So today I took the kids in my portfolio class on a field trip to Williamstown, MA to the Clark Art Museum. It was a french + art combination field trip. The French teacher likes bringing her kids there because they have a large collection of impressionist paintings plus right now they are having an Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit (which i was psyched for!). Anyways the day was amazing! I mean I usually love my job- but today was one of those days where you just feel it in your heart that this is want you were meant to be doing. I couldn’t stop smiling. First off we got there and we had a guided tour with the director of education. He was this older gentleman from scotland and he was just wonderful. He was so funny and had the kids so engaged it was unbelievable. Haha he had them lying on the ground looking up at paintings, getting them to figure out where the painting would have hung, who was the audience, the reason behind things. It was just great. I mean I cant stress how awesome this man was. I think the kids enjoyed the giant painting of naked nymphs pulling a peeping fawn into the pond to cool him down- with the symbolism of one of the nymphs pulling the fawns horn the best but I do really think they liked the whole tour. During the tour he was asking questions about a monet and one of my kids starting saying all this stuff about how it was an impressionist painting and they focus on light, and it looks better if you step away so that the color will blend and all this stuff and I was like wow they really do listen (well some!). I was so proud!
Anyways after lunch we gave the kids free time to walk around and I was just so proud of them. They kept wanting to talk with me about things they were seeing and were pointing out things different things and letting me know what their thoughts were. It was just so fun. I didn’t want to leave. There are a few students who really just make every bad day in teaching seem worth it.
I got a few mins to walk around the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit by myself and oh man I love that stuff. What an awesome era- they paintings mostly depict the 1890’s and the city life in Paris and the Moulin Rouge. If I could time travel i would go back then and dance the night away at those places wearing all those awesome dresses.
I leave you with some Toulouse-Lautrec paintings…
So there was this piece of artwork by Lautrec there of this guy performing surgery. I read about it and I guess Dr. Pean was a surgeon back in the 1890’s and he would perform public surgeries for people to come and watch. Lautrec would go a lot and draw what he would see. How crazy huh?
Another post to come about these french nite life paintings…
