believe there are years of pain ahead for countless millions, I envy you.

You're in the camp that hopes this interregnum is V- or W-shaped.

Perhaps you're an optimist, misinformed by leaders, or simply "lace curtain."

Whatever the case, spend a few moments with MOMA's new video.

PS: Read my most-popular post ever. It's also based on a life experience of my mother.

Encore

Yippee! I've sold two paintings. 

And launched an "encore" career.

I'm heartened as well to learn "it takes only a few people to make a career," according to New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz.

It takes as few people as 12:

• One dealer who pushes your work and "who’ll be honest with you about your crappy or great art."
  

• Six collectors. "Even if you have only six collectors, that’s enough for you to make enough money to have enough time to make your work."
  
  
• Three critics "who seem to get what you’re doing."
  
  
• Two curators "who would put you in shows from time to time."

"Surely your crappy art can fake out 12 stupid people," Saltz says. "I’ve seen it done with only three or four supporters. I’ve seen it done with one!"

It doesn't take a village to succeed.

At Jasper Johns' very first show, the Museum of Modern Art bought three of his works. The artist also landed on the cover of ARTnews.

Elizabeth Peyton’s breakthrough show took place in an empty room in the Chelsea Hotel, where visitors could see 21 of her charcoal-and-ink drawings. 

"According to the hotel ledger, only 38 people saw the show after the opening,'" Saltz says.

"It doesn’t take much."

Today Peyton's works sell for a million dollars. 

Painting by Bob James